The best thing about Celebrity Traitors is how unimportant everyone's fame really is
Olympic medals and knighthoods count for little in the Traitors castle.
In the summer of 2023, after the first season of The Traitors had proved the BBC’s biggest runaway entertainment hit in years, I attended an industry seminar where the show’s producers waxed lyrical about the virtues of having "civilians" (i.e. not famous folk) taking part.
As the commissioning editor explained: "As tempting as it is to have the poster full of well-known celebs, we realised that people are more likely to throw themselves into it if they don’t have an image" – translation: "If they don’t have an agent."
Two years on and, with more hype than the World Fair, Celebrity Traitors is upon us. It's an eclectic bunch to be sure, with players – "we don’t call them contestants, they’re playing a game" was another takeaway from that seminar – ranging from witty, nervy Jonathan Ross to clipped, clever Celia Imrie and the delightfully deadpan Joe Wilkinson.
Usually, a “celebrity” version of any TV show involves quite the range of has-beens to wannabes, but the pedigree here is unusually elevated. Why do it? Most don’t need the exposure, and the prize money is for charity. Could it be they're simply as engrossed by the ethics of the enterprise as everyone else? There’s no doubt from the off that everyone is throwing themselves into it like, well, like people who don’t have an image.
The real winner so far is the producer or hopefully now-promoted researcher who decided the third Traitor should be Alan Carr. The faces of his fellow murderers said it all, as they realised what a complicated prospect this brings. He’s giddy, too loud, excitable and the prospect of him being able to conceal his fox-in-chickenshed status appears to lie somewhere between zero and nil - unless of course that’s his superpower.
But Carr’s theatrics aside, the most revealing aspect of Celebrity Traitors is how completely useless, and uninteresting, everyone’s celebrity is. Content creator Niko Omilana’s YouTube likes count for as little as David Olusoga’s book sales.
Clare Balding may be able to recite a five-set tennis match point for point but, when it comes to getting a Trojan horse through a locked gate, she’s so useless her fellow players assume she must be a Traitor intent on sabotage. Meanwhile, Charlotte Church has sung arias in front of popes, but when she gives up her protective shield, she’s suspected of being a Traitor when she is actually just being selfless. One is rubbish, one is heroic, both may be murdered before the week’s out.
Nor do the customary deep-dive chats around the reality TV fireplace have anything like their customary import. Who cares how Tom Daley feels about being a famous sports star by the age of 14? We’re only wondering if he’s going to be murdered, betrayed or turned before nightfall. Typically, this is summed up beautifully by Stephen Fry who mentions he’s been both imprisoned and knighted before entering the castle, but here... "We’re all Faithfuls or Traitors, and that’s all there is to it."
He's right. We’re no more intrigued by Alan Carr’s apparent inability to conceal his treachery than we were by Linda’s season 3 shake of the head. No great wordsmithery, record sales or gold medals will rescue them from the dilemma of whether to betray or be betrayed. This is a challenge not of hierarchy but humanity where, the deeper we go into the game, the less important it becomes that they are celebrities at all. Better not tell their agents.
The Celebrity Traitors continues tonight at 9pm on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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