The backstabbing will begin this fall for The Celebrity Traitors, the BBC‘s latest edition of the murder mystery guessing game.
At the Edinburgh TV Festival today, the BBC’s Interim Director of Unscripted Syeda Irtizaali said the series will drop in October, and this was confirmed shortly after in a press release.
This means it will form a core part of BBC One’s programming in the run-up to the Christmas period.
Unlike in the U.S., where besides a first season that mixed famous faces with members of the public, the UK Traitors has always been just for civilians, until now. The British spin-off will officially be known as The Celebrity Traitors.
The show’s cast was confirmed earlier this year, comprising comedian Alan Carr, singer-songwriter Cat Burns, Bridget Jones actor Celia Imrie, singer and activist Charlotte Church, broadcaster and author Clare Balding, historian and filmmaker David Olusoga, former rugby player and podcaster Joe Marler, Afterlife actor and comedian Joe Wilkinson, presenter Jonathan Ross, broadcaster Kate Garraway, Hullraisers star and comedian Lucy Beaumont, Dept Q actor Mark Bonnar, Ted Lasso actor and comedian Nick, content creator Niko Omilana, singer-songwriter Paloma Faith, The Fall of the House of Usher actor Ruth Codd, Blackadder and Wilde actor and presenter Stephen Fry, 3 Non-Blondes star Tameka Empson and Olympic diver Tom Daley.
Here’s a trailer released earlier this year confirming the names.
The players will decamp at Ardross Castle in the Scottish Highlands and play a game in which a group of ‘faithful’ players must detect and eliminate ‘traitors,’ who each evening banish others from the competition. The winner of the show will bag £100,000 ($135,000) for their charity of choice.
Studio Lambert is producing the show, which rolls out on the BBC this fall over nine episodes. Exec producers are Mike Cotton, Sarah Fay, Katy Fox and Lewis Thurlow and Production Executives are Lynette Woods-Reynolds and Gemma Scholes.
In the UK, The Traitors has currently run to three civilian seasons. The format was first produced for RTL4 in the Netherlands by IDTV, an All3Media company, as De Verraders. IDTV and Posvideo developed it, in cooperation with RTL Creative Unit.