Colm O'Regan: Imagine what The Traitors: Ireland would be like? 

‪Comedian and Irish Examiner columnist Colm O'Regan pictured in Cork. Pic: Denis Minihane.

WARNING: This definitely does not contain spoilers.

By the time you read this, the winner will be announced. And possibly denounced. I won’t know who it is. 

We’ve only just started watching season two of The Traitors. I’m so early in the season I can’t even tell who it might be. 

The people have yet to establish themselves in my mind and their names and jobs are still sort of blurry. 

Will it be Zont, the fitness influencer from Sidcup, or Nanky, the quirky welder woman from Orkney?

I’ve made those contestants up but that’s EXACTLY the kind of twist you can expect on The Traitors, a very successful murder-mystery TV format where people have to do lots of — well — betraying. 

The US version is popular too but they’re all already reality TV stars and that feels like an unfair advantage when you need to be awful.

The Traitors plays on an ancient fascination: What if people aren’t as they say they are? No matter the contrivance of the circumstances it still hooks you. 

If you’ve ever been on a stag or hen and someone wanted to interrupt the drinking with an ‘activity’ and you all did one of these murder mysteries, the knowledge there is a traitor is exciting.

On the TV show, once the traitors are picked they then set about nominating someone for murdering at night. There is a sort of Ireland’s Fittest Families activity during the day. 

Except in Ireland’s Fittest Families when a mother lets the family down by not being able to get over a wall, there are hugs and brooding resentment, in Traitors she could simply be murdered or banished.

Apart from all of that, as the viewer it is interesting to see the power of gossip, how opinions are formed, and how, when you’ve ‘lost the dressing room’ it’s very hard to get it back.

It’s been optioned for Ireland. What would be different about an Irish version of The Traitors? Obviously, ha-ha the immersion, ha-ha the wooden spoon, ha-ha pints, ha-ha.

But still, perhaps one difference is the smallness of the country means there’s a strong chance contestants would know one another. 

Just like First Dates had a few situations where two people sat opposite each other and realised they’d brought each other to their debs, or one had given the other maths grinds, or were actually cousins. Or all three. 

So there would be people coming into the Round Table with the baggage of preconceptions about a person. Or even about their ancestors. What if the father WAS the same?

What exactly happened five generations ago? How come them hoors got the lovely south-facing field when Lord Bastardton’s estate was broken up, while your great-great-grandfather broke his back carrying seaweed to it with only an old underpants, and he was given nothing more than the Long Acre?

Or maybe they just changed GAA clubs when they got married because of that Aul Yoke they got hitched to. Did they take the wrong side in a messy relationship break-up that split the townland?

And then you vote for them based on this baggage. Their parting shot? I am not a traitor.

And while you were looking the other way, the real traitor has the knife out for you. The person that you knew by reputation to be sound out. 

A man with a hitch on his car who pulled your father out of a gulley wan time. A woman who is a stalwart in the Tidy Towns.

The Traitors: Ireland - coming soon to a streaming platform near you. 

“Oh, a streaming platform is it? It’s far away from streaming platforms they were reared.”