Last year, having received a series of notices telling me to renew my TV licence or face dire consequences (so dire the letter used bold and red lettering), I decided to save myself the £159: I formally declared that I wouldn’t watch any free-to-air television.
This did not seem like much of a sacrifice. I’ve never been one to channel surf or plonk myself down and “see what’s on”, and I don’t own a television.
I don’t believe this makes me better than other people; I certainly find plenty of other ways to waste precious time. At its best, free-to-air TV is a cultural pulse, a rare site of common ground with a low barrier to entry.
But my past attempts to “join the conversation” have left me standing mutely on the fringes, wondering what I’m not getting. Love Island, for example – often recommended for its cultural impact, sociological interest and witty commentary on X – couldn’t hold my attention. Twenty minutes of hot but largely uninteresting people hooking up while on holiday, stretched out to an hour, nightly? Who’s got the time?
This January, however, it took just one hour of BBC One for me to race to the TV licensing website and gladly shell out the fee. Two weeks later, I’d say it’s already paid for itself.
I am talking about The Traitors: the “reality game” show whose season-two finale airs this Friday. The series has made my January, if not my year.
For the uninitiated, The Traitors is a parlour game (in the vein of Mafia, Werewolf, Secret Hitler or Wink Murder), set at a Scottish castle and presided over by Claudia Winkleman. A team of players take part in physical challenges in order to grow a prize pot of up to £120,000. Meanwhile, a group of unknown “Traitors” in their midst secretly collude to execute “Faithful” players and keep the prize for themselves – as the Faithfuls try to identify and vote off the Traitors. All of which makes for unexpectedly thrilling, tightly plotted television, featuring lies, faulty reasoning, tears, meltdowns, even borderline panic attacks. The players’ emotional investment, relative to that, say, on Love Island, is striking: it seems that it’s far less bruising for one hot person to hook up with another for a shot at a Boohoo deal than it is to be accused of being a backstabbing liar on national TV.
Season one of The Traitors, which aired in December 2022, was a runaway hit for the BBC, averaging 3 million viewers each episode – and generating at least three genuinely hand-on-mouth, memorable moments of television (Nicky’s toast; the social-media magician’s reveal; and the entire Shakespearean finale).
But even among fans, there was scepticism that lightning could be bottled again. Reality shows often have diminishing returns as applicants grow savvy to the format. The Big Brother reboot had many who were clearly comfortable playing the villain, while dating shows now attract more influencers wanting to boost their profiles than people genuinely looking for love.
The genius of The Traitors’ format is that the clear parameters – relative to the risk of emotional entanglement on Love Island – permit the players to give it their all. As any family or friend group who’s survived an especially heated game of Mafia or Werewolf will be able to attest, the fact “it’s only a game” doesn’t keep emotions from flaring, or the stakes from feeling sky-high.
Season two has followed the same formula as season one, but played out as a very different show, thanks in large part to Paul: a Traitor whose unfettered glee for the role made him as watchable as a panto villain. Last Thursday’s episode drew 4.4 million viewers: more even than season one’s nailbiting finale.
Meanwhile, you might not even know that Love Island was even on. ITV2’s latest All Stars season, bringing back past contestants, suggests inspiration for how to refresh the format might be running dry. Audiences, too, are struggling to summon enthusiasm, with just 800,000 people tuning into Wednesday’s episode.
The difference, which audiences seem to be twigging to, is spectacle – there’s a whole different level of drama between seeing people endlessly interrogate relationships that they don’t seem all that invested in and watching people play a game as if their lives and legacies depend on it, sometimes while wearing silly cloaks.
For all its theatrical set-dressing, the secret to The Traitors’ success is that it rewards character and life experience. As Lauren O’Neill wrote in GQ, 36-year-old Paul’s villainy was so compelling because it was of a sort commonly encountered in our day-to-day lives – in property managers, say, or HR departments.
Amanda Lovett – now 56, and a season-one Traitor – exploited the group’s conceptions of her as a kindly Welsh grandmother to avoid detection. This season, 63-year-old Diane Carson was widely agreed to be the sharpest of the bunch – even as the young ’uns competed to claim (or diminish) her as their “mum”.
Winkleman, likewise, brings her decades of experience to the table, presenting as steely and supportive by turns in order to play the room and make the best possible television. The format itself has stores of potential, as suggested already by the US and Australian iterations: could the Traitors’ identities be kept secret – from viewers, or each other? How will they best Paul?
I’ve not felt such pleasurable anticipation for a new episode of telly since the golden era of HBO Sundays. When The Traitors concludes this Friday, I’ll feel its absence not just on my weekday evenings, but on X and in my group chats – and eagerly await its return.
I’ve already written off my £159 TV licence as nine episodes, £18 each. Even if I don’t watch anything else this year, I’ll feel like I’ve had my money’s worth.
