The Traitors is a strong TV format, but is it too brittle to last?
Since 2022, The Traitors UK has delivered two extremely entertaining seasons. But long-lasting TV formats are rare. What can producers do to keep The Traitors’ format fresh and — crucially — alive?
For reasons that will become clear, this post was prompted by the second season of The Traitors Australia. It’s informed by both seasons of The Traitors UK and The Traitors Australia and season 1 of The Traitors USA.
Note: I’ve avoided spoilers as far as possible, but there are references to events from:
- The final epsidoe of The Traitors UK season 1
- The Traitors Australia season 2
The strength of the format
First, a recap: the format originated from Dutch TV’s De Verraders. In it, a group of contestants, known as the faithful, work together to complete challenges that earn cash-money that accumulates in a season prize pot. Hidden among them are a handful of traitors who aim to eliminate the faithful without being detected.
As the game progresses, the group meets at the round table to talk and then vote out a player. By convention, this is one they suspect to be a traitor. Their ultimate goal is to elminate all traitors and share the final prize money. The goal of any one traitor is to make it to the end undiscovered and steal the prize money away from the remaining faithful (if any).
Wikipedia has a more detailed description of the format.
Why it works
What makes The Traitors so compelling is that deception is baked into the format. The traitors must lie to the faithful to succeed. It’s the moments of double-dealing that form some of the most memorable highlights of similar unscripted shows like Survivor. But The Traitors has this in spades.
Unlike the rigid format of Survivor, the rules of The Traitors are minimal. The emphasis is on the emergent social game, which hinges on strategy, social dynamics and psychology: must-watch TV in other words. It’s a parlour game cranked to 11 with stakes to match.
A strength of a format is that it will necessarily evolve as players learn from previous seasons and hone their strategies. This effectively creates an arms race with the producers, who need to tweak the format to keep players out of their comfort zone.
But the audience’s familiarity with the format poses risks too.
Vulnerabilities of the format
The Traitors’ innovative format poses challenges that could threaten its longevity. So far, these have largely been obscured with aesthetic and narrative smoke and mirrors. But as players and audiences become more familiar with the format, cracks may start to appear. For example…
The goodies vs baddies shtick is wafer-thin
The Traitors leans heavily into its gothic mystery and suspense sensibilities. And for the most part, that works well. (The UK and USA formats go big on this.)
But the portrayal of the traitors and faithfuls as being totally at odds with one an other doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. If you reduce the game mechanics to brass tacks, it looks rather different.
Stripped-back, every single player is part of one team, all working together to build the prize pot. Everyone knows that this prize will only be shared by a small group of survivors, so everyone is in competition.
That team is divided into two cohorts. One, cohort F, has the ability to vote out one player each day. The other, cohort T, shares this ability, but has the extra perk of being able vote out an extra player each day.
Now: just because cohort F don’t know the identities of cohort T, does it follow that the game is a case of faithful vs traitors? Not necessarily.
Looked at this way, we’re in similar territory to circumstances that can arise in Survivor after tribes merge into one big one, but when secret gameplay macguffins that bestow players extra power are in play.
Come the final stages of The Traitors, it’s essential for cohort F to expel all members of cohort T, but until that point there are any number of criteria people could choose as a basis to vote someone out. For example: their contribution to the prize pot, the strength of their relationship, their capacity to be read and manipulated.
The show’s host (and Claudia Winkleman in The Traitors UK is brilliant) has to almost goad the faithful into rooting out traitors for fear that the narrative breaks down. The faithful are portrayed as buffoons when they fail to identify traitors, even though they’re at a distinct disadvantage.
The game is rigged in favour of the traitors
Understandably, the show hides the fact that the traitors have demonstrable advantages from the off. It even suggests that the faithful, by virtue of being in the majority, have the advantage.
In the early stages in particular, the traitors are in the clear minority. This makes them statistically unlikely to be voted out. The players have had little time to build an impression of one another. And the vote is likely to be fragmented, so if the traitors pool their votes, they have a good chance theirs will be decisive.
And that’s before we account for the extra eliminations (known as murders) in the traitors’ gift. They have the simple advantage of being able to eliminate an extra player from the game each day. And as a smaller group, it is much easier to reach consensus around a mutually-beneficial player to remove.
