The Best Show You Aren’t Watching: The Traitors

I’m not one for reality TV shows – unless it’s a competition cooking show, and then I’m all in – but I had heard some rumblings about the new Peacock series The Traitors, so I took some time over the holiday weekend to give it a look. And, a mere 36 hours later, I had stayed up well past my bedtime two nights in a row and binged the entire first season of the series (and may have googled how I could watch the other two versions of the show – a UK and an Australian version – just so I would have another season of the addictive series to watch). And if this show can get someone like me completely hooked on it, I suspect it will have the same impact on many, many others.

So, what is The Traitors? Hosted by the absolutely perfect Alan Cumming, this competition reality series brings 20 individuals to a Scottish manor house and provides them with daily tasks to complete in the hopes of banking all of a $250,000 pot for those who make it to the show’s conclusion. But there are, of course, a few twists along the way. First, ten of the contestants are “celebrities” of a sort – people who appeared on various other reality TV shows, from Bravo series, CBS competition shows, and even a Bachelor. Oh, and Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte is also among their ranks, just because. Now, as I’ve mentioned, I don’t really watch reality TV so I had no idea who any of the reality stars were and I was worried that might impact my enjoyment of the show. It absolutely did not – in fact, I think it made the show all the more interesting, since this cohort of contestants already understood the psychological elements of reality TV, which in turn made their relationships with the “normal” contestants all the more interesting to watch.

The other major twist? Immediately after arriving, a number of the contestants were secretly selected by Cumming to become Traitors, tasked with “killing” a “Faithful” contestant each night. There are initially three Traitors, but it isn’t fully clear if the producers tell the Faithful how many Traitors live within their midst (by the end, that becomes an important point of the story but we don’t really know the rules on it), and at the end of each day the whole group meets together to vote to banish a contestant they believe to be a Traitor – and the selected contestant is required to reveal their allegiance after they have been voted out, letting the contestants know if they’ve kicked out a villain or one of their loyal teammates. If even a single Traitor makes it to the end of the game, the Traitor takes home the entire prize pot – but if the Faithful are successful in eliminating all the Traitors from the game, the remaining Faithful split the money.

Now, as someone who adored the early ’00s ABC series The Mole* (which saw one contestant trying to sabotage missions while the other players tried to identity them), The Traitors takes all the best elements of that game (a secret villain in the middle of the action) and improves on it (the Traitors need to work with the Faithful while on missions, as they all have the same goal to win money). The only way for the good guys to find and eliminate the Traitors then becomes closely watching how everyone interacts throughout the day – particularly at breakfast when the “murdered” contestant is revealed and at the round table banishments. It’s incredible to watch the contestants work themselves into knots, convinced through groupthink that someone is a Traitor only for that person to be a Faithful. And, in a game where there is no way to truly convince someone of your innocence, once the group turns on you, you are sunk.

*Netflix released a new season of The Mole last fall, and while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the original series, it’s still a pretty solid watch for fans of the original – or if you are into game with secret villains working against the group.

The series also does something that The Mole couldn’t: It lets the audience know immediately who the Traitors are. This allows us to watch how those individuals interact with the Faithful, spread rumors, hang back, and determine just who to murder each night. It’s fascinating to watch as one Traitor begins to make idiotic missteps, worrying their fellow Traitors and leading to their individual downfall. Similarly, it’s amazing to see another Traitor keep gliding under everyone’s radar and evade any sort of detection time and again until they finally make a major move that could sink them.

But the most intriguing part of the series turns out to be the psychological toll it appears to take on the contestants – Traitors and Faithful alike. Because, as with all reality TV shows where people spend a period of time isolated with one another, the contestants become friends (or, in the case of some, frenemies). And as their relationships grow, so too does their trust of one another. But the goal of the game is for the contestants to betray each other and ferret out the Traitors. Which means newfound friends must grapple with stabbing each other in the back. The Traitors are tasked with eliminating friends from the game in order to protect their identities. And, with $250,000 at stake, the question eventually becomes how far they are willing to go in order to ensure they receive the biggest share of the pie.

The Traitors is a wild ride with an excellent cast of reality show characters – both old and new. And Cumming makes the perfect Emcee for the series – and this Shakespeare nerd loved that each episode comes with Cumming offering a new quote from the Bard to fit the situation. If you’re looking for a fun and enjoyable ten-episode binge, The Traitors will absolutely hit that sweet spot.

The first season of The Traitors is streaming on Peacock. All ten episodes are available.