The Traitors celebrates deceit and treachery – and it's thrilling to watch

In 1629, the Dutch ship Batavia went crashing off course, leaving several hundred passengers stranded on an island off Western Australia.

Trust soon broke down between those battling for survival and, as Dutch TV producer Marc Pos cheerfully told the Today programme a fortnight ago, "A massacre ensued." As did, four centuries later, a global hit TV show after Pos – inspired by these disturbing goings-on – created The Traitors.

More than five million watched the UK version’s first season in 2022, with even more tuning in for the launch of the current third season.

A few format tweaks have kept both viewers and players ("not contestants!" the producers insist) on their toes, but it remains a simple premise. A few Traitors hide among a group of apparently Faithful figures; the Traitors must eliminate the Faithful, while the Faithful must identify and banish the Traitors.

At stake is a £120,000 prize.

It’s the parlour game of Wink Murder on steroids, in a spooky Scottish castle, with an admirably diverse cast and Claudia Winkleman in a cape. What then is so special?

For this piece, I’ve dutifully binged and can happily report the time has not been wasted: The Traitors is, in equal parts, inane, addictive and educational.

Even fast-forwarding through the "missions" – daily tasks set by producers for light relief and to reset players’ togetherness – there are enough rinse-and-repeat hours of "he looked a bit funny at breakfast" to have me chewing my leg.

But then the boardroom bit happens, meaning everyone has to clamour for survival. At this point, frankly, my trousers could be on fire and I’d still click on "watch next".

The herd mentality revealed here – apparently rational people dutifully filing in behind someone loud and untroubled – is nothing new. No, what’s extraordinary is, firstly, every person’s conviction that a) saying over and over again "I’m 100 per cent Faithful" is going to keep them safe when the Faithful don’t know and the Traitors don’t care, and b) that none of the friends they’ve made "could possibly be a Traitor" even though we all know there are at least three in there.

All rationale has fled. This is when I start shouting at the screen and give up all hope for humanity – before clicking "watch next".

It’s refreshing, though, after a decade or more in which reality TV has offered us a Disneyfied world of joyful togetherness. Years after the first Big Brother’s Nasty Nick was made a social pariah for his manipulative chicanery, Ofcom got involved when viewers decided Love Island’s roving Romeos were too cruel.

And even while contestants have virtuously showed off their skills in baking, sewing and pottery, there has endured a pantomime of comradeship, tapping into our sense that ultra-competitiveness is, by itself, unseemly, even un-British.

The Traitors throws all that out of the window. Here, we celebrate skills of not just deceit but proper treachery. We applaud sisters lying to each other, someone faking a Welsh accent because it’s apparently "more trustworthy", and even a vicar removing her collar and being prepared to "swear by the Holy Spirit". And it’s thrilling. We are invited into a world of the betrayed and the betraying.

Both of these carry their own pleasures and burdens and cut to the heart of what it means to be human. Who would you rather be? Of the reported 300,000 who applied for this year’s season, many volunteered to be Traitors, but every player eventually sacrifices their values for the promise of a prize.

Which you could say is a welcome outlet for our basest urges or a worryingly accurate mirror of modern life. I’m 100 per cent undecided.

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