By Clare ThorpOptions correspondent
It is dominating scores – and cultural conversations – around the globe: homicide mystery-cum-reality TV phenomenon The Traitors has proved successful as a result of it faucets into our obsession with liars. Why are we so fascinated by deceit?
In an period by which our TV viewing habits are so fractured, real watercooler moments really feel more and more uncommon. So it is at all times pleasing when a present comes alongside and unites individuals – even when that unification entails screaming at our TV units or sending a string of shocked face emojis to our group chats. Such is the case with The Traitors, the murder-mystery game-meets-reality present hybrid that has change into probably the most compulsive present on TV.
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Originating – like many in style actuality TV codecs – in The Netherlands, The Traitors premiered within the UK in late 2022, with the US version first airing in early 2023. The present turned a word-of-mouth hit and its success has continued to develop. Now halfway by means of its second season, The Traitors US is now the most-watched actuality present within the nation throughout all streaming platforms – with figures up 75% on the primary season. The UK version, which wrapped up its second season final month, dominated not simply the nation’s TV screens in its primetime BBC1 slot (greater than doubling the viewers of the primary season) however the cultural dialog, too. The present has additionally made waves in Australia and been licensed in a number of different nations.
At a time when actuality TV was beginning to really feel staid, with curiosity and viewing figures steadily waning, The Traitors has breathed new life into the format. Massive helpings of treachery and deceit are its primary promoting factors – and viewers cannot get sufficient.
The idea of the present entails a bunch of contestants inside which a choose handful are secretly anointed “traitors”. The remainder of the group stay “devoted” and should attempt to determine the traitors and oust them at a round-table ritual. In the meantime the traitors convene to “homicide” a devoted every night time. If the remaining faithfuls weed out all traitors by the tip, they cut up the money prize. If any traitors are left, they pocket the lot.
Every nation places their very own spin on occasions. The UK and the US editions are each filmed in the identical Scottish citadel, and contain comparable duties (contestants increase their prize cash by profitable challenges) however really feel very totally different. Within the UK, the forged are “unknowns”, an excellent various mixture of principally likeable regular individuals. The casting is a part of the attraction – it seems like a return to the times when actuality TV felt extra like a social experiment than an audition for wannabe influencers.
In distinction, the most recent US collection encompasses a best hits of actuality stars from exhibits together with The Actual Housewives, Survivor, Love Island and Massive Brother (the primary season had a mixture of celebrities and unknowns – however they’ve now ditched the muggles utterly). These are individuals who know find out how to amp it up for the cameras. Consequently, it is vicious, ruthless – and gloriously camp.
On the UK model, the nastiest it bought – in plain sight at the very least – was criticising somebody’s roast dinners. Within the US version, a contestant will fortunately announce “nobody likes you” to somebody’s face or – as contestant Kate Chastain did to Rachel Reilly in season one – inform them their garments appear to be they’re from a community-theatre costume bucket (Chastain, greatest identified for being head steward on yacht-based actuality collection Under Deck, prompted such compelling chaos that she’s been introduced again in season two). As host Alan Cumming – sporting a distinct beret every episode – says: “On this sport there isn’t any BFFs, until BFF stands for betrayers, fakes and fraudsters.”
This duplicity is precisely what makes it so compelling to look at – however why are we so fascinated by deception? “One idea is that watching actuality TV permits us to interact in a hyperreality,” explains sociologist Danielle Lindemann, creator of True Story: What Actuality TV Says About Us. “It is like our personal lives however extra excessive, a funhouse the place the whole lot is accentuated. Everyone knows liars in our lives, however in all probability to not this excessive.”
A present like The Traitors offers the viewer a fowl’s eye view of the deceit. We all know who’s mendacity and to whom. We will see what individuals are saying behind one another’s backs, and the barefaced lies they’re telling to their faces. We will additionally tear our hair out over how they’re falling for it. As a result of we might by no means be so silly, proper?
