From 6am.
The Aussie version really wasn’t very successful, but those who watched it have said it’s actually pretty good, and it’s getting a second run probably because it *has* been successful in other big markets and they want to try and tap into it.
It’s the same game you know and love, but the location (it’s a hotel) and the challenges are going to be different which might be reason enough to have a look if you’ve enjoyed the US and/or UK ones.
It has one of the best individual Traitors across the various shows to date in my book. They’ve since gone on to open a charity for vulnerable people with a friend they met filming the Traitors, so you know, that’s a fine legacy for a TV show.
It’s sort of a mix of the UK “everyone becomes friends, with suspicions” and the US “everyone turns on everyone”. I enjoyed its plot twists, but I saw it before the UK version had even finished. In short, and I’m being deliberately vague to avoid spoilers, if you liked The Traitors, and you were OK with the darker moments in the US version, then you’ll probably find a lot to enjoy in the Australian version too.
I’ve done one episode and love it already. But what an ugly location compared to the UK one!
I’m chomping at the bit to watch it, but we’re waiting until someone’s back from their cruise 🙁
In other news, S10 of Aussie Survivor is now on Amazon Prime.
One thing that’s confirmed it for me from watching the Oz version: with so many cast members there is always going to be a cast member who is never featured who you occasionally spot in the background and go “who the hell is that?!” In the UK version it was Rayan, in the Oz version (so far) it’s some older guy whose name I don’t think I’ve heard once.
Ok further to this, I’m halfway through the series and I’ve now realised there’s ANOTHER older guy who I think is British who hasn’t been featured *at all*. It’s like they’ve almost muted his role in the show as much as possible because he might have done something bad?! I don’t want to research in case I find a spoiler but at this point it really does feel like they’ve specifically avoided him on purpose.
The original older guy is finally getting some screen time!
Yeah we’re about halfway through it as well and yes this is a mystery – Paul is his name and there seems to be no concrete story as to *why* he’s been edited out so, but clearly it’s a deliberate decision. Argument with production? Did something whilst drunk? Witness protection? There’s apparently no answer! This isn’t a special Paul-less UK edit, as I understand it it went out in Australia like this.
Apparently he’s been the third most searched for contestant!
Episode 7 now and they don’t even seem to be showing his votes when it’s not a close vote! What did he do?! How will he get removed/eliminated?! This is quickly becoming the most exciting part of the shown!
It’ll be so funny if he ends up winning.
Well he’s suddenly featuring in a number of interviews and just appearing generally a lot more so I’m guessing something will happen in this episode!
Another thing I like about the Aussie show – the murdered people are just murdered and never heard from again. Greatly preferred to 10x “yes I’m disappointed.”
They’ve definitely shown 2 or 3 of them in the cab home after they’ve been murdered, normally the bigger characters.
They showed the first murdered, and they’ve shown a couple of the *banished* players, but I don’t think they’ve shown much else. Although that might change!
Ah there you go, happens ep 7!
I think they did it with murder victims who were set up as big parts of the series narrative. So, Episode 7 (though, again, Fay Alert, don’t tell the traitors how close you are to sussing them out!) falls under that.
According to Dirk from the Traitors on the Facebook page for the Oz Traitors, the Paul mystery is quite boring – he was fascinated with the behind the scenes stuff and would talk about production a lot, so they edited all of that out. (Though even editing his votes at times makes it look like they got pissed off with him, somewhat!)
This is it, I don’t know how much I buy it, there’s backgrounding characters and there’s editing them out of challenges/votes completely.
Yeah, I mean, it’s the most interested I am in a gameshow weird moment since that time they edited out a contestant from the Fifteen to One grand final in the nineties. (Apparently it was a criminal? And WGS said they were lucky the guy got voted out in Round 1, else the entire final would have had to been scrapped.)
Not saying I’m enjoying the Traitors format but not only are there 2 new versions due in the next month (Canada and New Zealand) but, through an accident of YouTube (looking up the Jon Petwee series Whodunnit?), I’ve found an American Traitors style show from 10 years ago called Whodunnit, which I’d never heard of before. It’s quite…well, of its time, but I do like the Spared or Scared cards everyone gets at dinner, to tell them if they are getting murdered or not. And instead of “you have been murdered”, we get full SFX death scenes, the most recent one involving a guy getting mauled by a mountain lion, which just happened to be in this mansion house.
