This article contains spoilers for the episode of The Celebrity Traitors on 29 October. Do not read on if you have not seen it. What happens when a game that revolves around secrets and lies gets derailed by the truth?
That’s what played out last night in the penultimate episode of The Celebrity Traitors, when – spoilers ahead! – James Acaster was dramatically confronted at the round table about his role in murdering Ross Kemp. After being grilled by Michael Sheen in a soliloquy that felt borderline Shakespearean, Acaster did something we have never seen before on this show: he fessed up to the entire thing, falling on his sword and revealing his true identity. Acaster’s reveal is one of the defining scenes in a series that has broken the show’s sky-high ratings records.
Yet watching the episode – and this celebrity series as a whole – I can’t shake the feeling that it’s been underwhelming. The grand finale could provide some big twists, but the show so far has felt tentative and lacked a certain spark. If Acaster’s confession had happened last year, it would have been merely a blip.
But here, it feels emblematic of a series that, no matter what happens in the final, hasn’t quite lived up to the hype. The selection of the Traitors is one of the most important parts of the game because these players have an outsized influence on its direction and, as a result, often take up more airtime. They also become the unofficial narrators of the show as they are the only ones who know what is really going on.
Part of the reason this series has felt lacklustre is because most of the Traitors were selected by the Traitors themselves, rather than producers who make a living from creating addictive TV. It all started with Richard E Grant’s epic blunder in episode one, when he told Joe Lycett that he was a Traitor and was quickly banished from the game. Not only did this deprive the audience of watching Grant and fellow Traitor Maya Jama scheming in the turret, but it set in motion a chain of events in which most of the Traitors were recruitments.
The problem here is that some of the recruited Traitors didn’t seem up to the task of murder and betrayal. Acaster made no secret of the fact that he didn’t want to be a Traitor, and Hannah Fry didn’t seem fully comfortable in the role, either. I have no problem with these players being authentically themselves, but it’s more fun to watch characters such as Alan Carr (from the 2025 series) gleefully plotting in the shadows – to witness supposedly “nice” celebrities mastering the dark side.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
