This article contains spoilers for ‘The Celebrity Traitors’
I was over the moon when James Acaster was announced as part of the cast of this year’s Celebrity Traitors. He’s not just funny, but also intelligent, a bit weird and unpredictable – he’s said that the guy we know and love is a “persona”, but it’s hard to know when he’s playing up to his self-prescribed role and when he’s just being James. The thought of him playing a game as perfidious as The Traitors was a very exciting prospect indeed.
Cut to six months later and the penultimate episode of the series and I’m furious with the bloke. It was one of the most important and tense Round Tables we’ve seen yet, with the Faithful – led by Michael Sheen – finally starting to interrogate the right people: namely, Traitors Maya Jama and James Acaster. And then, without warning, he simply gave up.
“They got me. I’ve been caught,” he said to the diary room camera. “I’ve always been a Faithful at heart; the reluctant Traitor. So, I’m going to do what I’ve done this whole game: continue to be completely honest.” Yet still, I didn’t quite expect what was going to happen next. “I just want to explain my situation,” he nervously told his fellow players at the Round Table. “I was made a Traitor.” And just like that, the wind was knocked out of the sails of the entire show.
This isn’t the first time Acaster has refused to play the game (Photo: BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry)The Traitors – both the celebrity and civilian version – is only good when the Faithful are hot on the heels of the Traitors. It’s something that has been severely lacking in this current series, with Maya in particular coasting through without even a hint of suspicion falling at her traitorous feet. But that all changed in tonight’s episode, with “father of the Round Table” Michael Sheen promising to make the Traitors’ lives “hell”. It’s clear that this pressure became too much for James – unsurprising for a man who couldn’t handle the stress of a charity version of The Great British Bake Off.
Still, at the Round Table, the fire and fury of the frustrated Faithful was laid solely at Maya’s door. The best bit? She was finally squirming. Michael refused to drop the topic of the murder in plain sight, correctly deducing that the only people left in the library with the victim, Ross Kemp, were Maya and James A. Maya’s only defence? That Michael would say that if he was a Traitor and wanted to attract attention away from himself. She was on the ropes when Michael dropped the entire interrogation and pointed his finger – literally – at James A.
“I understand how you’ve put it all together, and I can’t really argue that that sounds feasible. That sounds like it could have happened,” he began. “I can promise you that I didn’t spray him.” At this point, I was gearing up for James to launch into one of the greatest deflections in Traitors history – this was his Alan Carr moment. But all he did was straight-up admit he’d been recruited as a Traitor – and put a stop to all the fun.
As a result, everyone at the table voted for him to be banished, yet there was still a strange, overly-cautious atmosphere in the room – as if James’s fellow players still felt bad for writing his name on their slates, despite his confession. It was a far cry from the giddy incredulity they showed when Richard E Grant accidentally did the same thing in the very first episode. Anyway, the show didn’t even bother showing us who James voted for – presumably himself – and we were robbed of any tension in the final moments of the episode.
The Faithful had begun to turn the screw on Maya Jama (Photo: BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry)This isn’t the first time James had upended the game because he didn’t want to be a Traitor – remember when he refused to take his blindfold off and sneak around with Kenny and Maya in the shield-building mission? We should have known then that he’d give up the moment a Faithful began to turn the screws.
In a recent interview, James said that the producers should take the “good advice” that The Traitors is “just a game”. But The Celebrity Traitors is so brilliant because we all take it so seriously – the skullduggery and backstabbing and celebrities screaming bloody murder while carting around the severed heads of their dearly departed players all add up to a collective cultural moment we haven’t enjoyed in years. Over 15 million watched the opening episode, making for a rare monoculture that we feel protective over, that we want to succeed. So, when someone doesn’t take it as seriously as we do (and certainly as seriously as the people who work hard to create the show), it’s an affront.
Perhaps it’s James who should have taken heed of this advice. If the show is “just a game”, then there’s no harm in throwing yourself into your given role – Faithful or Traitor – headfirst. If it’s “just a game”, then try your hardest to make sure you’re in that finale, giving yourself the best chance to win thousands of pounds for charity. If it’s “just a game”, then play it.
‘The Celebrity Traitors’ continues tomorrow at 8pm on BBC One
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