Yeah Whodunnit was quite fun with a rather large hole in the middle, we talked about it at the time:
https://www.bothersbar.co.uk/?p=7665
Here’s a podcast interview with Paul: https://youtu.be/erJoD6Udypc?t=1741
He supposedly doesn’t know the answer himself. It can’t be a simple case of him being too dull or him talking about production too much. That would only make sense if he was murdered early on and they just didn’t need to feature him more.
The fact is he has an episode later in the series where he should have been one of three key characters so he absolutely should have had at least some reasonable amounts of screentime in the lead up to that. To have him clearly not feature in several votes, have him enter the breakfast room but almost always in the back of a wider shot rather than a full screen focus like everyone else got, and to actively avoid shots of him in conversations he was involved with… something definitely happened. Perhaps he’s playing coy so that whatever it was doesn’t come out, he certainly manages to brush past the question fairly quickly in that interview.
My theory is that it was something unpleasant that happened with one of the crew after the recording (which would explain why the cast don’t appear to know) – he couldn’t be removed because his game had already ended, the production company and channel don’t want to say anything to protect the crew/member, he doesn’t want to say anything to protect himself. If it was something to do with his own history I expect that would have come out by now.
Yeah, discussing this on the Discord. I was wondering if at some point *not* saying something might come across as poor contestant welfare as it’s just leading to rumours and innuendo, and that it might have been a good thing nobody watched it in Australia, but now it’s travelled other people are pointing it out and it’s become a bigger story.
The Traidars podcast is a lot of fun. Teresa says Paul was boring, and calls a spade a shovel. Craig seems such a nice chap too, but too willing to be led by the niceness of people. Calls the Shooting contest for the Shield a metaphor for his entire game, he got to the final “being useless at it” because he was “no threat to any of the Traitors or contenders”! He and Nigel are still mates, as are him and Claire. Something edited out of Claire’s bits is that she also is the carer for a disabled child, so a few folk were unwilling to vote for her even when they knew she was a Traitor.
Oh, and Paul shows up again in the Christian (goofy Traitor from the US version) interview asking if their food during the version of the show was cold, also!* One of them (Craig or Teresa, I forget which) mentioned a bit filmed where the psychic said someone else was in the room with them and Paul joked it was the camera man, and that all got binned too.
Doesn’t answer much, but I get the impression he complained a lot too.
*Apparently yes, very cold. But mostly pastries and cold toast.
**Oh the other bit of interest for those who don’t want to listen to a bunch of podcasts. Fi allegedly DID tell Marielle she suspected Teresa as a Traitor.
(Hmm, Traitors NZ and Traitors Australia S2 start this month. Luckily I have far too much self-restraint to go look the episodes up on Dailymotion after the fact…)
I’ve started on the Danish Traitors (I know, I know) and I can’t find where you said it, but earlier this year, you made a comment about how the game of the Traitors would change when it started getting contestants who had seen the game on TV, and they’d play it far differently from the less experienced S1 contestants. Well, on the basis of 2 episodes of this one so far (where people have clearly seen De Verraders and probably the UK or Oz versions, and even references tropes from them), you’re probably going to be right on the money there.
The interesting question is… does it make it less entertaining? I’d presume it means everyone has to play harder and there’s a lot more second guessing going on. This is probably fine if the levels of drama and comedy remain high – as we’ve said previously, as a format the show’s incredibly sketchy, but as a machine for drama and comedy it evidently works very well.
Hard to say after 2 episodes broadcast. Certainly, you wont get a Christian or Angus or Alyssa again where someone obviously a traitor is allowed to panic their way through half the series undetected. The clues or behavioural changes are spotted extremely fast by the Faithfuls*, without giving away too much in case folk actually start watching it. But then, I thought the US Traitors (to its flaw) and Australian Traitors (despite being good) weighted the game too much in favour of the Traitors when they already have the easier hand to play with. So maybe it’ll balance out some of those issues from the first series. Need more evidence tbh.
*I’ll admit I laughed myself hoarse at the To Camera bit for the Danish Amanda Traitor after the first roundtable, where she basically went “This is going shit!” Apparently she’s famous in Denmark, but I’m not really up to date on Danish celebrities! I thought one guy was a funny civilian and he turns out to be a celebrity chef!
NZ’s one is showing much the same, but the casting is mostly good, they did a nice spin on Maddie’s Party Game and the “line up in order of who expects to win” and there’s a tweak to the game I genuinely like – the idea that the Traitors have secret missions during the day which adds extra money to the collective prize pot for everyone. The Faithfuls aren’t told what the mission was, just if it succeeded or not. (For example, on Day 1, all 3 Traitors had to pot the number 7 ball in a game of pool before the hour was out in a crowded room.)