By Selina Gonzalez-Ruiz, Assistant Account Executive

Claudia Winkleman’s capes and velvet blazers may be a spectacle of their own, but the recent season of The Traitors UK captivated audiences for more than just its dramatic wardrobe choices. With applications for the fourth season closing last weekend, we can’t wait for the next season of the competition show, which, filled with deception and strategy, feels like a breath of fresh air in a TV landscape dominated by ultra-wealthy and hyper-curated reality stars.

I’ll admit—I love a bit of Real Housewives drama and the Love Island villa antics, but The Traitors has a different kind of grip. Maybe it's because, unlike the usual reality TV villains with their picture-perfect aesthetics, these contestants look like people we’d know. There’s something uniquely gripping about watching regular people lie, manipulate, and outplay each other.

This reality competition stands apart from the ultra-glamorous, influencer-heavy reality shows we’ve grown used to. Instead, it delivers something fresh—regular people, in a high-stakes game, acting in ways we can relate to. As social media trends shift toward authenticity and away from polished influencer lifestyles, TV preferences are following suit. Viewers now crave hyper-personalized, relatable content featuring everyday people—not aspirational figures—mirroring the demand for realness across digital platforms. The resurgence of Big Brother in 2024, bringing back unknown, non-celebrity contestants, proves this trend isn’t limited to The Traitors. Even in a more stripped-back, social experiment format, audiences still want to be entertained by regular people.

That said, the appeal of The Traitors isn’t just in its casting, the magic lies in our obsession with deceit that the show caters to. Knowing who’s lying, and watching the traitors manipulate the faithful’s three nights a week gives us the thrill of spotting dishonesty while holding all the cards. We love testing if we’d be fooled or if we’d catch them out. In everyday life, we know that the versions people present of themselves aren’t always honest and social media provides us tangible examples of the curated aspects of our lives that we’d like to present. We understand that deceit happens all the time, but we don’t always get the aha moment of knowing when we’ve been deceived. Perhaps this is why The Traitors is so compelling, because, whilst having become more familiar and comfortable with dishonesty, watching a show like this allows us the catharsis of pointing the finger and catching people out—in a way less awkward than doing so in real life.

The shift in demand for regularity and familiarity that media like this represents is something PR and marketing professionals are taking note of—understanding what people watch, offers valuable insight into how we should approach consumers. With its blend of strategy, social dynamics, and jaw-dropping reveals, The Traitors UK is reality TV at its finest and a great place to start.

So, is The Traitors just a thrilling game, or is it part of a larger movement toward embracing authenticity but also our comfort with deception? Either way, we can’t seem to get enough.