The Guide #216: Celebrity Traitors was a watercooler-moment smash-hit – but how long will audiences stay faithful?

In this week’s newsletter: Last night’s superb finale (no spoilers here!) was a fitting conclusion to a show that’s had everyone talking. Can it avoid the fate of other once-mighty reality juggernauts?

That’s it then. The curiously pristine SUVs are back in the garage, the cloaks are off to the dry cleaners and your favourite hits of the 80s and 90s are safe, for a few months at least, from those absurdly melodramatic cover treatments. Yes, The Celebrity Traitors is over, having served up a finale that had just the right amount of intrigue, double-crossing and slack-jawed looks to camera from the terminally outwitted. We won’t ruin things here for anyone who hasn’t watched it yet, but for a full spoiler-filled debrief you can read Lucy Mangan’s review of last night’s drama here.

It was a fitting capstone to a remarkably successful first Celebrity Traitors outing. Fears that its big names might be too media-trained or overly deferential to one another – or just lacking the ruthlessness and desperation of their civilian equivalents, who actually need the win a fair bit more than the celebs do – proved unfounded. The show’s core appeal was still there, but in a supersized state. The casting managed to be preposterously starry – featuring at least half a dozen people who wouldn’t usually go within a 10-mile radius of a reality TV show – but also carefully consistent with the civvy edition’s usual mix of personality types. More broadly, the Traitors franchise is now in its imperial phase; a ratings hit in a post-ratings era, a format that it feels like everyone is watching and talking about, even if they’re not.