Celebrity Traitors producer 'amazed by reaction'

With much of the country gripped by the latest series of The Celebrity Traitors, the man behind the show has told the BBC he has been "amazed by the reaction" to it.

Stephen Lambert is the chief executive of Studio Lambert - the company which has produced the programme, and its civilian version, for the BBC since 2022.

Alongside The Traitors, the production company is also responsible for hits including Race Across the World, Gogglebox and Squid Game: The Challenge.

The TV producer first started the company in 2008, and was speaking to BBC Radio Oxford ahead of an event at the city's Schwarzman Centre on Thursday evening.

Claudia Winkleman's Scottish murder-mystery game is currently on everyone's lips - although Lambert explained the format wasn't original to the UK.

"The Traitors was actually created by some brilliant Dutch people, who we then managed to get hold of the rights from to make the show in Britain and America," he said.

"Our brilliant team make those two versions and they've been hugely successful, so we've been amazed by the reaction."

The first UK series of The Traitors made it to screens in 2022, and proved an instant hit with TV audiences - all in an age of falling linear audiences.

That culminated in record nine million people tuning in live for the launch of The Celebrity Traitors earlier this month - all to see actor Richard E Grant make one of the game's biggest ever slip-ups.

Lambert said the appeal for the show came from "the melodrama of the whole thing, the cloaks, the talk of murder - it's all absurd but we enjoy the absurdity".

"I think the key thing is the game. The game is the engine of the whole show and it's based on what the Greeks called dramatic irony," he said.

"The fact that we the audience know more than the participants that we're watching... we know who they [the traitors] are."

"We find it very entertaining either watching them [the faithfuls] get it right and work out the traitors are, or it's often more entertaining seeing them get it wrong."

The first series of The Celebrity Traitors, which aired last year, saw one of the great upsets in reality TV history - as comedian Alan Carr emerged victorious at the final roundtable after the faithfuls failed to identify him as a traitor.

That was even after a series of faux paz throughout the series - including in the penultimate episode, when Carr could not keep a straight face whilst telling his other competitors that he was a faithful.

Audiences reacted with a mix of glee and astoundment at the comedian's triumph, with Lambert saying it was part of "the genius of the format".

"We the audience know who the traitors are right from the beginning, we see them being picked, and that completely changes the dynamics of the viewing experience."

In a country where lying on reality television can turn people into public enemy number one, Lambert said the fact that the audience were constantly in on the ruse enhanced the format.

"The fact the traitors are licenced to lie means that, just like a good poker player, we are impressed by their ability to be traitors - rather than thinking 'oh this is revealing a kind of terrible character flaw'."

"In other reality shows you sometimes feel that you don't really like a person because they're lying, but in in The Traitors you have no worries about that."

Series Two of The Celebrity Traitors continues Thursday at 20:00 BST on BBC One and iPlayer.