CHRISTOPHER STEVENS: Fancy that! Estate agent Amanda is one of The Traitors' ... trends now
View
comments
The Traitors
Rating: ****
Freddie & Jason: Two Men In A Tent
Rating: *
Every newspaper office has them, that couple who are sleeping together, or are maybe even married, and don’t let on.
They show no affection to each other, they barely speak.
They might share a bed but they won’t arrive for work in the same car. I knew one pair who feigned hostility so well, they wouldn’t look at each other — and then she got pregnant.
Maybe it’s just journalists or maybe it’s the same in every industry — I suspect the latter. It’s certainly true on The Traitors (BBC1), Claudia Winkleman’s addictive gameshow where contestants compete to eliminate each other without drawing attention to themselves.
The Traitors sees 22 people taken to a castle in Scotland. They have a chance to win up to £120,000, but three of the contestants are 'traitors'
The players are meant to be strangers . . . but actress Alex, 26, and magician Tom, 24, are telling no one that they’re in a relationship. Alex plays a singleton so well that one of her rivals, nice-but-dim Matt, is more interested in flirting with her than winning the money.
The Traitors is such a deliciously devious game that it will eliminate every shred of faith you have in human honesty. And after the Beeb’s lamentable recent forays into reality shows, such as Freeze The Fear and Unbreakable, it is also restoring my faith in TV’s ability to invent clever formats. This one has already been a hit in the Netherlands and it’s well polished.
It’s only real flaw is the padding — frequent aerial shots of the landscape. If the show was made with one eye on the overseas market (for sale to channels with lots of ad breaks), perhaps all the scenic filler is meant to be easily trimmed out.
