📺 Watched The Traitors (US version).

Well it was hard to resist watching it after getting more excited about the UK series than I should have. Although sadly it takes place in the exact same place with the exact same missions and rules. This made it relatively uninteresting until towards the end when we “knew” enough about the contestants to care; at least outside of the opportunity to contrast British vs American culture as performed by paranoid gameshow contestants.

However the ending was rather more engaging and dramatic than I was expecting, so if you already made it most of the way through then it’s worth sticking around for the last episode.

There is a slightly different dynamic in that half of the contestants in the US version are some kind of celebrity (defining celebrity here as meaning “was prominent on another reality TV show”). Whilst I didn’t bother to check, I assume thus means some of them are extremely rich already, in which case there’s a whole added layer of voyeuristic grimness on the part of us, the audience, in watching them steal money from each other by pretending to be their best friend.

Fun fact: the contestants did not in fact stay in the castle where the shows implies they sleep, with one eye open, waiting to be murdered. Rather, they were forced to endure whatever airport hotel they have in Inverness.

Again, I hope the contestents get some serious counselling once they leave.