Continuing on from last week’s look at the most recent season of the BBC’s phenomenon of a game show, The Traitors, I would like to dissect potential cracks beginning to appear for the show going forward. Currently, The Traitors is on an upwards incline, reaching viewing numbers rare for current live TV: the finale of season three, which aired on Friday 24thJanuary, was watched live by roughly 7.4 million viewers, which makes it the most watched live episode of the show so far. Reaching new heights for current entertainment, it seems like The Traitors can’t really go wrong – after all, it’s a fairly simple format with a few twists and turns thrown in so as not to get too stale, but could The Traitors craze die out, or is it a format designed for longevity?
By the time the third season of The Traitors started, I had only seen the previous series when it aired because my mum had been so obsessed with the first that I thought I should see what all the fuss was about. It’s safe to say that I enjoyed the second season so much that I was wholeheartedly excited for the new year if only for the fact that a new season was set to start. The finale of season two was such a highlight of last year’s tv – it was unbearably intense. I don’t think I’d ever been as seated as I was for that final fight between Harry, Mollie and Jaz. The producers of the show had worked their magic to perfection, and I would say that they managed to carry some of that over into season three.
After season three was over, and I had a Traitors shaped hole in my life that needed desperately to be filled, I went back and watched the very first season and realised that the difference in tactics, communication and gameplay was drastic.
In the first season, everyone is on the same footing at the beginning of the game because everyone is learning how to play for the first time, along with the audience watching. They had no previous guidelines other than the instructions they were given as the game went on for how to play. I also noticed that players were much more easily trusting of their friends, which, if another traitor hadn’t stabbed the last remaining traitor in the back at the final round table, would have caused the faithfuls to lose the money because they were so certain that their closest friends couldn’t be lying to them. In season two and three however, players now have a point of reference for how the game is played, an awareness of the kinds of moves the traitors will make, and, if they want to win the money, will have thought about the best way they can play the game. This gives us players like Charlotte, who pretended to be Welsh for the entirety of season three in a ploy to be more trustworthy (definitely trying to emanate Amanda from the first season), which makes me think the players now have a more ‘meta’ understanding of how to win the game.
I think as the show continues, players are going to be more and more aware of how best to play – whether this elevates or lessens the impact of the show I don’t know, but it will make it harder for the producers to keep it a fresh, surprising format, especially when the show has such a regimented structure of murder, round table, banish, murder.
One thing the producers included as a final week twist this season was the Seer power, which a player could win by making the most money in a mission. This power meant that after the second to last round table, the player was allowed to invite one other player of their choice to a secret meeting to find out their true identity: traitor or faithful. Richard Osman, British television presenter and producer, has shared his opinions on this new twist on the podcast he co-presents with journalist Marina Hyde, called The Rest is Entertainment, and I think he hits the nail on the head with the problem this power causes for the show. He argues that ‘The second you’ve got a faithful and a traitor in that situation, then there is no tactic, nothing for the rest of the people to do other than vote out both of them’.
Frankie, a faithful, was the player who won the Seer power, and she ultimately decided to invite Charlotte to the meeting, finding out that she was a traitor. The next breakfast, it is simply Frankie’s word against Charlotte’s, and the rest of the players have no evidence to go on in terms of who to trust. No matter how well Frankie had played up until the final, she now had no chance of winning because the other players have to be one hundred percent trusting of everyone remaining in order to end the game. Although this twist led to a very heated final round table, I don’t think it should make a return next season, and I doubt it will if the producers of the show are aiming to renew the format slightly every year.
This year, people also picked up on other flaws that might have a negative effect on future seasons, such as the three people who enter the room last at breakfast usually being the three people up for murder the previous night, meaning they cannot be traitors. Only viewers of the show have mentioned this, so perhaps it is something the producers tell them they’re not going to do, or perhaps they are not allowed to follow this train of thought because it makes the game feel too aware of itself as a televised show.
It’s also becoming more and more pointless as the seasons go on to banish traitors at the round table early on in the game, as it is likely they will just be replaced by a recruited faithful. The paradox of the show lies here: the faithful cannot get the traitors out too early, otherwise the show would not be long enough, yet the faithful who are finding traitors at the beginning are no closer to winning the money at the end of the show as they would be if they kept banishing faithfuls.
I think The Traitors is an exceptionally strong and compelling game show, and one of the best parts of it is the show’s casting of its players. If the producers continue to do a good job casting interesting, entertaining to watch people, then The Traitors could definitely stand the test of time. However, they also need to avoid the pitfalls of the show’s format becoming too predictable or repetitive, without ruining its central integrity.
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