** Celebrity Traitors episode nine spoilers follow **
It was the epic curveball teased ahead of time in the penultimate Celebrity Traitors episode and, for once, the rumour mill was correct.
For the second time this series, one of the Traitors revealed their identity to the Faithful and was promptly banished.
With it, the hit show has finally revved up to the pace of last season. What a shame it’s done so right before the whole thing wraps up.
It also comes at a cost to the sanctity of the game itself. Celebs going around telling the Faithful that they’re a Traitor is a bit like blowing holes in the hull of the BBC’s best and most prized boat. Even if it does make superb TV once or twice.
Unlike Richard E Grant, at least James Acaster only revealed himself once the turret walls had started to press in on him.
In a previous column, I envisioned that Maya Jama placing the entire complement of Traitors in the library when Ross Kemp was murdered would come back to haunt them.
Michael Sheen has spent weeks barking up the wrong tree, but this episode transformed into a sniffer dog with a nose for Traitor blood. He turned the line of enquiry back to the murder in plain sight, to Maya and James specifically.
The comedian made one limp defence – ‘I can promise you that I didn’t spray him’ – which stayed within the narrow confines of his non-lying Traitor policy, but he couldn’t bring himself to deny murdering Ross.
Because he did murder Ross. And he should have never been recruited as a Traitor, a day Amol Rajan will surely rue as he watches along with the rest of us
As Maya also demonstrated this episode, coasting through with little suspicion, only to come under intense interrogation in the final act, is a singular challenge and one I don’t think James fancied.
In the diary room he admitted the jig was up, before the moment of revelation at the roundtable. ‘I was made a Traitor without wanting to be,’ he told a circle of shocked faces, plus James Blunt, who looked like he suspected a double cross was afoot. Classic Blunt.
The reluctant Traitor threw the Faithful the ultimate bone by identifying himself at the last roundtable with a post-banishment reveal. They can now go into the final knowing there are two left among them.
‘I got to play this game on my own terms,’ James said in his final moments. He’s bang on – he never caved to turret pressure to get more involved. In a couple of instances he told the Faithful, almost verbatim, the conversations that had gone on in the conclave.
It was a unique approach and I very much enjoyed gasping along with the roundtable when James removed his cloak hood to them – but it should not be repeated in future seasons.
Much like in the civvie series when Fiona accused Rachel of being a Traitor, knowing full well she was one, or the Seer twist was unveiled to dob Charlotte in it, these grand moves risk breaking the game.
The Traitors are explicitly told they cannot reveal their identity to the Faithful. It is a core tenet of wink murder.
I have sympathy for James’ plight as a reluctant killer and can give him a pass because he would have clearly folded under a legitimate inquisition, but his and Grant’s moves cannot set an example for unwilling Traitors to come.
It’s part of why this season has struggled to connect as the last did, because there’s been a glib approach to the game from certain corners of the castle. They’re not serious people, as Logan Roy would say.
Going by the grumbling from contestants, including James, over the rigid rules during production, I don’t think the cast realised this light entertainment show would be quite so intense. But that unshakeable commitment to the game is what makes the finished product pop on screen.
When you’re in the castle, it should feel like life or death. Traitors should not be willing to throw themselves on the pyre as James did – even if it bides his fellow turret-dweller Maya a bit more time and spiced up proceedings.
Life or death is exactly how Maya is playing it, even growing tearful when Joanne McNally said goodbye.
It currently looks inconceivable that she makes it through the final. Even Blunt suspects her now, and he hasn’t been right about anything.
I think that Maya’s ‘OG Traitor’ status could be her downfall. While her compadre Kenny proved his Faithful mettle before he was recruited, Maya has let her fabulous outfits do all the talking at the roundtable.
The Faithful have finally woken up to her reticence and now she is being forced to defend herself, having not had to do so at all in the game so far. This is a very late stage to be put under the microscope and her middling roundtable performance was only saved by James throwing his hands up.
Yet, Nick Mohammed’s last-minute turn on Joe Marler proved we should not underestimate the capacity of paranoid theorising to infect good thinking. James self-immolating, while not a great move for the show in totality, shows how little we can predict what comes next.
The Celebrity Traitors finale airs on Friday at 8pm on BBC One and iPlayer.