This article contains spoilers for The Celebrity Traitors.
After last year’s inaugural series of The Celebrity Traitors, the stakes were certainly high for the follow-up, and bosses had their work cut out for them in putting together another season that could live up to it.
Fortunately, after Thursday night’s action-packed launch show for The Celebrity Traitors’ second iteration, bosses can breathe a sign of relief.
On Friday morning, it was reported that just shy of nine million people tuned in to watch The Celebrity Traitors’ return live – making it the most-watched launch show for any UK version of The Traitors.
Per Deadline, 8.9 million of us tuned in to watch the episode on Thursday – three million more than season one, and a figure which is only going to climb as more of us tune in.
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
Critical reception has been similarly effusive, too.
HuffPost UK’s take praised the first episode as the “most chaotic launch” in Traitors history, noting: “Any doubts about The Celebrity Traitors living up to last year’s series went out the castle window mere minutes into the Thursday night’s launch show.”
The Times gave the episode a glowing five-star review, enthusing that the show was “back with a twist and better than ever”, and adding: “The best reality TV show in Britain has returned. Yes, with a strange curveball, but in great, great style.”
Metro and The Independent also bestowed the show with perfect scores, with the former noting: “If this is just the beginning, I feel sick with excitement about what’s to come.”
A critic for the latter, meanwhile, said the show is “so glorious it’ll restore your faith in the universe”, hailing Celebrity Traitors as a “show in its golden age”.
The Guardian also gave the launch four stars, suggesting that while producers hadn’t “managed to capture lightning in a franchised bottle […] quite as successfully as last time”, the “opening episode of any Traitors outing is always the weakest”.
“It is relationships and alliances that make the show, and they of course take time to build. Seeds have been sown […] and will flourish in due course,” they insisted.
BBC/Studio Lambert/Euan Cherry
Fortunately, there’s not long to wait until the next instalment, which will follow the aftermath of Richard E Grant’s jaw-dropping blunder, and reveal whether he and Maya Jama had chosen to recruit comedian James Acaster or broadcaster Amol Rajan.
The Celebrity Traitors continues on Friday night at 8pm on BBC One.
