This was up on Reddit in 2022 and I stumbled across it there. Even though the series is nearly four years old, and was watched by seemingly half the UK at the time, consider spoiler warnings for the rest of this.
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Host
Weirdly, it took me a while to get used to Claudia Winkleman in the role of Traitors Host. She seemed too cold, and distant, and miscast next to Strictly or the other lighter shows she makes a habit of hosting. It wasn’t until her pseudo parental protection of Theo came to light that I started to warm to her, and eventually she was part of the furniture. As this was the first series I saw, I had nothing to judge her on. Now I’ve seen many others, I appreciate the people skills and air of support that Claudia seemed to give the Faithfuls, and several report how nice and helpful she was to contestants when the cameras weren’t rolling. Being a biased Scottish person, I love the Scottish countryside, and think it looks the most amazing of all Traitors landscapes. The castle (which is more of a convention centre these days, there’s not really room to house 22 sleeping people) is as part of the iconography of this hit show as the Traitors and round table themselves.
Best bit of the series
You all think I am going to write “Parting gift” here, and it is a crucial moment in making The Traitors the big huge thing here. However, to avoid that, I’ll point to that party game in Episode 8, about who you trust the most. It sets up the whole rest of the series: Amanda’s trust in Theo, Kieran’s willingness to forgive Wilf, Hannah’s first realisation Wilf is playing a game beyond her, Maddy forgoing the cash to her own cost.
Contestants
22. Aisha. She’s Marmite! We’ll either love her or we’ll hate her. What we saw in Episode One suggested that, as is common with people who say this, she was going to be incredibly annoying very fast. Luckily, the Traitors realised this and just bumped her off immediately.
21. John. As soon as he spoke, I realised he was Scottish and thought he’d be the guy I’d be rooting for. Then his character was revealed. Oh dear. Now, to be fair to him, its clear that the whole game was too much for his mental health from early on. Even so, the way he reacts to Aaron’s innocent questions, and then hounding the poor lad, was horrible to see. Grumpy John said the Traitors killed him because he was popular. Maybe he was, with other households…
[Since this was written John was convicted for attacking a waitress, and in retrospect is let off lightly here.]
20. Meryl. Another Scot. Oh dear. Can we have inspiring funny brilliant Scottish contestants in Season 2 please? (spoiler - we did not.)
Meryl actually won this series, in a fine example of Luigi Wins by Doing Nothing at all. Her Traidar was extinct. At one point she was clear 100% who the Traitor was, only to find out seconds later that person had actually been murdered. At another point, she voted for someone she knew was Faithful because she didn’t like them. She kept trying to end the game with Traitors still in it. She is easily one of the worst people to ever win the show, yet nowhere near the worst Faithful to play the game. (She openly admits this but won the money so you know, fair play and good luck to her!)
19. Claire. The team Mum apparently. Going back to the early episodes now is like walking on Mars. Claire is the Team Mum. Faye is the obvious Traitor red herring. Both of these plot strands got abandoned early on. Faye’s because everyone decided to trust her instead. Claire’s, because she got murdered on Day 2. She created the show archetype for folk like Bam and Claude who get eliminated early and get forgotten.
(Bam was apparently an early eliminated contestant on Season 1 of the US Traitors. I had to Google that. Claude was on one of the French shows.)
18. Theo. Claudia loved Theo. He was quite popular in the house. His friendship with Amanda ended up dooming her. But he was terrible at the actual game. His key moment was leading the charge on Imran as he was convinced that Imran knew Theo and Claire were close so murdered Claire just to spite Theo. As Imran looks befuddled at this idiotic idea, Theo ended his banishment table statement with “That’s my truth”. People who say that are usually fools. After being so wrong on Imran, Theo rarely spoke out at the table, though he did get shirty with Andrea of all people later on, and he had one of the nastier exits. Just left a bad taste in the mouth. But they're all friends now seemingly.
17. Imran. Youngest PHD ever, you know. Imran was one of the smartest contestants on the show. This terrified people. He got banished due to early on set paranoia, and the belief he was smart enough to be a Traitor, as if folk become Traitors by getting a PHD in Traitorology.
16. Nicky. Nicky was loud and controlling at the early missions. She was also the first person voted out at the round table after being completely stitched up by Alyssa. Even after pointing out that she didn’t pick up a glass of water because she had NO HAND, Nicky was doomed. I don’t blame any Faithfuls who voted along with this to avoid being too obvious early on, its part of the game play. It did however make me look a bit funny at Alyssa from then on.