In actual fact, analysis exhibits that people are a lot worse at detecting lies than we expect we’re – and The Traitors is testomony to this. As the present season of The Traitors US kicked off, the devoted wasted no time placing their deduction expertise to make use of. One contestant, Bergie from Love Island USA, was instantly marked out for suspicion as a result of he had purple cheeks and talked quick. John Bercow – the British former speaker of the Home of Commons – was interrogated over some heavy respiration (which turned out to be bronchial asthma ). “I am superb at catching individuals who lie,” stated devoted Ekin Su, from Love Island UK, in episode 4, not realising she’d already been “poisoned” by a traitor and was about to partake in her personal elaborate funeral.
False flags
Staying too quiet, speaking an excessive amount of, possessing an excessive amount of confidence or not sufficient, a humorous look, an inappropriate giggle… all these can ship the devoted on a wild goose chase as they attempt to pin down a traitor. In the meantime, one of many precise traitors effortlessly throws individuals off the scent simply by enjoying dumb and proclaiming “If there was actually a mastermind, it positive would not be a dolled-up Housewife, child.”
“We frequently watch actuality TV to really feel superior to the individuals on the exhibits,” says Lindemann. “We will see what’s occurring and we all know what’s to return, however the individuals on the present do not. It can provide us this sense of smug superiority, like ‘why did not you see what they did there?’ When if truth be told it is actually not that apparent. They do not have a number of clues to go on.”
As a viewer, it is also enjoyable to look at liars get caught. “In our personal lives we’d know liars who aren’t getting their comeuppance, so we are able to reside vicariously by means of the individuals on the present who do,” says Lindemann. Or possibly we’re egging the traitors on, desirous to see simply how far they will push their deception. “It is one other way of life vicariously,” says Lindemann. “They get to do all of the deviant behaviour we won’t.”
Our fascination with liars is not restricted to actuality tv. We won’t resist documentaries like The Tinder Swindler (once more, we might by no means fall for these lies ourselves). Then there’s the spate of dramas based mostly on real-life scammers, like Inventing Anna, The Dropout and The Act. Fictional tales about fraudsters are irresistible, too – see the thrill for Netflix’s upcoming Ripley, based mostly on Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Proficient Mr Ripley.
However actuality TV lends itself uniquely to liars and fraudsters, with its most seismic moments involving lies and betrayals. Like Vanderpump Guidelines’ “Scandoval” – the place longtime forged member Tom Sandoval was revealed to be dishonest on his girlfriend with a co-star. Or the (now on reflection somewhat quaint) “Nasty Nick” scandal of the primary season of Massive Brother UK, the place Nick Bateman wrote secret notes to gamers to attempt to sway their voting intentions.
“Deception has at all times been woven into the material of actuality TV,” says Lindemann. “Individuals know that actuality TV just isn’t utterly 100% actual however that does not halt our enjoyment of it.”
As actuality TV has felt much less genuine, it is also change into more and more problematic. Final 12 months, legal professionals for present and former forged members of NBC actuality exhibits accused TV producers of subjecting its stars to “grotesque and wicked mistreatment”. Figuring out that exhibits may be prioritising good TV over the welfare of their forged members could make for an more and more uncomfortable viewing expertise.
So maybe it is smart that viewers are embracing a present that makes no bones about encouraging contestants to stab one another within the again. On The Traitors, each contestants and audiences know what they’re in for. Nobody can – or at the very least, ought to – get mad on the sport.
Within the social media age, it is onerous to flee dishonesty. Many people craft a model of ourselves to current to the world on-line, one that may not at all times utterly replicate actuality. We have change into comfy with a component of deception in our lives, however we nonetheless need to really feel like the great guys.
“We watch actuality TV to gawk on the deviants, the people who find themselves not enjoying by society’s guidelines, and liars fall into that class,” says Lindemann. “One of many pleasures of that’s to symbolically distance ourselves from the deviants. Regardless that we’re all deviant in our personal methods, at the very least we’re not like that terrible individual. At the very least we’re not a traitor.” Once we watch liars on TV, we are able to console ourselves that we’ll by no means be as deceitful as that in our on a regular basis lives. Sincere.
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