Last year I declared that The Traitors, the new reality competition series from Peacock, was one of the best shows folks weren’t watching. Well, what a difference a year makes! It seems like I can’t go a day without having an in-depth discussion about the ins and outs of the second season of the US version of the series (currently airing on Peacock), or one of the two international versions of the series – those would be the UK and Australia installments – that are also available on the streamer to binge (only season one of each is currently out – although both have already aired their second seasons in their native countries, and those installments will be making their way to Peacock in short order, so fret not). The series has become a bona fide hit for Peacock, becoming the most watched streaming reality competition series with season two. And boy, has it earned its accolades.
However, in the year since I wrote about season one – which saw a combination of reality TV veterans and “normies” come together to play the stylized game of “Mafia” – the US version has flipped the script, offering a cast that is made up of solely reality TV veterans in season two. This differs from its UK and Australian counterparts, which still use casts of regular people (or, at least, non-reality TV stars). It’s fascinating to look at the differences between the three series, how their casting changes how their players approach the game itself, and how the game flow changes based not only on casting of the players but also of the crucial role of the host.
I’ll admit that I subscribe to the view that while the first season of The Traitors US was excellent, the second season has exceeded my every expectation – and I say that as someone who knew next to none of the reality contestants on either season of the series – and it all comes down to casting. With the first season, the non-reality players were at a distinct disadvantage when going toe-to-toe with individuals who not only understood how the reality TV sausage gets made (playing to the camera is just as important as playing to your fellow players) but who also understood how to exist in the world of competitive reality television. It’s no surprise how that season ended, considering who made it to that final banishment and their particular background. But this time around, with a cast comprised of a good mix of competitive reality stars and “other” reality stars (the Bravo crew – which isn’t just the Housewives – as well as our former Bachelor and some Love Island contestants), it’s been particularly interesting to see how the players from each realm of the reality world play the game – and how successful those Housewives have been. On paper, the Housewife skillset might not seem ideally suited to a game of misdirection like Traitors. However, it turns out that being on a series where you are expected to attack the honor of your fellow contestants as well as come up with defenses for yourself – while mustering supportive allies along the way – makes for the perfect training for this particular game. And it also doesn’t hurt if you’re someone like Phaedra Parks, one of this season’s traitors and a former Housewife, who also worked as a prosecutor. As a former attorney myself, I firmly believe that her dismantling of fellow traitor Dan Gheesling at the round table was such a brilliant example of cross-examination that it should be shown in law schools around the country.
But while watching the US version of the series, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like without a cast of reality TV veterans. How might the game change when populated by people who aren’t used to the cameras and the mental challenges of trying to navigate providing good TV while also trying to sus out just which of your castmates are looking to murder you at night? Well, thankfully we have two additional case studies available to us here in the US – the UK and Australia versions of the series, both of which only use regular Joe contestants (there are additional versions of the series airing in other countries, but only those two have been added to the Peacock line-up).
I admit that I immediately burned through the UK version of the series upon finishing season one of the US side of things early last year, and I was amazed at how different it felt. For one, it seemed that the players in the UK version were much more able to build genuine relationships rather than simply looking for temporary alliances, allowing the gameplay to feel more organic and less polished. And the agonizing choices made at the roundtable were harder to watch when you knew that the people involved seemed to desperately want to win and not screw each other over in the process (this, naturally, wasn’t the case with every participant, but this group of players felt more genuine in their gameplay and care for each other). And, while Alan Cumming remains the gold standard of hosting*, Claudia Winkleman was absolutely smashing in the role of host here, forming a lovely bond with the players by the end of the season and being genuinely hilarious and empathetic throughout the show’s run. When it comes to this game, the choice of host can be just as crucial as the selection of the players.
*There’s an observation I’ve seen floating around online that Cumming appears more at ease this season with an all-reality veterans cast rather than the mixed company of season one, and I agree to some extent with that statement. While I suspect Cumming would be just as funny and charming with a cast of non-reality folks, getting to play off of people who understand television, who get that he’s also playing to camera all the time, and who are more in the realm of entertainment as a profession like he is, certainly seems to have loosened him up a bit. You get the sense he knows he can play with this group more than season one’s since they understand more of what he’s doing and are less personally impacted by anything he might say or do – and the cast’s own performances are also providing him with some laughs of his own.
Which brings us to the Australian version, which, for my money, is the most uneven of the lot, but which had the most compelling final stretch of episodes of the three shows. For one, its host, Rodger Corser, never really connected the way Alan or Claudia did. We didn’t get pithy one-liners throughout the challenges or any sort of connection (beyond some weak flirting) from him to the cast, which was a bit of a disappointment – and made the early episodes of season one a slog when there were so many contestants and no real narrative to follow. It’s in those early moments that we need our host to provide the humor and keep the game on a certain path, which didn’t happen. That being said, hoo-boy did this season of television turn out to be one of the most interesting runs of The Traitors out of the sample size we have. If UK was focused on allies and working together, Australia was focused on how many people you could stab in the back to get what you wanted. And what an arc that turned out to be. I was absolutely riveted – once I made it through the first five episodes, which took me over a year to do. But, now that I’ve see how amazing the series ended up, well, bravo to season one’s winner(s) (I’m not about to spoil this journey, don’t worry), and thank you for providing such a textbook look at what it takes to win this series from one side of the table. Because I was on the edge of my seat, yelling at the TV, as those final episodes played out.
But, at the end of the day, we’re living in a world with an embarrassment of Traitors riches. We have the social experiments of what happens when 24 normal, everyday folks (who also want to be on a reality TV competition show, so I guess they aren’t totally normal . . .) get together in a remote location and try to figure out who among them might be a traitor (something that, for the first several episodes, is such a brilliant look at what behaviors and actions can incite the hive mind mentality to accuse a fellow player of being “different”) and we also get to watch a host of reality TV veterans jockey for screen time and stab each other in the back – while also learning that Bravo’s Housewives franchise might just be the series closest in nature to this particular series, a true shocker. If you’ve only sampled the US version of The Traitors, you absolutely need to take the time to watch the UK and Australian series – they’re delightful in their own way, so long as you make it through the early slog of Australia’s season. Who would have thought a simple game of Mafia could be so utterly compelling?
