Claudia collects NTA award for The Traitors last year (Image: Getty)
It was the greatest twist since Chubby Checker. Until Thursday night, slippery Charlotte was nailed on to win the third series of The Traitors. And then the produced introduced The Seer.
Unlike most seers, Francesca Rowan-Plowden had no supernatural powers, just the ability to find out if one of the remaining contenders was a traitor or a faithful. She picked the right person, her friend Charlotte Berman, a converted traitor so devious she even spoke in a fake Welsh accent from the start and gleefully stabbed fellow traitors Minah and Freddie in the back.
But Freddie had the last laugh by nominating her before he was banished sewing enough suspicion to spell her doom.
Four faithfuls were left tonight but suspicion was rife and they ended up banishing decent, honest Francesca and former diplomat Alexander, whose forgetfulness doomed him. It ended with Leanne and Jake winning £94,660 – a jubilant finish for TV’s smartest reality show which provides us with a perfect opportunity to see how cliques form and herd mentality kicks in.
The Beeb are working on a Celebrity version now. Why? One featuring magicians, lawyers, politicians, spies and second-hand car dealers would make more sense. They’re the deception experts.
The Traitors also delivered my first pet-hate of 2025 – people saying “yourself” when they mean “you”. TV is awash with irritations. Bad lighting in dramas, booming background music, mumbling actors, colour-blind casting in historical yarns, rolling news with nothing to say, and the flood of sob stories in everything, even Dragon’s Den. Then there is the sad decline of Saturday night entertainment. Since the glory days of Brucie, Cilla and Noel’s House Party, we’ve seen more old tripe than a Lancashire butcher – flops like Don’t Scare The Hare, Mel & Sue’s lifeless Generation Game revamp and the rapidly axed I Love My Country.
Even the bankers are shaky; I’m A Celeb feels tired, Strictly is beset with scandals. But what of Michael McIntyre’s Big Show? If exuberance could be harnessed, McIntyre would solve the energy crisis singlehandedly. He’s like an overgrown puppy, busting with life and eager to please.
His latest series began with a gloriously chaotic edition of his Midnight Game Show. Usually, the portly comic disturbs sleeping stars in their bedrooms with memorable results. Classic moments include Peter Crouch realising Holly Willoughby had replaced Abbie Clancy in their bed, and a half-asleep Bradley Walsh meeting Fanny Chmelar, the German skier whose name reduced him to hysterics on The Chase.
Last weekend, Sam Thompson and Zara McDermott had locked their bedroom door from the inside so McIntyre couldn’t get in. Believing burglars were afoot, Sam made Zoe open it. In a possibly unrelated story, the couple have now split up.
Granted they’re reality dregs rather than proper stars but the nation’s ribs were duly tickled as McIntyre gleefully brought in Jason ‘Foxy’ Fox from SAS: Who Dares Win to torment Sam and cream pies flew everywhere.
Yesterday, he revived his Send To All segment where he commandeers a celebrity’s mobile phone and claims to send an embarrassing text message to all the contacts therein. Michael Sheen wasn’t the bit’s greatest booking (that was Jamie Oliver), but the “miss-sent” text supposedly meant for Sheen’s GP produced a smart response from David Tennant who quipped simply, “Wrong doctor.”
Segments may sag, but the show’s old-school mix of laughs, good-hearted stunts and hidden-camera surprises makes it a worthy heir to Noel, Beadle and co.
McIntyre beat ITV’s The Masked Singer in the ratings, and BBC1’s revived Gladiators thrashed Ant & Dec’s Limitless Win – an underwhelming quiz that asks absurd questions like how long the cable on a vacuum cleaner is in millimetres… Yawn. Last week they asked, ‘In the womenswear range at M&S, the standard or regular trouser length is designed to fit an inside leg of how many inches?’ Honestly, who gives a tuppenny damn?
Like ITV’s original Glads, the Bradley Walsh fronted version has created mighty champions in Giant, Apollo, poor nobbled Nitro, Sabre, Electro and the rest, along with panto villains like Viper, a kind of Poundland Wolf, and the ever-arrogant Legend.
They should elbow Brad’s son Barney for a female co-presenter with a sports background, like Emma Paton, but the format is so strong nothing can derail it.
It seems to be dawning on TV bosses that popular entertainers make the best hosts. Who knew? Apart from the millions who watched the likes of Brucie and Bob Monkhouse in the 80s and 90s, that is.
After decades of comedians who want to be politicians, lecturers, or social workers, it’s agenda-free funny guys like Brad, McIntyre and Lee Mack who draw the viewers. Pasquale would too.
Don’t miss…
I tried to watch ITV’s The Chase on Monday but it’d been replaced by a big orange man who had a whole lot of answers of his own. is scorned by most achingly liberal British TV broadcasters, of course, but anyone watching President Trump’s Inauguration with an open mind will have noted his decisiveness, positivity and optimism. Ditching dogma, deporting illegals, drilling for oil, rebuilding industry…yes please. He didn’t launch a single pointless official inquiry either. Compare and contrast with the constant can-kicking, negativity and awkwardness of our own tinpot shower.
Pacey ITV drama Out There showed how tough modern farming is – long hours, little profit, intense pressure, desperation, small family farms being priced out… And that’s before Rachel Reeves’s inheritance tax kicks in.
“This life is a struggle, isn’t it? Every day. We must be mad,” said curmudgeonly widower Nathan (Martin Clunes) who works the land while raising his game-addict son Johnny and wondering who’s sending drones over his land. It puzzles him so much, his accent wanders.
To underline the misery, Nathan’s debt-ridden neighbour Owen shoots himself and Johnny is duped into county lines drug dealing by the dodgy brother of his classroom crush. It’s a bleak and disturbing story with a distinct ring of truth.