There is a reason why The Emperor’s New Clothes has remained the most useful of Hans Christian Andersen’s cautionary fables. It is often dragged out when some wiseacre believes himself the only person to understand that a much-praised work of art is useless. If you sincerely believe the world is dumb for singing along to Taylor Swift then knock yourself out with references to regal nudity.
The story is, however, most powerful in summing up a wilful collective delusion – that sense of the world making itself believe something unbelievable as a way of sustaining a perceived magic. Maybe religion meets that description. The Traitors certainly does.
So, yes, The Traitors. I come not to smugly identify myself as the only person who regards the BBC’s smash reality show as toxic brain rot. By the time you read this I will, no doubt, have happily yelled through another three episodes. I come to smugly identify myself as one of a growing mob plagued by an awareness that the format makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t work. It feels as if we are halfway through an early pilot conceived to help the producers iron out flaws unmistakable to any half-awake viewer.
Space precludes a detailed description, but the essential elements are simple enough. More than 20 members of the public are driven to an archetypically Gothic castle in the Scottish highlands. Three of them are secretly designated as traitors. The rest are identified as “faithfuls”. (The clunky use of that word as a singular noun is the least of the issues.) Draped in the druidical robes that Spinal Tap wore when playing the song Stonehenge, the traitors decide which of the faithfuls they will annihilate. At a round table the remaining faithfuls chew over the day’s events and vote to eliminate one suspected traitor a night. There are also silly tasks, but nobody cares about that.
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The Traitors makes no sense. Its logic is flimsy, its flaws obvious. So why do I happily yell through three episodes a week?
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So here’s the thing. At the end of the series, if a traitor is left among the two or three survivors, he or she gets all the prize money. If not then that sum is split between faithfuls.
Okay? Got it?
Before we get to the real meat, let us note that the faithfuls have, with occasional exceptions, nothing to go on in their attempts to unveil the murderers. The contestants willingly play along with the conceit that they are trying to root out those with untrustworthy characters. The sort of people who might betray their friends. You know? Like Vidkun Quisling or Judas Iscariot. Buckets of tears are shed as Madge from Huddersfield wails that she does not have a disloyal bone in her body.
[ RTÉ to bring hit reality show The Traitors to Ireland, with €50,000 up for grabsOpens in new window ]
But hang on. These people are only traitors because Claudia Winkleman, the series’ curtain-fringed presenter, told them that’s what they must be. The arguments at the round tables, particularly in the early episodes, rest on the flimsiest of perceptions. There was a “look” in that fellow’s eye. Did that person sigh menacingly? This year poor Kasim looked to be blamed for the telling crime of being a doctor in real life. “Saving lives during the day then killing faithfuls at night,” someone hissed. Not unreasonably, Kas noted that “you’re basically calling me Harold Shipman” before being voted out and confirming he had been a faithful all along.
So that’s all very silly. But worse still is the realisation, which sets in early, that there is not much point in attempting to get rid of traitors. If all three are voted out halfway through – the dream scenario for the faithfuls – then the BBC no longer has a show. The producers can’t even pretend there may still be traitors in the tower, as, all of a sudden, the murders will have stopped. They have, therefore, engineered ways of replacing the eliminated. The existing murderers can secretly invite one of the faithfuls to join them.
At time of writing, the most recent “invitee” has been propositioned with a virtual gun to her temple. As you read this, another shameless innovation may have been introduced to maintain the traitors’ numbers.
The show is therefore an effective analogy for the Sisyphean pointlessness of existence. It is like a game from a Samuel Beckett play (and lit like many productions of that writer’s work). Day after day we slave to annihilate the potential causes of our own destruction only to realise that a malevolent deity will upend any temporary triumph. Beckett’s characters are often aware of the circular pointlessness of existence. No such truth can, however, pass the lips of contestants chasing a potential six-figure prize fund.
It’s a grim business that makes fools of us all. It’s also a brilliant show. I’ll miss it desperately when it’s gone.
