Lyasan Utyasheva, host of the “Traitors of Russia” program Heirs and Challengers Photo: YouTube
If you watched the second episode of “Traitors”, which is approaching its highly anticipated finale, you've played your part in the debate surrounding the most talked about entertainment show of the year. While the loss of the element of surprise may have undermined the punchiness that the first episode had, the treacherous, manipulative energy of it all is still engrossing. The good guys will finish last, and the most creatively evil and devious — presumably Harry, but who knows — will race to victory.
It's all exciting, water-cooled television, and healthy viewing figures (four million for a recent episode featuring Diane's poisoning, resulting in «the worst hangover in history») suggest that interest is not waning. At a time when very few people in mainstream television achieve this kind of breakthrough, TV executives will be breathing a sigh of relief into their own (hopefully non-toxic) glasses of fizzy drink. However, as they celebrate, leaders should remember that the show's origins lie in an even more fascinating story than anything that happens at Ardross Castle.
There are currently several different versions of Traitors broadcast around the world, all of which are derivatives of the original Dutch series De Verraders, which first aired in 2021. There are versions everywhere from Greece to the US, all finely tailored for the local market — the American series, for example, is hosted by a grinning Alan Cumming and features contestants who have already become famous for their appearances on other reality shows. All of them are licensed and fairly faithful to the original format. With one inevitable exception: the bootleg Russian version of «Traitors», retitled «Heirs and Pretenders» and first shown in the country in late 2022.
Claudia Winkleman in the British version of Traitors Photo: BBC
Its host, Lyasan Utyasheva, a renowned gymnast and socialite without the charm of Claudia Winkleman, took some pains to extol the virtues of the show. “Like any woman, I love mysticism and believe in it,” she said before the show aired. “And I also believe that the show will demonstrate that Russia is capable of creating interesting, masterful world-class projects… I promise you that it will be very beautiful and mysterious.”
Others were less impressed. Peter van der Vorst, director of the Dutch channel RTL Nederland, which broadcasts the show in the Netherlands, said the Russian version was unlicensed and a direct copy of the existing format, but no attempt had been made to acquire the rights. . However, he admitted that little could be done, sighing that Russia is a «rogue state» and that, after all, a show made without any oversight is unlikely to be as competent as others presented franchised all over the world.
Van der Vorst was right. If you watch the first episode of the Russian version of Traitors, it becomes obvious that coherence and ingenuity of storytelling is not its priority, but instead is nothing more than a bag of ideas that were thrown together without any understanding of what made the original show what it is. successful. Lowlights include characters refusing to die because they claim the word «leave» on their kill card was grammatically incorrect, banished traitors returning to the series seemingly by accident, and one unfairly eliminated character being eliminated yet again because he was very unpopular.
Not surprisingly, many participants either feigned illness rather than participating in any of the trials, or, as a last resort, they voted to exile themselves, thereby ending the trial in which they were participating. As one stunned fan wrote: «Complete ruin doesn't even begin to describe it.»
Still, there's no reason the show had to be so terrible. After all, Russia is the country that invented the game called Werewolf, which — along with a 17th century massacre off the coast of Australia — is one of the main influences on the creation of Traitors. Werewolf, also known as Mafia, for the uninitiated, is a room game that pits two groups of participants against each other: the knowledgeable (the werewolves) and the ignorant (the villagers).
The game's two stages take place at night, when werewolves try to kill the villagers, and during the day, when the survivors have to figure out who is a werewolf and who is just an innocent victim. As with Traitors, it is a game of double bluffing, manipulation and skill, and has enjoyed enormous popularity since it was invented, almost by accident, by a young Russian psychology student named Dmitry Davidov in 1987.
Davidov, who worked part-time as a tutor for high school students, came up with the idea of dividing his students into two groups. To show the practical aspects of the psychological theories he was explaining to them, he would give one group important information and withhold it from the others, trying to see what effect it had on their minds or, in his mind, in the words «uninformed majority versus informed minority.»
Traitors
“I wasn’t trying to create a game, per se,” he said, but students responded with great enthusiasm. Having perfected the game, Davidov introduced it to his friends, and within a few weeks it had spread throughout colleges and schools in Soviet Russia. Its fascinating qualities lie in its simplicity, but also in its cynicism about human nature: the fewer people you trust, the less susceptible you are to inevitable betrayal.
As befits a game that specializes in deception and manipulation, it soon became popular at the highest levels of Big Tech, which used the activity as a form of particularly intense networking. Wired magazine told how in 2008, people like Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, and Google co-tech executive Brian Fitzpatrick got together to play a game that became a particularly intense and cathartic session. One of the group members was so shocked by what was happening that he broke down, screamed and began throwing pretzels at the others.
However, Wales later described the experience as “a work of art… a work of beauty” and said of his own participation: “I was only sure of three things. First of all, I wasn't a werewolf. Secondly, one of these bastards was an amazing liar. And thirdly, the other guy was a complete idiot. I just couldn’t figure out which was which.”
Perhaps aware that high-ranking Russian citizens could often get into fatal accidents if they dared to say anything out of line, Davidov soon left for the United States (which he sardonically called the «ideal Soviet Union» in 1991) and never made huge amounts of money from the game he created, instead remaining a deeply private individual, living a quiet life away from the wealth of the tech geeks who now play Werewolf religiously.
He watched with irony as his game became a phenomenon, refusing to do traditional interviews (when he spoke to Wired, it was in the context of the World of Warcraft game) and being either unable or unwilling to offer fail-safe strategies for victory. One of the few observations he was happy to make was that “Lying and being caught in a lie is extremely dangerous. The best players lie only when absolutely necessary, and otherwise stretch the truth as much as possible. Never lie unless you are sure no one will notice.”
The werewolf, the mafia, or whatever name it is best known by, remains a phenomenon, all thanks to the central belief that, when people care only about themselves, they will prosper, and if they try to help their fellow humans, they will fail. Cheerfully cynical? Certainly. But it certainly makes for entertaining television that can be watched endlessly.
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