{"id":656669,"date":"2026-10-16T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-16T15:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656669\/"},"modified":"2026-10-16T15:46:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T15:46:08","slug":"celebrity-traitors-is-james-acaster-the-worst-traitor-in-the-history-of-the-show-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/656669\/","title":{"rendered":"Celebrity Traitors: Is James Acaster the worst Traitor in the history of the show? \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

The territorial and cultural peak of the Roman Empire<\/a> was also the moment it began its irreversible decline: once you reach the top there is nowhere to go but down. You wonder if this logic also applies to The Traitors and whether, decades hence, historians will trace the downfall of the back-stabbing franchise to the moment Paudie Moloney<\/a> declared he wasn\u2019t a hugger. It was never going to get any better than that. <\/p>\n

That was top Traitors \u2013 and since then it\u2019s been down all the way, first with an underwhelming second series of The Traitors Ireland and now with the joyless and thrill-free return of the BBC\u2019s <\/a>Celebrity Traitors. How did it go so wrong so quickly – and why has the second time out for Celebrity Traitors failed to reach the duplicitous heights of the first year?<\/p>\n

The simple answer is that these Traitors seem to have no idea what they are doing \u2013 and that most of them don\u2019t even want to be Traitors. First Richard E Grant<\/a> self-immolated by declaring that he was a Traitor \u2013 an admission that not all the back-pedalling in the world could wave away. <\/p>\n

Next it became increasingly obvious that James Acaster<\/a> is the worst Traitor in the history of the show \u2013 in that he seems to be of the opinion that getting into the spirit of a ridiculous parlour game would be a stain on his soul. Then he and Maya Jama recruited top telly boffin Hannah Fry<\/a> \u2013 another Traitor who doesn\u2019t want to actually murder anyone.<\/p>\n

The Faithful, meanwhile, are in just as big a flap. They are either entirely clueless and running around accusing the wrong people (James Blunt<\/a>) or they are playing the \u201ckeep a low profile\u201d game and thus essentially removing themselves from the fun (Michael Sheen<\/a>). Then there is the third category, represented exclusively by Ross Kemp<\/a>, whose paranoia bubbled straight to the surface so that by the end of episode one he\u2019d turned into Marlon Brando<\/a> at the end of Apocalypse Now.<\/p>\n

[\u00a0The Traitors Ireland finale: Final betrayal barely registers as second season fizzles outOpens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Week three of the contest has at least advanced the story to the extent that the Faithful have turfed out another Traitor in Fry \u2013 using the logic that she\u2019s a professional clever clogs, so of course the Traitors would recruit her. That proved to be exactly the case \u2212 but the maths whiz\u2019s number was so clearly up from the outset that there is no dramatic tension.<\/p>\n

Will this tepid Traitors find a way to raise the temperature in the time remaining to it? There are indications that token Irish contestant Joanne McNally<\/a> could be in hot water \u2013 because of her habit of nominating completely random Faithful, which Fry, before her departure, identified as the actions of a desperate Traitor. <\/p>\n

So maybe McNally will have to face some scrutiny and perhaps The Celebrity Traitors will finally develop a pulse. It will have been a long time coming \u2013 to date, this celebration of murder and mayhem has been as dull as the grey cardigan Claudia wore to the latest round table.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The territorial and cultural peak of the Roman Empire was also the moment it began its irreversible decline:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":656670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1578,36379,93,62259,61,60,141937,45750,170058,62059,18749,6085],"class_list":["post-656669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-bbc","tag-claudia-winkleman","tag-entertainment","tag-hannah-fry","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-james-blunt","tag-joanne-mcnally","tag-michael-sheen","tag-paudie-moloney","tag-richard-e-grant","tag-rte"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=656669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/656670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}