Ah, remember those hysterical evenings last December, when The Traitors took over British television? Nothing brings us together like an addictive new reality format and, by Christmas last year, everyone in the UK was obsessed. But is it a format you can keep going back to?
Much of the thrill of The Traitors was in discovering its mechanics for the first time. Those friends who told you about it probably abandoned their explanation halfway through and said, look, you just have to watch it. When we did, we slowly learned how the contestants, all holed up together for a fortnight in a big country house, contained a secret minority, the “traitors”, whose effort to avoid detection by the others, the “faithfuls”, created a complex parlour game of politicking, conspiracy and deception. It took us all 12 episodes to unravel its intricacies, and by the end every elimination vote was a screamingly intense psychodrama. After it was all over, we were all a bit exhausted. When the BBC got overexcited and showed the US version only a couple of weeks later, hardly anyone could face it.
Season two of the UK version is coming, but perhaps enough time has already passed for us to go through it all again, so here’s The Traitors Australia. First impressions are that the Aussie take plays it safe, swerving the crass American version’s decision to mix celebrities and civilians, and not bothering with the British programme’s opening trick, whereby two contestants were apparently eliminated before they’d had a chance to unpack.
As the two dozen hopefuls trickle in, however, we notice that they’re not quite a random selection of ordinary Aussies: some could or should be particularly suited to a battle of who can read human nature best. Smooth talker MK, for instance, is a criminal defence lawyer, while Nigel’s claim that he has a pastoral care role at a university is a lie. In fact he’s a negotiator specialising in kidnap/extortion cases, whose job draws on his experience as a hostage who spent 460 days in a cell near Mogadishu, manipulating a gang of Somalian bandits into ransoming him off instead of killing him. Surely that gives him an advantage over Lewis, a bloke in a loud shirt who introduces himself by shouting “I’M FROM BRISSIE!” (Brisbane) and “I’M A SPARKIE!!” (electrician).
Chloe, meanwhile, is almost cheating: she’s a clairvoyant whose second sight does not stop at discerning people’s auras. “I can actually do an internal body scan,” she tells two puzzled rivals at the initial meet-and-greet, regaling them with a tale of when she sensed a cyst on someone’s left ovary. Next to that, determining who’s lying about not being a traitor should be a doddle.
There’s plenty of classic reality-TV buffoonery to entertain us. Someone, in the 21st century, sees fit to enter a room saying “Oh behave, baby, yeah!” in the voice of Austin Powers, while the grandstanding MK is consistently good value, coming across like a man with delusions that make him conduct everyday tasks in the manner of a barrister addressing a court. “I believe, on reasonable grounds … ” he says, offering a theory on who’s a traitor, having previously called for silence and asked for a collective effort to sift through the “circumstantial evidence”.
So the personalities are promising and, when the contest gets going, all the correct dynamics play out. The four traitors, tasked with “murdering” their first victim, debate whether to see someone off at random or make a statement by culling a big personality. The collective task, whereby everyone works together to boost the overall prize pool, remains (as became clear as the British show went on) a drudge: it has to be there to give the contestants more time to interact, but we’re marking time until the banishment showdown, where everyone votes on who should leave next.
Once the faithfuls and traitors are narrowing their eyes at each other around a circular oak table, the old magic starts to flow, and the feeling of having seen it all before begins to fade. A rumour has spread that a contestant has slipped up by talking to someone using traitor jargon. Seeing him pilloried by people who know that acting as an accuser will keep the spotlight off them, at least for now, we experience that desperate vicarious dread that only The Traitors can bring: he’s a faithful, but he can only insist in exactly the way he would if he were a lying, conniving traitor. Deliciously, the gossip-mongers also suspect someone who really is a traitor, so that person endures a different kind of torture as they sweatily face being found out.
As the opening episode ends, and the traitors try to work out their next double-, triple- or quadruple-bluff, one of them reveals themselves to be vastly more cunning and ruthless than they’d previously made out. We’re gasping and pointing and wildly theorising once more. Game on.
The Traitors: Australia aired on BBC3 and is available on BBC iPlayer
