What makes The Traitors so fiendishly compelling? Is it the emotional betrayals? The schadenfreude? The Machiavellian skulduggery? It has all that, and some. But for all its diabolical genius, there’s the risk of it going stale. Plus, how do you top a recent celeb edition that had everything? Celia Imrie farting! Tom Daley learning the word “flabbergasted”! Alan Carr murdering his friend Paloma Faith with a poisoned lily!
Not helping matters for the arrival of this fourth series is the fact we haven’t actually had time to miss it. Barely eight weeks since Carr’s triumph, and here we are again for the common-or-garden edition. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that. Still, Claudia Winkleman and the producers clearly know they need something fresh. So before we even get to the usual palaver – that same steam train arrival, that same amazement at the castle accommodation – Winkleman unveils a devilish twist: a secret fourth Traitor. How I laughed when the chosen three discover there’s another one in their midst, and they’re suddenly reduced to mere middle-management, only permitted to eliminate Faithfuls from a shortlist handed down by their faceless overlord. Even murderous treachery has a chain of command now. “It’s supremely annoying and frustrating,” moans Hugo, the 51-year-old barrister and one of the selected three. “The whole point of being a Traitor is having perfect information and now there is someone above us in the chain.”
