There is something about January, is there not? You put a handful of parsley in a smoothie, you do more bending and stretching and running than usual, you eat lean proteins and complicated grains, you drink gallons of water, you begin to glow from the inside out. And – and this is a crucial step to the whole process! – you watch an evil little reality show from start to finish, crunched into such a short period of time that it feels like you are gasping for air. That is just as important as, like, ‘remembering to take vitamins again’.
The Traitors, then, which started up again last week. It is intriguing how quickly and how ferociously The Traitors became British legacy TV – it took about 20 minutes into the first episode of last year’s debut show, for my money (although it really cemented when a pink-haired magician ruined a perfectly good breakfast with: “Guys straight up, straight up: Alex isn’t a traitor, she’s my girlfriend!”) – and now we’re all having to watch, gripped, as it happens again. A castle in Scotland, some mask-and-cape-wearing, Claudia Winkleman’s Head & Shoulders contract. Wink-murder mystery, clumsy attempts at subterfuge, a mixed-age contestant pool. Nothing starts the year quite like it.
But while I’ve got you, can I also mention The Trust: A Game of Greed, 2024’s clunkiest-titled TV show so far, and Netflix’s answer to The Traitors? It’s a mash-up of a number of familiar-ish shows but done with so much shine you barely notice: set on a paradise island mansion that is half Love Island and half Glass Onion, involving some arcane card-pulling and scenes set in a vault, 11 strangers are entered into a quarter-million dollar trust and told not to vote each other out of it by former CNN host Brooke Baldwin. Obviously, that does not happen. Over 12 episodes released over three weekly ‘events’, we watch how much you can trust 11 people who don’t know each other but do want to be on TV a little bit. The answer isn’t particularly surprising, but it is entertaining.
There’s nothing quite like an American reality TV contestant; some of these people really are going to hell. Of the 11 contestants, I maybe like two-and-a-half of them, and that is quite important to how The Trust works: a ghoulish part of me wants to watch these people tick around a house, clinking champagne glasses and talking earnestly about how they’ve made “friends for life” less than 24 hours after entering, then slowly turning upon each other, using the various daggers of the format to stab each other in the back. I’m not naming any names – because every one of these contestants is destined to get a million-strong army of Instagram fans they can set on me like dogs – but there are multiple people in here that I actively want to see both fail and cry. But anyone can fill a house with monsters: what makes me want to watch those monsters to the end is whether they are being tasked with something interesting or not. The Trust offers them all enough delicious chances to be evil that you keep gulping episodes down, forgetting to really breathe.
As with every reality show created today, there are at least two daily ‘ceremonies’ – one held dramatically on the balconied edge of a cliff, as the wind whips slightly harder than the sound guys were expecting – and I am starting to wonder if an evil reality TV format has quietly become one of ours. This is the bloodletting we need to start our year off properly. I need to watch a 32-year-old police officer lie about their job in a clumsy attempt at brinkmanship; I need to watch someone flash a fake smile before folding their hands on their lap in a confessional and say they’re “not here to make friends”; I need to watch someone who knows they just casted a dramatic and deciding secret vote pretend to be shocked that that happened; I need to watch a man dressed as a cowboy storm out of a big dining room. Listen, I’m drinking the AF lagers, I’ve re-downloaded that meditation app, I’ve got some overnight oats in the fridge. Let me hold over one little totem of the grim little person I was before midnight struck on the 31st. Let me watch my horrible, devilish reality programmes in peace.
The Trust: A Game of Greed is on Netflix from 10 January
