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Few tv moments beat final yr’s finale of BBC One’s shock hit, The Traitors. It had all the things: a self-destructive mistake, an emotional betrayal, and a last, visceral, launch. “I’m the perfect Traitor on this planet!” the winner yelled into the evening, champagne in hand. So how do you high that? That’s the duty for Claudia Winkleman and co as The Traitors returns with expectations greater than ever.
“New yr, entire new recreation,” proclaims Winkleman, peering out from beneath her signature fringe. However after all all of it feels quietly acquainted: the identical arrival by steam prepare, the identical citadel lodging, the identical twists and turns. Among the many contestants this yr are a window cleaner with a concern of heights, a former British diplomat, the (now customary) physician, and a pair of sisters. Then there are the contestants hiding a secret: the Anglican priest who has stripped off the canine collar, the Londoner who’s (for inexplicable causes) faking a Welsh accent, and the ex-soldier who’s masquerading as a nail technician, carrying a pink go well with and calling herself “murderer Barbie”. All in all, one other solid of delicate eccentrics.
And The Traitors lives and dies on its casting. The duties, utilized by the present each to lift cash within the prize pot and pad out the runtime, are very a lot secondary. As a result of The Traitors is, in impact, a parlour recreation performed out on an elaborate stage; a very powerful aspect is the interpersonal dynamics. Who will get mysteriously emotional on the improper second? Who will develop an irrational distaste for a fellow devoted? And who would be the bloodhound who – deliberately or in any other case – picks up the traitors’ scent? Because the gamers progress via the sport, the feelings construct in the direction of a crescendo.
However, as for this opening episode, issues begin in a moderately jolly means. “I simply love a great homicide,” the minister reveals. “I’m a priest, not a saint.” At its essence, The Traitors is a quite simple recreation, and the primary two sequence – each of which concluded in sensational finales – maintained that simplicity. The important thing, for producers, is to chaperone the fitting characters via to the showdown, in order that the consequence continues to be within the stability, the jeopardy actual. However alongside the way in which, there are going to be twists and turns. Right here, three contestants are ejected from the prepare earlier than it’s even left the station, however one suspects that, having seen earlier editions, these gamers are making a calculated gamble. Generally banishment isn’t everlasting.
This third season of The Traitors is, naturally, extra self-aware. Contestants know the assorted gameplans employed, know that the producers maintain a number of playing cards up their sleeves. There’s a sense that rivals wish to assure extra screentime by taking part in video games throughout the video games, presumably on the encouragement of the manufacturing group. There may be nonetheless the pure pleasure at coming into the world (“It’s giving studying,” one participant exclaims, when she walks into the library), however tinged with growing cynicism. In spite of everything, this isn’t a recreation of random probability: shrewd gamers know that the true, political, recreation doesn’t begin for a number of episodes. Till then, you simply should cling on for pricey life.
Viewers watching this primary episode will probably be left fearing for Winkleman’s chosen trio of Traitors. “I cherished each minute of it,” considered one of them says. “Am I unhealthy?” The reply is “sure, at being a Traitor”. Unsubtle seems to be, teary over-performance, near-audible gasping: this doesn’t appear like a group able to making it to the final leg. And but, the perfect Traitors of seasons one and two – Wilf and Harry – made equally inauspicious begins. They grew into the sport and started to edge out their teammates. And that’s what makes The Traitors so compelling. The characters, who’re attempting to be characters at first, will slowly be drawn again into ragged, fallible humanity.
“Issues are a bit completely different this yr,” Winkleman proclaims on the roundtable. And there are tweaks to the sport’s construction, sly adjustments designed to maneuver the percentages in favour of the present’s antiheroes. How that impacts the denouement stays to be seen. For now, The Traitors has set the stage for an additional season of backstabbing and blithering, perpetrated by a captivating but shifty dramatis personae.
