There are many first nights at the BBC Proms – whether you’re a debut performer, an audience member visiting the Royal Albert Hall for the first time, or a composer anxiously premiering an untried and untested new work. Sam Watts is one of this season’s newcomers. You may not have heard of him, but if you’re a fan of The Traitors – and we are in our millions – his music will already be instantly recognisable. “I’m very excited,” he says. “Since the success of the first series, I said we should be pushing for a Prom. So at the end of last year when producer Sarah Fay told me it was happening, I was thrilled.”
The Traitors is riding a crest of popularity, having won Baftas and NTAs and, crucially for the BBC, it’s a ratings success with upwards of ten million glued to series three earlier this year. For the uninitiated, The Traitors is filmed in the spectacular setting of Ardross Castle in the Highlands and unfolds like a grand-scale version of wink murder. “Faithful” competitors must identify and banish the murderous Traitors in their midst, in a quest to bag £120,000. Originating in the Netherlands, The Traitors is produced in the UK and US by Studio Lambert Scotland, while parent company All3Media has licensed the format to almost 30 territories.
Watts is working flat out translating his Traitors score for the live performance. “I’m in the middle of remixing all the electronic elements for the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra to play along with. We’ve completely reworked the music and reorchestrated it. The audience will hear music they’re familiar with but played in a way it never has been before. Quite a project!”
Having studied music at Nottingham University, Watts was blessed with encouraging mentors. “One of my composition professors was the wonderful Mervyn Cooke, who is an expert on film music and very good friends with the composer George Fenton.”
Now 43, Watts looks back on the “youth and exuberance” that turbocharged his career. The next crucial step was born of his admiration for Russell T Davies and his work on shows such as Queer as Folk (“hugely influential for me”) and of course Doctor Who. “I wrote to Russell in the old-fashioned way with an actual letter and enclosed a CD. And I was very lucky that he didn’t just throw it in the bin. He actually decided to listen.”
Watts was invited to send in a demo to The Traitors team in 2021. All he had to go on was the original Dutch version. Not normally a fan of reality shows, he was “completely hooked, which was a good sign”. He composed the theme (blending menace and excitement), cues for key moments such as the missions and Round Table denouement. His music has now been sold as part of the package to other territories. “It’s on about 12 versions – I’ve lost track. As well as the UK and US, it’s used in Australia, Poland, Sweden, and both the Canadian series, because we have English-speaking and French-speaking versions.” This autumn it will be heard on the highly anticipated The Celebrity Traitors.
Before emigrating, Watts was a devoted Prommer. “I’ve always loved the BBC Proms and the fact that they’re continually pushing and changing and have started to include film and TV music. I also love that they’ve stuck to the original remit, to get more people listening to classical music. We need to show it’s not some snobby elitist thing. It’s essentially for everyone. Because we put people like Bach and Mozart on pedestals, we can forget that theirs was the popular music of the time.”
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