There is also imbalance of knowledge. From the start, traitors know each other’s identities, while the faithful begin with no information to go on. This gives the traitors a strategic advantage — the asymmetry allows the traitors to manipulate the faithful, and take evasive action when people are on to them.
Finally, the show hides from the faithful how many traitors are in the game at any moment. This puts the odds against them in the end game when, to succeed, the faithful must identify every traitor.
This should be borne out by a majority of wins for traitors as seasons go by. Although season 1 of The Traitors UK culminated in a win for the faithfuls, it was off the back of moment of what was arguably a moment of rule-breaking as the penultimate traitor effectively revealed the identity of the last. (It was sizzling TV, though. But season 1 can get away with a moment like this. Season 5 not so much.)
The game is low-stakes until the very end
I’ve alluded to this already, but the game’s biggest deception is that it matters who the faithful vote out. It doesn’t, really. You could even argue that, if you have a good idea who the traitors are, you’re better off leaving them in the game (although without letting slip that you know).
The show self-corrects when a traitor is voted out. The remaining traitors usually have the option to recruit a new ally. And if they do, the chosen faithful usually has the option to refuse. But rest assured, in the unlikely event of the traitors being reduced to 1 player in the opening and mid-game phases, the show will force a way for new traitors to be introduced.
What would you prefer as a faithful? To have a good idea of who the traitors are all along so you have the best chance to get rid of them at the end? Or repeat a cycle of having to second-guess whether new traitors have entered the game, and work out who they are?
To put it another way: the aim for all players of the game, faitful or not, is to stay in the game. Voting out particular players strategically — or feigning intent to do so — is a means to that end. Although for the faithfuls at least of course, this changes in the final episode.
The casting is vital
The answer to almost all of these issues is good casting. People don’t want to scrutinise game mechanics. They want to get caught up in the unfolding human drama: moments of delightful underhandedness; people letting their guard drop; creeps getting their comeuppance.
But the casting has to be on point. This is where The Traitors UK has been flawless. And it’s perhaps the reason why The Traitors USA uses minor celebrities: they are known entities.
But season 2 of The Traitors Australia shows what can go wrong when the casting is off. The show did well to snag Survivors Australia fan-favourite Luke Toki. Very early on, Luke, steered by his faithful ally Annabel had sussed the identity of the traitors, and made their suspicions known to the group. It was great TV. They were promptly voted out by the traitors — a brazen response that, usually, would only confirm suspicions.
Unfortunately the remaining members of the faithful took a hapless scattergun to subsequent votes. Clues went ignored. Plans would be defenestrated at the last moment. And perhaps the worst traitor gameplay in the history of the UK, USA and Australia versions of the show went unpunished. Rest assured: this was not advanced gameplay from the faithfuls: they bungled proceedings until they were in the minority, guaranteeing defeat.
The casting had been sub-optimal, to put it mildly. There wasn’t the right balance of players on the traitor and faithful sides.
The result was a season that, for a large chunk of the time, was frustrating rather than entertaining to watch. I won’t spoil the ending except to say that at least the final moments of the show brought some semblance of justice to the season’s least likeable player. Sneaky is entertaining. Detestable is TV kryptonite.
That Traitors Australia was subsequently cancelled, or at least shelved, may not be a direct result. It had always struggled for ratings, perhaps due to the fact that the market for unscripted TV in this area is serviced well by the usually-excellent (and well-cast) Survivors Australia.
Yet far from doomed
Reduced to its mechanics, The Traitors is a simple game. And one that, to be honest, isn’t all that interesting. You can take a look at this episode of an early version of the format, titled Traitor, broadcast on the BBC in 2004. It condenses all the murders and round-tables to a single 40-minute session.
It shows that that the appeal of the modern take is all about the social meta-game: the group dynamics, the side-chats, the developing friendships and rivalries. And for that to be interesting, you need the right mix of people with a blend of personalities, skills and ways playing the game. (And everyone should be, to some extent, likeable.)
If the BBC and other versions can continue to nail the casting, and continue to tweak the format each season in innovate and interesting ways, there’s no reason The Traitors can’t continue for years to come. Maybe they’ll even bring back The Traitors Australia one day. It’d be worth it for host Rodger Corser’s repartee alone.
Postscript: As well as touching on several of the topics in this post, this excellent Eurogamer article on The Traitors, with The Traitors UK season 1 contestant Ivan Brett, explores the meta-tactics players should use to stay in the game: Can game design help you beat The Traitors?
