The Traitors: Why viewers have become so loyal to the BBC reality series

By Steven McIntoshEntertainment reporter

According to your TV regime, your TV competition Favorite ity one could take place in a Spanish villa, the Australian jungle, a Hertfordshire ballroom or a giant tent filled with ovens and self-rising flour.

But recently, a growing number of viewers have instead fled to a Scottish castle with Claudia Winkleman and 22 members of the public who just want to avoid being murdered.

"It's a new formula that no one else has really done," says Harrison Brocklehurst, pop culture writer for The Tab. "And in a time when a lot of reality TV has faded into one, all following the same formulas who they cast with, I think Traitors really stand out as unique.

"They have a very wide range of ordinary people, of different ages, races, sexualities, it makes for a real assortment of personalities. What makes it so fun is that it's always the people you don't really expect who play a blinder. Upon arrival, three of them are secretly told, via a push on the shoulder by Winkleman, that they are traitors.