THE TRAITORS

BBC One, 9.30pm

The “ultimate game of deception, skill and trust”? Or pompous, overblown tosh? Either way, The Traitors is an exceptionally entertaining and remarkably silly reality/game show, presided over by

Claudia Winkleman in unconvincingly ruthless mode (“no cuddling guys – that’s a different show”) and featuring 22 strangers competing for a prize pot of £120,000. Effectively the parlour game of Mafia by way of The Apprentice, it lands the hopefuls in a sprawling country pile in the Scottish Highlands, where Winkleman secretly selects the “traitors” whose task it is to kill off all the “faithfuls” (the rest) before they are outed. Whoever is left standing at the end of 12 episodes – having forged key bonds and sewn a malicious note of discord through the rest of the group – takes the prize.

Peopled by a grab-bag of good eggs and bad actors, and with the traitors conducting their first “kill” to a deafeningly orchestrated version of Britney Spears’s Toxic, it is at least knowingly absurd. And while an early twist is bold enough to ensure the viewer can take nothing whatsoever at face value, it also riskily plays shock value off against the fatigue of watching a format where rules count for little. Continues tomorrow and Thursday. Gabriel Tate