The Traitors (US)

I know there are some fans of The Traitors who read this.  I’ve now watched a few episodes of the US version, which I gather is available on the BBC iPlayer, and it’s an interesting companion piece to the BBC version.  Some observations:

• The setting is exactly the same, using that (not particularly old?) Scottish castle
• The game, including all the missions so far, is exactly the same
• The host is different, and in my opinion far superior.  Alan Cumming is a great blend of aloofness and campness – and had a few laugh-out loud lines.  He has this bizarre Scottish-American accent, and if he turned up the bitchiness by a few notches then he would be the perfect host for this trashy reality competition show.
• The contestants are wildly different.  The BBC version had a bunch of nobodies.  Half of the US contestants are “reality show stars” – which isn’t to say I recognized any of them, because I didn’t.  But there are several loud personalities who do tend to dominate the show.
• The gameplay is wildly different.  There was very little conflict in the BBC version, where people were just happy to be there and make friends as much as trying to win.  The US version is the opposite – very competitive, and in some ways much nastier and cut-throat.  The contestants are equally clueless, but I feel like most of them are at least trying to play the game more than the BBC version.  This is perhaps because a lot of the “reality show stars” come from shows like Survivor and Big Brother, which have a very similar skillset of trying to survive among a group of people.  However, some are clearly there just because they want to make drama, and don’t really care about the prize money.
• I seem to remember that the BBC version had these weird covers of well known songs.  I don’t hear that in the US version.
• Clearly whether both shows are successful or not is almost entirely dependent on the quality of the editing.  And, as is typical for reality shows, both versions are overproduced.
• The totally OTT cliffhanger episode endings are also the same – despite the US version appearing on a streaming service rather than a TV channel.

Bottom line, I think the people who like The Traitors should check the US version out.  But whether you will like it or not, I don’t know.  But I suspect the US version will probably be closer to how the 2nd season of the BBC version will go – less naivety, more competitiveness.