Sometimes, the best way to describe a new competition series is to triangulate it between a couple of shows that already exist. So Fame Academy was The X Factor meets Big Brother, and The Great British Sewing Bee is Bake Off meets Project Runway.
However, this is impossible to do with Netflix’s new competition series, Million Dollar Secret. That’s not because it is so fiercely original that it defies comparison. No, it is because Million Dollar Secret is The Traitors. It is transparently, baldly, shamelessly The Traitors. Million Dollar Secret feels like the result of a careful scientific procedure designed to make something as identical to The Traitors as humanly possible, while remaining just legally distinct enough to prevent it from being sued into oblivion by All3Media.
It barely even feels worth explaining how Million Dollar Secret works, such is the comprehensiveness of its unoriginality, but here goes. A number of strangers gather in a big luxurious house. One of them has a secret they desperately need to protect, and the others must do everything they can to discover their identity. Each day they take part in group tasks that will give them an advantage when it comes to voting each other out. The voting happens around a large, ornately decorated table. Sometimes, the action will be punctuated by slow-motion footage of the contestants, while an incongruously dramatic pop song plays in the background. Million Dollar Secret is The Traitors, and I really don’t think I can underscore this enough.
Herein lies the problem. My head is telling me that favourably reviewing Million Dollar Secret is tantamount to rewarding plagiarism. It would be like giving a high exam grade to someone who openly copied all their answers from the smartest kid in class. However, I just watched four episodes of Million Dollar Secret in a row – even though I only meant to watch one. It might be a rip-off, but it is apparently a rip-off I cannot get enough of.
The gimmick of Million Dollar Secret is that all the contestants have boxes in their bedrooms, and one of them contains a million dollars in cash. The others have to guess who has it, and whoever is left holding it at the end gets to keep it. This means things get febrile pretty fast. Everyone has seen enough of these shows (mainly The Traitors, let’s be honest) to come with a gameplan, which means that everyone finds themselves in a paranoid frenzy of hypervigilance from the outset. Early on, one contestant suggests that everyone should hold hands at lunch to give thanks for the food, and everyone immediately turns on him, because by the game’s logic this is exactly the sort of thing a secret millionaire would do.
It is worth pointing out that this is an American series, so compared to the BBC version of The Traitors everyone is incredibly loud and performative, with camera-ready personas locked and ready to go. One of them is a former New York police officer who cries about infertility then boasts that she only did it to win people over. One is an older woman from Texas who acts as though she fell out of a charming network TV show about a cunning amateur detective. One quickly announces that he is “the king of nonverbal communication”. All three come out of the gates way too hot, and it isn’t a spoiler to say that it backfires spectacularly for one of them.
Then there is the host. Million Dollar Secret is presented by Peter Serafinowicz, who gives a knowingly batty performance destined for meme immortality. Serafinowicz takes the role of the owner of the fictional hotel where everyone is staying, and conducts himself with a genuinely bizarre upper-class aloofness. The beauty of it is that, for most global viewers, he probably seems quite generically British. But if you know his work, it is hysterical. Towards the end of the first episode, when everyone is tearing each other apart to discover the identity of the millionaire, there is a cutaway of Serafinowicz happily munching away on his dinner. It is as if he is doing his own private one-man show unbeknownst to everyone else. It’s incredible. This may well be the role he was born to play.
So, Million Dollar Secret is The Traitors. But guess what? The Traitors is great, and so is this, too. If you liked The Traitors, I’m afraid that this will be your new obsession. Turns out originality is overrated.
• Million Dollar Secret is on Netflix now.
