Paul Henry is back as the host of The Traitors. Photo / Three
Paul Henry is back as the host of The Traitors. Photo / Three
OPINION
Backstabbing, treachery, betrayal … that’s the promise of Three’s new reality series, The Traitors. Eh. Just an average day on what used to be called Twitter.
Maybe I’m not the target audience. I gave up on Survivor long ago, though it added useful catchphrases – “The tribe has spoken”- to human discourse. I’ve never played murderous parlour game, Mafia, which The Traitors’ format resembles. It does give me flashbacks to excruciating dress-up murder mystery dinner parties of the 90s, which only a heavy intake of cocktails made tolerable.
The Traitors draws on the apparently bottomless pool of people willing to expend their 15 minutes of fame being driven mad by a competition that compresses all the worst aspects of society - manifest unfairness, random goalpost-shifting, spurious judgmentalism – into twice weekly episodes overseen by Paul Henry.
Get thee to a rural luxury lodge made to look spooky. The 19 are secretly divided into two groups – three traitors and the rest, called, as in some dystopian drama, the faithful. The faithful try to eliminate traitors by guessing their identity. The berobed traitors meet in secret to choose a faithful to murder, politely, by mail. If the diminishing team of faithfuls guess all the traitors first, they divide the money. Otherwise, last traitor standing gets the lot. Let the rampant paranoia begin.
Like that other social experiment, Big Brother, The Traitors began in the Netherlands. The US, UK and Australia shows have been hits too, and who doesn’t need one of those in tough times?
The US version – castle, Scottish Highlands - is hosted by actor Alan Cumming in elaborate tartans. Contestants are recycled reality stars and regular folk. A contestant lays his cards on the table: “If I can save myself by throwing her under the bus, then get ready ‘cos I’m gonna throw her under it then reverse and run back over top of her.” Another: “I don’t want to toot my own horn, but toot toot.” God bless America.
The local version highlights a problem with local reality TV. People are nice and largely not attention-inhaling narcissists. Where’s the fun in that? Never mind. Contestants include sports broadcaster Brodie Kane, weather guy Mike Puru, comedian Justine Smith, reality repeat offender Colin Mathura-Jeffree and radio host and surprisingly philosophical NZ Herald columnist, Matt Heath. There are entrepreneurs, influencers, a crime writer and a psychic. First useful lesson: Ronnie, hairdresser and mother of four, is way better at cold-reading the room for who might be a traitor than Kimberley the psychic. “Well, that was predictable,” says Kimberley, when faced with a plot twist she failed to psychically predict.
None seem to have predicted Paul Henry. “I thought he was living on a superyacht sailing around the world,” mused someone. Last year Henry wrote piece for the Herald calling New Zealanders, “willing lapdogs, suffering from Stockholm Syndrome”. Yet here he is. When I interviewed him years ago at his own little country lodge, he spoke of the joys of shooting pūkeko on his estate and his dream of blowing up caravans. In The Traitors he marches around waving a cane, calling everyone “liebling”, a cross between Mephistopheles and Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. In one of the tiresome challenges where contestants compete to win money for the prize pool, they are trucked off to a church with a creepy masked congregation. Part of the challenge: entering a confessional with Henry. “I can’t tell you how many fantasies this is fulfilling for me,” murmurs Henry creepily. Reviews say the format grows on you. We shall see.
And maybe this is the perfect show – hello gaslighting and misinformation - to watch in the lead-up to a more vicious and much bloodier reality competition, the general election. “Trust no one” is not a great message. Down the rabbit hole that way lies. But here’s a reminder to keep your wits about you as the power plays intensify. One contestant has a mini epiphany that applies in politics as well as primetime. “The game,” she says, “is outplaying us all.” Watch your back.
