The most talked-about TV show of the year has finally landed, and if episode one is anything to go by, it is going to be an absolute ride. The Celebrity Traitors returned to BBC screens this week, bringing 21 famous faces to the stunning Ardross Castle in Scotland, all under the watchful and slightly terrifying eye of host Claudia Winkleman.
The format is the same one viewers have come to love. Celebrities compete in challenges to build up a prize pot of up to £100,000 for their chosen charities, while secretly a handful of Traitors among them try to sabotage the group without getting caught. The Faithfuls, meanwhile, have to figure out who is lying to their face every single day. Simple enough on paper. Absolute chaos in practice.
This series has been building hype for months, and the casting has a lot to do with that. The lineup spans reality TV veterans, sports stars, comedians and proper acting royalty. But the name on everyone’s lips heading into launch night was Ross Kemp, the man who made his name playing hard-as-nails Grant Mitchell on EastEnders before spending years travelling the world documenting some of the most dangerous gangs and conflict zones on the planet.
So naturally, you would expect Kemp to walk into a Scottish castle, clock the situation immediately and run rings around everyone else. Instead, episode one showed a very different side to the former soap star. Kemp came across as rattled, second-guessing himself and, at times, genuinely struggling to hold it together in the group setting. For someone who has interviewed armed gang members and reported from active war zones, the pressure of a TV game show seemed to get under his skin in a way few people predicted.
It made for brilliant television, obviously. There is something deeply entertaining about watching someone with that kind of tough-guy reputation squirm under the social pressure of figuring out who around the dinner table might be lying to him. Kemp is not alone in finding the castle atmosphere unsettling, but he was certainly one of the standout moments of the first episode for all the wrong reasons.
Winkleman, as ever, is in her element. Her gothic wardrobe, deadpan delivery and genuine unpredictability as a host make her one of the best things on British television right now. She clearly enjoys watching the celebrities unravel, and she does absolutely nothing to make anyone feel comfortable. That is exactly what the show needs.
The first episode did what any good opener should do. It introduced the full cast, gave viewers a feel for who might be worth watching and dropped enough hints about who the Traitors could be to send social media into a full meltdown before the credits rolled. Fan theories were flying around within minutes of the episode ending, with viewers picking apart every glance, every hesitation and every slightly too-enthusiastic reaction from the celebrity contestants.
The charity element adds a layer to the celebrity version that the civilian series does not quite have. These are people playing not just for personal glory but for causes they genuinely care about, which raises the emotional stakes and makes the eventual betrayals feel even more brutal.
With 21 contestants to get through and Winkleman clearly in no mood to make things easy for anyone, the coming weeks look set to deliver exactly the kind of compulsive, slightly cruel and completely addictive television that made the original series such a phenomenon. Whether Ross Kemp manages to channel his inner Grant Mitchell and turn things around remains to be seen. Right now though, the castle is winning.