After series two’s nail-biting finale, we’re all ready for a fresh batch of contestants to join Claudia Winkleman – and her knitwear collection – in her Scottish castle. 22 players will enter the contest and be split into ‘Traitors’ and ‘Faithfuls.’ Although they can say which side they prefer, the choice is ultimately Winkleman’s to make.
With British celebs such as Ekin-Su and John Bercow heading across the pond for The Traitors US, it’s no surprise that the BBC has chosen to commission a celebrity series for the UK.
Such fuss over the most simple of fashion statements would suggest that TV has become the catwalk of our times.
In light of this, we took a look back at ten series which either sparked a trend or played a part in its proliferation. For good or bad.
The Traitors: The Movie will star Suranne Jones (Vigil) as presenter Claudia Winkleman, Sally Phillips (Bridget Jones’s Baby) as contestant Diane and Jonathan Bailey (Bridgerton) as Harry. Expect to see all the iconic moments from the series, from Ross’s winking, Harry’s scheming and Diane’s murder.
From panto villainy to Jazatha Christie, high camp funerals to heart-breaking betrayals: most shows can only hope to have one, maybe two moments of the year, but series two served up several.
Here's our top ten.
Could they not just go backpacking around South East Asia instead of backstabbing around the Scottish Highlands? Perhaps, but their loss of marbles is our gloriously watchable gain. I guess there is the £120,000 up for grabs.
As we saw in the first series, no matter a contestant's intuition or intellect, the game will always follow a course as wildly unpredictable as humans are irrational.
But we've still scoured their profiles to discern who might make good Faithful or Traitor material. So read on for some mission statements that will no doubt prove ludicrously bold.
Albeit in the form of a fresh hell for its participants.
There was something slightly sadistic about how gripped millions of us were last year, watching 22 people descend into the very depths of paranoid despair as they systematically picked off one another. But you just couldn't deny how fascinating it was to see, writ-large, the processes (in-group and out-group, herd mentality) we'd only really read about in our A-Level psychology textbooks.
The announcement comes in advance of the highly-anticipated second series, which is due to return to BBC One later in 2023.
Hosted by an inscrutable Claudia Winkleman, The Traitors has won many fans for its gripping game of deception, based on the party game Mafia.
21 million audiences tuned in to watch the likes of Wilf Webster and Amanda Lovett bluff and backstab their way through the voting rounds.
"The BBC," says Head of Entertainment Kalpna Patel-Knight, "will always remain faithful to The Traitors.