15. Alyssa. A Traitor! The first Traitor banished in the UK version of the shows history. At first, she presented herself as the Traitor boss, and she represented the sort of Traitor who does very well on this show. However, she completely collapsed under the pressure. She gave herself away, and it was edited out of the show, but she was doomed even before Wilf turned on her. Amusingly, Tom twigged she was a Traitor early on, and tried to befriend her to stay in the game. At one point he told her that, if a Traitor got rid of another Traitor at the round table, they’d be seen as Faithful and get to the end of the game. Alyssa ignored this “hypothetical” advice Tom was trying to give her, but the person sitting next to them, Wilf, was clearly taking notes!
14. Matt. Matt walked in as the cool kid. He instantly fancied Alex, and within Episode 2 was talking about her as his future wife. Steady on, that’s a bit fast! He then got really upset when he found out that Tom was her boyfriend, but then seemed to forgive her, only to not forgive her at the roundtable, only to instantly get murdered. And then, everyone forgot him quickly. We saw a lot of his flirting game, but less of his finding Traitors game. Had Alex been a Traitor like he suspected, his friendship idea would have been genius. Should have flirted with Wilf instead…
13. Rayan. It’s YouTube and Reddit’s own! Rayan’s edit isn’t great. He gets 24 Confessionals, which is actually more than Faye, Amos and Andrea. In fact, only 10 of the cast get more. But when not giving us his private thoughts, he was mostly ignored by the cameras, even when trying to get involved, such as in the Red Breakfast scene. He got some focus in Episode 1, and more focus in Episode 7 when the group suddenly decided to banish him, for reasons which escape me. “We just got rid of a quiet person, clearly Claudia picked another quiet person”, thought no one thinking sensibly ever. Rayan has shown outside of the series he has a fun personality, and he stated in an interview that he had researched to be a Traitor, only to find himself struggling to play the role of Faithful. Still we did get a fine description of how it feels to realise that when you don’t know about The Plan, you ARE The Plan. “It’s shit!”
(Rayan actually read this, because I got a thanks note for it. I do think he was badly represented by the TV Show as it didn't present the funny and intelligent guy he is on podcasts, but we know the show by now - shy and quiet people tend to lose out in the edit to the louder types.)
12. Ivan. Ivan ought to be higher up this list, but they did banish him in the first third of the series. His feud with Tom managed to get rid of both of them from the game. And it’s odd, as they actually get on in real life, and the two chaps are genuinely intelligent, so if they’d worked together, they could have cleared the board. But if they’d done that, we wouldn’t have got Ivan’s spectacular banishment (“here’s the prestige, that was not my card!”), nor Tom’s insane meltdown. Ivan’s joy at the mechanics of the game were clear, as was his inability to keep a straight face during the sheep trial mission. I said in the Australia one I wondered what would happen if they got rid of Kate early on. This is an example of it!
(I agree with Ivan: sheep are naturally hilarious creatures.)
11. Faye. Popular Faye was originally a potential Traitor suspect but lasted in the show so long she graduated to becoming trusted elder stateswoman. Her game play wasn’t very good, but she provided much entertainment trying to figure things out, until she came up with a plan of keeping notes on everything, only she revealed this to a Traitor. Bye bye Faye.
10. Amos. At first we thought Amos was gone on Day 1, through a fake elimination, and Andrea was devastated. Only for him to return, and Andrea was delighted. Then he got murdered, and Andrea was once more devastated. This is the thing about The Traitors, the friendships between unlikely people. Here, the 30 year old black British doctor, and the 70-something widowed lesbian granny hit it off instantly, and remain firm friends. Which is lovely. Inside the game, Amos’s social game worked so quick and fast that he became a threat to the Traitors within 2 episodes. He had suspicions about Wilf but hadn’t cemented them, and was killed before he could. Still the fact he could piece together alliances and solid suspicions so fast made those in the castle who hadn’t achieved this in a week look weaker.
9. Tom. He could have been a contender. Tom sniffs out a Traitor early on, and makes his game about befriending Traitors so he can stay in the game. In most series he would have been a genuine contender to get near the end. Unfortunately for him, his girlfriend was in the game. Time and again, a loved one torpedoes the game plan of great players, and here was no exception, as Tom dived in front of a bomb to defend his girlfriend, exploding his game, his chances of winning, and his hopes of snuffing out Traitors all at once. He still managed to turn a table on Ivan, which was panicked thinking – even if Ivan was a Traitor, all that did was make his own girlfriend in more danger on the Death Row. Every series has someone who falls apart earlier than expected. This was Tom.
8. Alex. The aforementioned girlfriend. Between that breakfast, the roundtables, her thwarted recruitment and the way she goes from Patient Zero to actually trusted, Alex has one of the more interesting journeys in the game. I would like to point out that not telling folk you have a boyfriend isn’t a crime, and everyone blaming the woman in a situation is so on brand with society.
