The Celebrity Traitors continues to be the most talked about show on television – but season two has left viewers squinting at their screens thanks to one unusual editing decision.
Series two of the all-star spin-off is well underway, with 21 celebrities separated into Faithful and Traitors, and a total of five having been banished or murdered so far.
However, a number of eagle-eyed viewers have noticed an bit of editing that has been going on this season, where the faces on the watches worn by the contestants have been consistently blurred.
During the round table on Friday (9 October) night’s episode, actor Sharon Rooney and comedian Miranda Hart both wore watches with the time made illegible. Ross Kemp, Joe Lycett, Richard E Grant and Amol Rajan have also been filmed wearing similarly unreadable timepieces.
There’s an obvious reason for the real time to be obscured: continuity. Episodes of The Celebrity Traitors will feature different clips edited together (often in non-chronological order) to construct a narrative that runs through the episode.
It’s no secret that constructed factual formats like The Traitors piece together footage in this manner, but producers will want to avoid alerting viewers to this for fear of confusion or making the drama seem less authentic.
This does beg the question, however, of why the cast of The Celebrity Traitors series two were allowed to wear watches in the first place.
Removing clocks and watches is a key component of many reality TV shows, as it helps the contestants immerse themselves within the programme and not think so much about the outside world.
There are infamously no clocks in the Love Island villa, for example, and the Traitors castle has historically followed suit, with series two winner Harry Clark telling BBC News: “You get picked up in the morning and when filming is over, you get dropped back to the lodgings.
“I don’t know what time the mission starts or when lunch is – we rely on the production team to direct us and in between, we all just sit around and chat.”
The same rule followed on the first celebrity season of the hit game show, according to comedian Nick Mohammed, who revealed on The Comedian’s Comedian podcast that contestants, including himself, had their devices taken away from them and that they “weren’t even allowed to know the time”.
“When we were in the castle, you’d be like, ‘What’s the time?’ They were like, ‘It’s Traitors time’. That was their response. Every single member of production had to just answer with that until someone kicked off and said, ‘It’s a basic human right, just tell us the time.’”
The rules have clearly been loosened for series two, with some fans speculating that giving the contestants more freedom might have been what allowed the show to get such an impressive cast of stars to sign up for series two.
The Celebrity Traitors continues Thursday 15 October at 8pm on BBC One.
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