Hey everyone, welcome back.

I hope everyone’s doing okay.

It’s time for the second episode of Stevie TV Recommends and I’m pleased to say today is another recommendation.

Today I’m going to talk about The Traitors, a reality TV show that’s on iPlayer in the UK hosted by Claudia Winkleman.

I found it a very bingeable TV series.

After doing a bit of research I found out The Traitors was based on a Dutch TV show that I’m probably going to totally ruin the name of, but De Varadares, I’m guessing that means The Traitors in Dutch.

The Traitors is a group of 22 consistents who arrive at a castle in the Scottish Highlands and in the very first episode they’re separated into two different camps.

One camp is The Faithfuls, they’re the good, and the other camp is The Traitors, they’re the bad.

Both groups are trying to win the prize, up to £120,000 and that prize fund is built up throughout the series doing various different missions.

Each mission they can win different amounts of money and that gets added to the prize fund.

Each night The Traitors gather and choose one faithful contestant to murder, to eliminate from the game.

The remaining faithful contestants are unaware who’s been eliminated until the next morning.

The viewers are unaware as well, we don’t know, until the next day, until the next episode generally, who’s been murdered.

We find out when they arrive at breakfast, they all walk through the door to enter the breakfast hall and whoever doesn’t turn up has been murdered.

Obviously The Traitors are in that breakfast as well, so they know who they’ve murdered and they have to act as if they don’t know.

To be fair, the whole point of this is that The Traitors act as if they’re faithful, they’re good, because obviously they don’t want to be found out.

During the missions, which we briefly spoke about just now, that’s where all of the players work together as a team to win more prize money.

Various different challenges and tasks, it could be a quiz, they might have to build something, they might have to collect certain items and bring them back to complete the mission and earn more money, and often it increments as they go.

For example if I’ve got 10 things to collect, each item might be worth £1,000, the more they collect the more money they get, and if they get all 10 at the end they’ve added £10,000 to the prize fund.

But there’s also other factors in some of these missions as well, depending on whether you get the answer right or wrong, you could be eliminated from that mission and if you’ve got hold of some money at that point, so let’s say you’ve got £1,000 in a bag and you get eliminated, you lose that money along with your elimination.

You’re only eliminated from the mission, you’re not eliminated from the actual competition, not yet anyway, not unless you’re murdered or if you’re banished and we’ll come onto banishment in a minute.

Now in these missions, on top of the money that you can win, you can also claim what’s called a shield, and if you find a shield that gives you protection from being murdered, and the player can decide whether or not they reveal if they’ve got a shield.

They can just hide it in their pocket and never reveal it.

What that means is, one of the traitors could try to murder you, you’ve got a shield, you’re protected and the murder fails.

They’re only again going to find that out the next morning if you turn up for breakfast and the traitors know that they’ve murdered you.

It’s an opportunity for you to protect yourself and it’s up to you if you reveal it.

So you can decide if you want to, to reveal that you’ve got a shield and tell everyone, then obviously the traitors aren’t going to choose you.

If it was me, I would not reveal it because then there’s a chance that a traitor is going to waste their opportunity to murder somebody.

As the program progresses, if the number of traitors drops to two, they have the option to recruit a fateful contestant to join them instead of committing a murder.

The fateful player can choose to decline, which may or may not result in their immediate murder.

If they choose to accept, they become a traitor.

That means at breakfast the next day, if they’ve recruited and no one’s been murdered, then people are going to think what happened?

Was it a shield?

Was something else going on?

It all adds to the twists and turns and the mysteries of the traitors.

At the end of every day, they all meet around a round table and they discuss as a group who they think the traitors are.

They have a little bit of a conversation.

They can all talk amongst each other and then they must decide by writing the name of who they think a traitor is.

The person with the most votes essentially then gets voted off and then they have to go and stand up and say whether or not they’re a fateful or a traitor.

Did the fatefuls get it right and pick a traitor or did they get it wrong and pick a fateful?

The game continues until about four or five players and then that group decide whether they continue to vote for who they think is a traitor or if they end the game.

If they end the game and there’s any traitors left, they take the prize money and split it amongst themselves.

If they continue the game and they vote every traitor off, then the money’s split between the fatefuls.

I’m not going to do any spoilers but very, very difficult to make a decision in that moment.

I’ve now caught up on two seasons of the traitors.

They’re both 12 episodes each.

Each episode’s about 40 minutes, 45 minutes.

So it’s a bit of an investment to watch but it’s a really gripping, intense TV show that I’ve really enjoyed watching.

So much so there is an Australian spin-off that I’m about to start watching as well and I’m really looking forward to that and there will no doubt be more series of the traitors in the UK very, very soon.

So if you like this kind of style, this kind of suspense, this kind of gameplay and foul play as well, absolutely recommend the traitors.

Me, personally, I’d be rubbish.

I can’t play poker because I can’t keep a straight face and if I was a traitor in this, I don’t think I’d be able to keep a straight face either and I’d probably be voted off in the very first banishment.

So definitely not for me to be a contestant but absolutely worth a watch and highly recommended by StevieTV.

So that was my second show that I recommend.

I hope you enjoyed listening and I’ll be back very, very soon.