When lists are compiled of seismic TV cliffhangers, it’s to drama that critics ordinarily turn, be it The Walking Dead's Negan with his baseball bat, JR’s bullet to the guts in Dallas or EastEnders' Kat redrawing the Slaters’ family tree with the three words, "Yes, I am!" But if last night’s edition of The Traitors proved anything, it’s that fiction no longer has a stranglehold on unresolved friction.
Ad
If the job of a cliffhanger is to compel an audience to keep watching, then the fate of the treacherous Rachel ought to be offered up in a masterclass on heightened stakes. Yet, what marks it out as different to acclaimed deferred payoffs from the past is the key ingredient of irrational human behaviour.
Real people are unpredictable at the best of times, but put them under pressure at a roundtable where money and safe passage are at risk, and the messiness becomes momentous.
Which is not to say that The Traitors is free from editorial manipulation. Each episode is as expertly designed and layered as Claudia’s wardrobe on a windswept Scottish morning.
And those tasked with editing each show must have felt a whopping amount of job satisfaction when work was completed on Thursday’s jaw-dropper. But, for viewers, the tension crucially doesn’t feel manufactured.
That sense of the Faithful and Traitors having agency over their fates puts events in a state of real flux, something that can’t really be said whenever a line-up of suspects is issued for the latest soap whodunnit.
"You ain't my mother!" gripped the nation over two decades ago. BBC PUBLIC SERVICE
In those instances, the resolutions have usually been predetermined by a storyline team bound by the usual rules of characterisation, foreshadowing and the necessity of scheduling a big reveal to coincide with either a major anniversary or the festive season. And canny soap fans, being well-schooled in such tricks, are sometimes able to outsmart the writers.
But in the case of knee-jerk Faithful James, it’s impossible to rely on convention. We can speculate, argue, and maybe take a side, but guaranteeing the outcome of this particular narrative? It’s a fool’s errand and one that will likely leave the average person blushing harder than Stephen under a studio light.
Yes, it’s packaged up with hooting owls and Fleetwood Mac songs given gothic makeovers. However, the effect is to make The Traitors' suspense feel lived rather than pre-plotted.
All drama, be it in the castle or in soapland, is in the business of staging peril. But the state of anticipation in which we’ve been left ahead of tonight’s final has the livewire feel of danger unfolding in real time.
As such, Kat Slater may just have newfound competition on those countdowns of last-minute TV jolts.
Keep up to date on what’s worth watching with your favourite entertainment news from Radio Times – see more of our exclusive news and interviews featured prominently in Top Stories when using Google.
The Traitors season 4 concludes on Friday 23rd January at 8:30pm on BBC One and iPlayer. Seasons 1-3 are available to watch on iPlayer.
Add The Traitors to your watchlist on theRadio Times: What to Watch app– download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.
David Brown is Deputy Previews Editor at Radio Times, with a particular interest in crime drama and fantasy TV. He has appeared as a contributor on BBC News, Sky News and Radio 4’s Front Row and has had work published in the Guardian, the Sunday Times and the i newspaper. He has also worked as a writer and editorial consultant on the National Television Awards, as well as several documentaries profiling the likes of Lenny Henry, Billy Connolly and Take That.
