The archive · Content & Film · Product decision · 2021–2023
IDTV's The Traitors games betrayal into TV — BBC's biggest launch since 2021
IDTV turns social deduction into a real castle competition for £120k — 43% Dutch adult share, then BBC records and global versions.
IDTV (All3Media) · Studio Lambert
What it had to solve
BBC One wanted a new entertainment series and took IDTV/All3Media's Dutch hit 'De Verraders', first aired on RTL4 in March 2021: 22 strangers enter a castle in the Scottish Highlands to hunt hidden traitors and win up to £120,000.
How it works
In March 2021 IDTV, an All3Media company, launched 'De Verraders' on Dutch channel RTL4: a psychological game in which players must decide who they can trust. Created by IDTV CEO Marc Pos and creative director Jasper Hoogendoorn and developed with RTL's creative unit, it ran on a brutally simple premise — a small group of traitors is hidden among faithful players, and the faithful have to find them.
Each night the traitors meet in secret and murder one of the faithful, who simply fails to appear at breakfast; each day the whole group gathers at the Round Table and votes to banish the player they most suspect. BBC One's 2022 adaptation, hosted by Claudia Winkleman and produced by Studio Lambert, put 22 strangers in a Scottish Highlands castle playing for up to £120,000 — with a prize pot built through missions and every decision carrying consequences.
The formula travelled. De Verraders took a 43% share among Dutch adults 25–54 and 50% among adults 16–24, earning its second series after only two episodes aired. The BBC version became the corporation's biggest brand-new entertainment launch since 2021 and the biggest new series for young audiences across all BBC titles in 2022; series two reached 21 million viewers and the show swept BAFTA, National Television Awards and RTS prizes.
Within eighteen months of the Dutch launch the format had been commissioned in the UK, United States, France, Spain, Belgium, Norway and Australia, with local productions anchored in castles and celebrity casts — proof that a game about ordinary suspicion could scale into a global television format.
Why it lands
- It inverted reality TV's usual contract: instead of producers engineering conflict, the rules themselves — nightly secret murders and public banishment votes — force players to scheme and betray.
- The stakes were real and legible: ordinary people risked a £120,000 pot and their own social judgment on a game whose rules everyone understood.
- Putting 22 non-celebrities in an isolated castle made the drama about character and misjudgement rather than fame or manufactured storylines.
- Casting Claudia Winkleman against type — dropping her smiley Strictly persona for a stern, gothic host — gave the format a distinctive tone that reviewers immediately recognised.
What it did
In the Netherlands the original drew a 43% share of adults 25–54 and 50% of adults 16–24, and a second series was ordered after just two episodes. The BBC version became the corporation's biggest new entertainment launch since 2021, its second series reached 21 million viewers, and it won BAFTA, NTA and RTS awards; by mid-2022 the format had been commissioned in the UK, US, France, Spain, Belgium, Norway and Australia.
What you can take
Hand the audience the secret and let contestants play a fair, legible game: when producers stop manufacturing conflict, viewers lean in to test their own judgment against real lies.
Since then
A third UK series was commissioned before the second even aired, and the format kept expanding: HBO Max ordered a Spanish adaptation, while Peacock, Network 10, M6 and broadcasters across Scandinavia and the Benelux took local versions. The UK show was the biggest new series for young audiences across all BBC titles in 2022 and won the BAFTA TV Award for Best Reality & Constructed Factual, with Winkleman named Best Entertainment Performance, as All3Media International turned it into a global franchise.
Sources
- All3Media International and HBO Max take "The Traitors" to Spain
- "The Traitors" returns to BBC One and BBC iPlayer for a third series
- Claudia Winkleman stuns The Traitors contestants with savage twist
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