With one dramatic sweep of a green velvet cloak, the highly anticipated game of deception returned to our screens...
With one dramatic sweep of a green velvet cloak, the highly anticipated game of deception returned to our screens with a star-studded cast ready to betray their friends, fellow stars and anyone foolish enough to trust them. With over 11.7 million faithful viewers (BBC Media Centre, 2025), The Celebrity Traitors became the watercooler show of 2025.
We should start by praising the casting directors for such an incredible group of celebrities, where else on television would we see cinema legend Celia Imrie farting in a secluded cabin deep in the woods. This alone felt like a broadcasting fever dream. The cast was so unhinged that it often felt like someone had shaken up a BAFTA guest list, a daytime TV sofa lineup and the presenters from a chaotic Children in Need charity telethon, then just crossed their fingers and hoped for the best. It definitely worked. The sheer range of personalities brought together on screen, from national treasures to up-and-coming musical artists, comedians, television historians that no one had really heard of before the show, made every scene feel like a second-year seminar where only two people have done the 30 page reading and everyone else is pretending not to be hungover from Skint the night before. The casting team deserve almost as much credit as the production and film crew who fed us an eleven second (that is an approximation - I didn’t rewatch it to check or anything…) clip of Gold Medal Diver Tom Daley scrubbing himself in the shower, a moment that briefly evoked more patriotism and unity in our nation than any Jubilee street party celebration ever could.
The biggest difference with this series compared to the previous three series, is the fact that the cast is all celebrities therefore the topic on the tip of everyone’s tongues has been how will this affect the gameplay. Of course, celebrities already have a persona on television, radio, podcasts, public appearances and thus a reputation to uphold. It is interesting to think, after the fact, how the fame of the contestants did drastically affect the game. For example, Joe Wilkinson’s (enacted by Joe Marler) affectionately named ‘Big Dog Theory’ would be rendered untenable, if it wasn’t for the fact that the so-called ‘Big Dogs’ Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry entered the Scottish Castle with their well-established public identities. And it wasn’t just the social dynamics that were reshaped by fame, the missions themselves seemed designed to test how far a group of recognisable public figures could be pushed before collapsing into chaos. One moment they were pushing a two-and-a-half-tonne Trojan horse along a windy path, the next they were being suspended in a booby-trap net, and then they were tiptoeing across a tightrope before free-jumping to grab a hessian sack of cash. Even the simplest corridor conversations became heightened; the editing team managed to turn a cluster of celebrities whispering in a hallway, like drama students rehearsing the weird sisters scene from an underfunded production of Macbeth, into something with the emotional stakes of a political scandal. Every “goodnight”, every down-time nap, every stifled giggle (except for Alan Carr’s — which might as well have come with a flashing neon sign, and we all know how that went), every bite of a sun-dried tomato became ‘evidence’, fuelling a paranoia that only grew more deliciously unhinged as the episodes went on.
Beyond the flickering lanterns, unkempt fringe and all-you-can eat lasagne buffet dinners, the show traps a distinctly modern issue: our ravenous obsession with distrust. It’s reality TV engineered for an audience raised on plot-twists, soft-launched relationships, photoshop, and public figure images that are curated with more precision than their wardrobes – something made delightfully obvious if we remember the beige woven hats Kate Garraway brought to the castle. Intently watching celebrities navigate a game built on the foundations of deceit mirrors our own cultural fascination with uncovering the truth behind an image. This leads us to question not just the player’s motives within the game but too the carefully edited personas we digest online every day. The reminder that even the most camera-ready and well media trained professionals still fall under suspicion and the line between performance and authenticity become increasingly blurred, more than we may like to acknowledge. The show functions as a high-budget, high-production-value version of Mafia, the classic social deduction game, the staple entertainment of festive family dinners after eating one too many pigs-in-blankets and beginning to severely regret it, post-rainy-dog-walk pub afternoons and preteen “I can’t sleep [because I’m on a Haribo Tangfastics sugar high]” birthday sleepovers. This type of game has dominated for years, yet this time the players are famous, the stakes are televised, the money is for charity meaning every accusation becomes a miniature morality play about who we choose to believe and why.
In the end, Alan Carr won, arguably the least plausible winner given he spent most episodes radiating ‘I am definitely a Traitor’ energy. But no matter how unsatisfactory his victory may have felt, it undoubtedly was the perfect final twist for a series built on unpredictability and camp farcicality. With The Celebrity Traitors officially renewed for a second season, viewers are promised even more twists to dissect.