If you were one of the 5.4 million people that tuned in to watch episode one of BBC’s wildly popular show, The Traitors UK, then you'll be all too familiar with the show’s dynamic, dramatic – and slightly camp – main theme. Keeping viewers on the edge of their seats and second-guessing everything each week – who’s next to be murdered? Will there be traitor-on-traitor crime? What diabolical spelling of someone’s name will we see at the banishment? How chunky will Claudia Winkleman’s knitwear be? – the show has gone from strength to strength in a few short years and has seen the nation tuning in in their millions.
Despite the show being shrouded in mystery, The Traitors’ composer Sam Watts agreed to lower his cloak and join Headliner at the turret to reveal all about how he created the show’s iconic main theme and share how his music has been integral to shaping the sound of the programme that has brought audiences everything from, “but Ross is…”, to #jazathachristie, Paul’s pantomime bow, Linda’s acting, agonising final reveals, and everything in between.
(At the time of interview, the most recent episode to air is S3E9)
Like the majority of the UK, Headliner is currently obsessed with The Traitors series 3. How are you liking this season so far?
I think it's great. The nicest thing about having been a part of this show is that I'm actually a really huge fan. It's such compelling television, and this series is really interesting because, as a few former cast members have pointed out, the players are no longer playing just the game, they're playing the production company as well, because in the first series nobody had seen it, and nobody knew what it was. They were all going in with no information at all.
Now that we're on series three, all the players are thinking, ‘This happened last season, so they're gonna do something like this again’. It adds an extra element to the gameplay, because the production are geniuses and come up with these very clever things to make these twists happen. They are no longer second guessing everything, they’re triple guessing everything.