It has been billed as “the ultimate game of trust and treachery”. Now an Irish version of hit television format The Traitors is in development after Dublin-based independent production company Kite Entertainment optioned the show for the market amid hopes that RTÉ will commission it.
Kite managing director Darren Smith said his company was in discussions with RTÉ's television factual department about making the series, but added that it was competing with other pitches for a share of RTÉ's programming budget and that the show had not been green-lit.
Mr Smith said The Traitors, based on the Dutch show De Verraders, was “just great fun”, but that financial constraints at RTÉ meant there were “no slam dunks anymore”.
Kite executives visited the set of the British version at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands last September while production company Studio Lambert was making a second season for the BBC. Studio Lambert, which is part of global production group All3Media, also makes The Traitors US for NBC-owned streamer Peacock at the same location.
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However, Mr Smith said Kite wanted to film the potential Irish version at an Irish castle and had identified a shortlist of possible locations. The location will determine the budget for the show, he added, as longer distances from urban centres typically lead to higher personnel costs.
Kite is the maker of Ireland’s Fittest Family for RTÉ, Gogglebox Ireland for Virgin Media Television and LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland, the new Graham Norton-hosted comedy series launching on Prime Video this Friday.
The Traitors is a structured reality series that sees 22 contestants try to identify who has been selected – usually by the producers – as the “Traitors” in their midst.
The “Faithful” must vote out (“banish”) the Traitors at a nightly roundtable before they are either “murdered” one by one by the Traitors or banished themselves. If any Traitors remain undetected by the end of the game, they claim all of the prize money. If all Traitors have been banished by this point, the money is shared between the remaining Faithful.
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The format adapts the concept of a “wink murder” party game for television and blends it with race-against-time missions in which the contestants must work together as a team to boost the overall prize pot despite being highly suspicious of each other.
The series was created by Dutch company IDTV, which is also part of All3Media, and further developed by broadcaster RTL, which aired the first season in the Netherlands in 2021. It has since been sold around the world. Mr Smith said the intention was to “stick to civilians” when casting an Irish version, rather than booking celebrities as is the case in some of the international versions.
[ The Traitors is arbitrary and brutal, like January – give me more of itOpens in new window ]
The first BBC iteration of the show was broadcast on BBC One in late 2022 and later gathered momentum on the BBC iPlayer, reaching 34 million views by February 2023. Presented by Claudia Winkleman, it has been credited with bringing younger viewers back to the BBC, becoming its biggest entertainment launch among this group in at least five years.
The second season, which is midway through its 12-episode run, has contained twists and surprises not featured in the first season to keep the format fresh and prevent both contestants and viewers from second-guessing how people will behave.
Mr Smith said The Traitors Ireland would have the advantage of being an established format when it came to finding a commercial sponsor, but that the concept would not be over-familiar to an Irish audience because the iPlayer is unavailable in the Republic and many viewers will have missed it on BBC One.
“We’re not in the shadow of the BBC the way we would have been once.”
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