Even as Richard E Grant leant back and thrust his fists forward in a defiantly celebrational departing gesture, we could see his pain. As I suggested last week, his momentary lapse of treason was irretrievable and he was destined to go – his loss, and ours.
For those just catching up, the giddy-with-excitement 69-year-old Swazi-English actor had failed to do the basics, such as denying he was a traitor, and was banished on Thursday’s show by a large majority of the Traitors castle inhabitants.
Inevitably, the remaining players cheered and congratulated each other on their success. But the degree of that success is open to question – and herein lies what is commonly conceived to be the biggest flaw in the show’s format.
By ‘uncloaking’ the treacherous, twinkle-eyed actor, the ‘faithful’ had removed someone who, let’s face it, was never going to hoodwink them for long. But what did they gain as a result? A single day’s stay of execution.
Having lost one of their number, the remaining two traitors were faced with a single choice consisting of two options. Remain of a pair and murder one of the faithful, or forego their opportunity to murder and recruit someone to their ranks.
In choosing the latter, they replaced a failed traitor with one they reckon will do a better job, arguably making the remaining faithfuls’ job harder than it had been.
They all know this – they all appear to have seen previous series of the show – yet the faithful celebrated regardless, no doubt simply swept up in the moment, yes, but also due to the necessity of ensuring that everyone else sees them being happy to see the back of a traitor.
But I’m not so sure this really does represent a flaw in the process.
Really, it’s just another opportunity to strategise. Because while the round-table room may be full of jubilant glee at the departure of a traitor one day, and awash with moroseness at the betrayal of a faithful like Coronation Street star Julie Hesmondhalgh the next, in both cases the number of participants has come down by one, and the rest are therefore one step closer to winning a great big pot of money for their chosen charity. And also, admittedly, a lifetime of being ranked alongside Alan Carr. Gawd love him.
I suspect there’s more awareness of this among the group than we’re allowed to see via the final edit. It would certainly help to explain the really shameless pile-in nature of the voting, which my esteemed editor compared to Lord Of The Flies during our office post-mortem on Friday morning.
Richard, 30-year-old Industry actor Myha’la and Julie have all been ousted with comprehensive votes in their direction. Yes, Professor Hannah Fry – the biggest maths celebrity since Johnny Ball – ran Julie close-ish, but they were the only two names in Friday’s vote, effectively. It’s rare to find five or six different names on all those chalkboards, yet if the voting were random, you’d get still more.
As long as it’s Piggy getting the stick, it’s not you. And that’s just fine, move on. Sacrifice. Survive. Repeat.
I have cottoned on to one editing habit which does come across as a bit of a flaw, though.
In order to increase the tension in the voting process, there is often a recap of the votes cast thus far. Given that the show’s producers have it in their gift to start with whomsoever they choose, it seems inevitable that they’ll begin at the point which will ensure the jeopardy lasts longest. So in a circle in which nine consecutive players voted for Myha’la, they began with the next player after that sequence – boxer and YouTuber King Kenny – such that the first count had a 3-3 split between Myha’la and Jerry, and the second count had a 4-4-1-1 split with those two plus Julie and Michael Sheen.
Similarly, in Friday’s episode, we had a count with Hannah on five, Julie on three and Jerry Hall on one, and another count at 6-6-1-1. So when the next vote was for Julie, it just seemed certain she would get the push, which she did.
Another of the older contestants jilted, I thought, before realising with a jolt that she’s younger than me.
Not that these editing choices entirely put me off, however. I’m still all agog to see a battle royal between Hannah and her chief accuser Miranda Hart, for example. I’m still relishing the rollercoaster that is Ross Kemp alternating between roaring with testosterone one minute and freaking out over a hat the next. And I’m impatiently waiting to see who will next be subjected to the entirely certain but mistaken suspicions of James Blunt. This is a man who once refused a misguided attack order from an American Nato commander, who led a troop of men into enemy Serbian territory in order to scout bombing targets, but who went for the jugular of a faithful Coronation Street actress who was sniffing out traitors like a hound – on Traitors Uncloaked, Julie gave Ed Gamble a list of seven people she thought were definitely faithful and got them all right, while also identifying two of the traitors.
As we rejoin the action on Thursday, the one original traitor – Maya Jama – and her two recruits, James Acaster and Hannah, will be roaming a forest in search of the crypt housing their next victim, who may or may not be able to repel them.
Whatever happens, I haven’t had this much fun watching telly since Superstars.
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