For the past year, The Traitors has had a massive problem. No, not the parade of indistinguishable white male contestants. Nor the way it increasingly kills off its most likable characters too early (RIP Jessie). Not even the fact that the disproportionate number of people of colour who leave the show early suggests it has a big problem with unconscious bias. Actually, sorry: let me rephrase. The Traitors has two massive problems.
But here’s the one that defines this series: what the point of the show actually is. The celebrity version blew the previous regular season of The Traitors out of the water. It was absolutely charming, featuring a bunch of lovely people playing a gripping game while committing the politest series of murders possible. It smashed the normal version in every sense: ratings, watchability, how instantly it hooked you. And it was always going to be that way, given that this is a show that functions best when you’re rooting for as many contestants as possible. So when nearly every player is one you’re already familiar with, it inevitably makes for more gripping TV than a series where you spend the first two weeks going: “Sorry, there’s a guy in there called Jack?”
But the runaway success of The Celebrity Traitors has risked the standard version looking as if its USP is: “The dull one.” The show’s producers have decided to deal with that problem by amping up the drama. Before its launch, Claudia Winkleman called its new direction “hardcore” and “brutal”, adding that: “We get some very juicy round tables … It gets very heated ... it gets ugly.” She’s certainly not wrong. Some of this year’s contestants seem incapable of having their name mentioned at the round table without blowing their stack. James is often tetchy. Jade is on a constant hair trigger. By the end of Friday’s show, there was such bad blood that she even refused Matty’s offer of a hug, and he had to come back to try again the following episode.
There has also been open warfare in the castle for the first time, with Fiona explosively going head-to-head with Rachel in a way that seemed genuinely ill-tempered. Even Harriet’s strategic attempt to take Rachel out devolved into such an unpleasantly aggressive breakfast shouting match that she has since told the Times: “It was awful watching it, I lost my temper and it’s not nice to see that … It was so intense, the pressure just got to me. That was insane behaviour. I’d never normally shout at someone I only met two weeks ago over breakfast.”
It is, frankly, a massive shame. When it was first broadcast, The Traitors was a breath of fresh air. It felt like a revolution in reality TV, not because it had a penchant for the dramatic, but because it was populated by hugely relatable people navigating reality TV dynamics in an extremely nice way. So endearingly understated were the first couple of seasons, that sometimes people got kicked out of the game because they admitted to playing the game. It was the most British reality show imaginable.
In its first season, The Traitors was hailed as channelling the joy of the first season of Big Brother – where a bunch of ordinary people captivated the nation by being low-key daffy. Whose most iconic moment involved the entire cast (and viewing public) uniting in their apocalyptic hatred of calculated gameplay – and vilifying a man called Nick for writing some names on a bit of paper. It was a comparison that felt very apt – like BB, the early outings of The Traitors charmed a broad audience, many of whom wouldn’t normally go near the histrionics and confrontation of a typical reality show.
In 2026, however, ruthless rules The Traitors. Winning the show has increasingly morphed into an exercise in who can be the most cut-throat. And that person, without question, is Rachel. She effortlessly batted away both Fiona and Harriet’s ferocious attacks. The way she blindsided Ross with: “Was Hugo this dramatic in the turret?” at the round table was one of the most astonishingly brazen bits of gameplay the show has ever produced. She will seemingly stop at nothing to win – and it’s working. Barring, of course, any last-minute dramatics from Faraazatha Christie.
There have been cut-throat players before, of course – season two’s Paul Gorton even read a copy of American Psycho as a training manual. He didn’t, however, manage to match his arrogance levels to his ability to not get booted out, and proved an unwitting comic delight. Series one’s Wilf certainly had no compunction in stabbing his fellow traitors in the back. But his tendency to break down in tears when sticking the knife in – not to mention being gloriously undone by Kieran’s parting shot – kept him the right side of likable. And while there’s been one other proper watch-through-fingers moment of brutality – Harry’s betrayal of Mollie in season two’s finale – that, at least, came in the show’s dying seconds.
To watch The Traitors now, though, is no longer to immerse yourself in the friendliness that characterised previous seasons. Instead, it’s to plunge yourself into an energy that feels much more predictably reality TV, with its histrionics and manufactured drama. Where, for the first time, truly unpleasant moments have flared up. It is, of course, still very watchable television, but given the state of the world right now, do we really want to see the UK’s most lovely bit of reality escapism morph into something much harder and more aggressive? No thanks. In attempting to become a more brutal version of itself, it’s hard not to suspect that The Traitors has lost something: a bit of its soul.
