How many tasks can Celebrity Traitors come up with that involve masks?
Apparently, quite a few. Episode four of the series is here, which means watching yet more creepy hooded people in the woods making celebs do random things. It’s all feeling a bit repetitive; something which seeps over into the rest of the episode.
First things first, though. We start with a murder, of course, and this time it’s poor old Ruth Codd, Jonathan Ross’s greatest nemesis, who gets the boot. It’s certainly a daring move from Ross: relying on the ol’ double-triple bluff to fool people into thinking it isn’t him behind it.
It doesn’t look like it’s working, though. “My gut is telling me a) I’m hungry and b) he's a traitor,” Joe Marler says. He’s really giving strong Travis Kelce energy this series. I am endeared.
In the meantime, there’s that task. This time, it involves the celebs trying to track down masked ‘banshees’ hidden in the woods, and singing their ‘song’ down a well to the team waiting at their own well on the other end of the line. The catch? The people trying to listen to the song have to do it with their heads underwater.
Nothing like the sight of celebs trying to drown themselves to get the nation’s jaws dropping. Even Claudia puts her hand over her mouth as she sees them go for it.
“Oh, Stephen Fry’s in the water,” she hisses at one point. It’s like she can’t quite believe she’s gotten him to do it, and indeed, once he’s out, he’s muttering, “I’m a grown man, what the hell am I doing?” That’s the joy of the Traitors, baby.
Two minutes later, Celia Imrie is wailing into said well like a dying woman. “The skill of projection is important,” she says smugly. Such a pleasure to watch an award-winning actress at work.
After the task is over, there’s still the little matter of the round table to contend with. Marler is still wedded to his (entirely accurate) ‘big dog’ theory: at one point he calls Ross “the treacherous Traitor playing human chess.” And yet, Ross manages to inveigle his was out of it yet again. When the axe falls, it’s poor old Clare Balding who gets the chop. She plays it off, but it must sting, even though the other celebs do their best to couch it in the nicest terms possible.
So, the game continues, and the episodes are starting to feel a tad formulaic. There’s a task, the Faithfuls dither, and the Traitors scrape through by the skin of their necks. “The Faithfuls did our dirty work for us!” Ross exclaims. “It’s like playing chess with a bunch of five year olds.”
“Stop being so polite,” Claudia tells the group at the end; you kind of agree with her. This might be the messiest roundtable ever; practically everybody got a vote cast against them. I was half expecting them to vote for me by the end.
And yet, we’re still watching, and as the Traitors convene once more, there’s a new list of names on the chopping block.
Despite being stuck in something of a holding pattern, it’s still a joy to watch the trio work. You can’t get camper than Ross declaring, “let’s get ready to enjoy the sound of the banshee’s wail,” before heading off to dispatch another poor Faithful. Until next Wednesday, then?
The Celebrity Traitors is streaming now on BBC One and iPlayer