(This is why Diane and Ross, and Roxy and Judy, and Paudie and his lad never mentioned those family ties in the show afterwards.)
7. Hannah. Hannah for so long felt like she was the Hannah from Australia, a road block Faithful who helps the Traitors to win. And then, slowly, she twigged. It took most of the series. I joked to my Dad at the time that “Hannah worked it out, 11 hours and 55 minutes into a 12 hour series”! But really, she started to twig something is up at the party.. She sort of knew Kieran couldn't be the only Traitor left by Episode 11. Kieran did help a lot with her Damascus realisation, but there was something there for it to feed on.
6. Andrea. What a lovely old woman. Everyone loved Andrea. She never really betrayed much of her game plan, presenting herself as a harmless old lady who didn’t know how to play the game. As a result of this, she got very close to the end, but I’m unconvinced. With her gung ho attitude to the missions juxtaposed against her claims to be a frail old lady, I’m thinking that Andrea deliberately cultivated her approach to the game to surviving. She even admits herself she thought she was going to win. Unfortunately, she was too good at being unsuspected, so got killed off. It’s really difficult to win the Traitors as a Faithful, as you need dumb luck and an obvious blind spot to a Traitor, two things Andrea, for all her faux bumbling, lacked.
5. Aaron. Imagine being Aaron back in Episode 3, hounded by Grumpy John, targeted as an obvious Traitor, and not knowing you were days away from winning thirty-three grand. Aaron’s game play was under the radar most of the game, as he was fighting to survive. However, he twigged Kierans final message instantly, which was the key moment in the Faithfuls winning. He was also kept in the game by his friendship with two Traitors.
4. Kieran. Parting gift. Kieran is Exhibit A for how under the radar players can suddenly explode into life. For most of the series, he was Amos’s shadow, the guy best known for witty and barbed Confessionals, but in the background of the actual game. Then Amos got killed (not literally), and Kieran was devastated, and went into Traitor seeking revenge mode. He was part of the takedown on Amanda, and because he openly said publicly that he trusted Wilf, he became the obvious recruitment target. As a Traitor, he instantly struggled in the role, but when he heard Wilf was throwing him under the bus, he decided to go out at one of the iconic Traitors round tables.
Although when he found out Wilf was a Traitor, he said he knew it. If he did, he was keeping it secret from us too.
(The parting gift route to double crossing your fellow Traitor in the final made for great TV but is now against the rules, apparently thanks to this!)
3. Amanda. The Queen of Traitors, Amanda was the villain the nation took to its heart. A Welsh grandmother, who would tut under her breath about how terrible the Traitors were, and hug all the young Faithfuls, all the while murdering them at night... For most of the series, she played a masterclass in being an under the radar Traitor. And then Theo torpedoed it. Even as she turned on him at the round table, she had to know this was killing her own game. I don’t get it. Maybe tired thinking after playing a Traitor for so long.
2. Maddy Marple. She once played a homeless woman on Eastenders, you know. (And has a regular spot on Hollyoaks now!) Maddy’s deduction skills were certainly an event. She worked out that Wilf was a Traitor. She worked this out because she knew Aaron was a Traitor, and that was wrong. But she had Wilf, and his increased frustration that she wasn’t letting go of this belief, and that if he murdered her, it would give credence to her, formed the backbone of the series. Who would blink first? Well, it turned out to be Meryl.
Nowadays Maddy would have been bumped off early on, but then we wouldn’t have got moments like her stating at least she knew who she could trust, while sat between two Traitors.
Or her Confessionals, which got more and more funny at time went on. She got to all but prove she was Faithful, only to get later bumped off by round table in a U-turn which confused me at the time. “The Traitor is obviously a bloke, there’s only two possibilities, let’s all vote for Maddy”. Eh? “All of my friends turn out to be Traitors, I think that’s where I’m going wrong!” Maybe if she’d got Wilf out early, she could have focused on other Traitors, but then she was never able to out do Wilf’s social game.
1. Wilf. At the time, I couldn’t stand this guy, and his Houdini like skills. I cheered when he lost. But looking back, he’s the obvious power broker of this series. He stitches up all three of his shared Traitors, in such a way as to keep his own momentum going. (Unlike Alyssa, he actually listened to Tom's strategy advice and lasted until the final four as a result.) His Confessionals shifted from comfortable in control Traitor to paranoid paragon of self-doubt. He actually wore a Traitor esque hood to banishment at one point and no one twigs. If he hadn’t taken Kieran for granted, he probably would have won this series.
Final Thoughts
An early series, this has a lot of questionable game play, terrible Faithful game play, and sheep trials. When it got going it really got going though, and some of the moments are among the iconic TV of this decade.
Do I recommend it?
Yes.
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