Alex Casey and Tara Ward gather at the roundtable to talk the murderously good beginnings of The Celebrity Traitors UK. Warning: Contains spoilers for episodes one and two.
Tara Ward: You don’t often see 19 famous people try to murder each other on the telly, so I was fit to burst when The Celebrity Traitors UK kicked off last week. I have many thoughts about the first two episodes, and I intend to write them all down on a small piece of slate while sweating and cackling nervously, a la Alan Carr. Alex, please join me at the round table so I can wildly interrogate you for the next few hours: what did you think?
Alex Casey: Iron my fringe straight into my eyes, line them with kohl and call me Claudia Winkleman, because I obviously loved every single second of it. Initially, I wasn’t super enthused about a celebrity version of The Traitors UK. We all saw what happened with New Zealand in season one, where the matey-ness of the celebrities massively diluted the potency of the game. I tried to watch the Celebrity Traitors US and lasted about three minutes thanks to all the “big” personalities making my ears and eyes fold in uponeth themselves. But when I saw the cast for this season, absolutely everything changed. Most powerful cast in history?
TW: It has to be. Rather than a dubious “who even is that?” celebrity line-up, this features an electrifying mix of respected, successful, genuinely famous people, including brainbox Stephen Fry! TV stars Alan Carr and Jonathan Ross!! Actor Celia Imrie!!! Comedians Joe Wilkinson, Lucy Beaumont and Nick Mohammed!!!! Olympic champion Tom Daley and voice of an angel Charlotte Church!!!! In the words of Fry when he arrived to dig his own grave: “what in the friggin’ potatoes is going on?”
AC: It really speaks to the way that The Traitors franchise has single-handedly dug reality television out of its mucky low-culture grave. It is basically prestige programming at this point, winning BAFTAs up the wazoo and toppling Love Island off the throne as the most popular reality television show of the moment (in the UK, at least). The celebrity edition premiered to a record-smashing audience of over six million in the UK, and didn’t do too badly here in Aotearoa either – 163,000 tuned into watch live, with 14.3k streams on ThreeNow on launch day. What did you make of the premiere?
The celebrities come face to face with their mortality on The Traitors.
TW: On a scale of “standing next to your own gravestone” to “being murdered by poisonous pollen”, I loved it more than Tom Daley’s knitted jersey in episode one – which is a lot. I adored how the show tinkered with the format to keep the celebs on their toes, but still leaned into being the self-deprecating piece of theatre that we know and love. I’m thrilled that Alan Carr is a traitor, because the man doesn’t know subtle and has been crumbling from within ever since. Also, no other reality show has hinged on someone knowing many people died in Hamlet. Do you know how many people died in Hamlet?
AC: Thanks to Taylor Alison Swift I did actually go “OPHELIA” loudly, but I would have been toast otherwise. The only thing I loved more than Stephen Fry stepping into his Shakespearean potency during that challenge (and later fact-checking himself in the castle library) was broadcaster Claire Balding accidentally pulling the lever immediately, locking in an incorrect practice answer. She seemed so utterly mortified and there was that beautiful moment of stunned silence afterwards where the celebrities all looked beyond the cameras, hoping they might get another chance at it. That’s what I love about this version already: how it shows these titans of television suddenly in a television environment that is totally out of their control.
Speaking of out of control, can we please talk about the staggering production design of the challenges? Be still my flaming Trojan horse.
Claudia Winkleman and a nice wooden horse (Photo: Three)
TW: That Trojan horse was spectacular – fingers crossed we see something similar on the next season of Celebrity Treasure Island (a twiggy Shrek the sheep, perhaps?). There’s so much delicious attention to detail – the gates, the puzzles, the fields of heather smothering the breakfast table. I also loved the funeral in episode two, and how the skies opened and the gods cried and everyone looked so miserable it was like they were actually at a burial. And Claudia, draped in a veil, clippy-clopping around on horseback! RIP to singer Paloma Faith, murdered in plain sight by her real-life friend Alan Carr, who knocked her off with some virulent pollen. Only love can hurt like this, Paloma.
It was all gloriously over the top, full of humour and human foibles – and so much fun. What a treat to have some appointment viewing to look forward to each week again.
AC: Yeah, as the credits rolled and I realised I had to wait a whole week, I genuinely felt my brain rewiring to the ancient television-watching rhythms of my ancestors. Still can’t quite believe they are making us wait to see what crazy camp Nosferatu-meets-Morpheus outfit Jonathan Ross wears next, what classic literary reference Stephen Fry is going to flex on these utter plebs and, of course, who is going to be the first to be banished from the castle for good. As for our treacherous trio, I predict Alan Carr will crumble to pieces ASAP, people will start sniffing around Jonathan Ross soon and Cat Burns will fly under the radar for the longest.
Beyond the Traitors themselves, I’m hoping to hear a bit more from my Taskmaster UK faves Lucy Beaumont and Joe Wilkinson, and will be keeping a close eye on my picks for Traitors-in-waiting: Celia Imrie, Tom Daley and mega-genius Nick Mohammed. What else do you think awaits us?
TW: When death’s cold hand comes knocking, it won’t be wearing any of Winkleman’s fingerless gloves. Let’s hope there are more batshit challenges that catapult the celebs out of their comfort zone, more moments of outlandish treachery and suspicion, and even more literary references – feel like Chaucer would have bloody loved The Traitors and Jane Austen would have made a lethal under-the-radar recruit. Also can’t wait to see how far these stars will go to win the game, or will they be more worried about their precious reputations? Is there a true celebrity villain about to emerge from one of those creaky coffins? Bring on Thursday night.
New episodes of The Traitors