The joy of Traitors is in rooting for real people. Does anyone care about celebrities in that way? | Zoe Williams

Having famous contestants is a betrayal of all that’s great about the show – and a misunderstanding of what makes humans tickIf you have never seen Traitors, you will be sick to death of people telling you to watch Traitors: everybody loves it, no one can ever explain why. They describe the premise and it’s a load of people lying to one another. Contestants perform challenges – such as the challenge of running faster than most of them would like – and then they lie. They are often presented with the dilemma of whether to lie or not, but there is very little suspense, because they always choose lying. That is, of course, if they have anything to lie about; the ones who don’t just operate in a perpetual fog of misdirected trust and reptile-brained paranoia. It sounds like the kind of thing you wouldn’t have to watch twice, but that is so far from true you could easily find yourself scouring the world for the connoisseur’s Traitors (Traitors Australia, season two).Theoretically then, Celebrity Traitors, which starts next Wednesday, should be everything you want from TV, supersized. It arrives in a flurry of promises – the most brutal yet – with a cast list you couldn’t possibly dislike. Clare Balding, Stephen Fry, Charlotte Church, Celia Imrie, Niko Omilana, Paloma Faith: who wouldn’t want to see them confronting the darkness, or maybe lack of it, at their moral core?Zoe Williams is a Guardian columnist Continue reading...

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