IF YOU LOOK back at the most-viewed television programmes in Ireland over the last few years, there’s rarely any variance. The Late Late Toy Show will top the charts with around 1.5 million viewers, and the next eight or nine spots will usually be taken up by sports: The Sunday Game, the Six Nations, a world cup if there’s one going.

Last year, something new broke through: The Traitors.

With 818,000 watchers, the most-viewed episode of the season broke into seventh place on the annual top TV list.

To put it in context, the only other programmes to make the top 10 over the last few years that weren’t about toys or sport were Patrick Kielty’s debut as the new Late Late Show host in 2023 and Oprah’s famous interview with Meghan and Harry in 2021.

Safe to say, The Traitors caught the country’s attention.

It wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but those who got into it really got into it. It was the first show in years to fill the water-cooler-TV-talk shaped-hole in our lives. It created instant local celebrities (prison officer-turned-player Paudie needed 20 minutes to walk the length of the Crescent Shopping Centre, so mithered was he with attention). One way or another, it got the country talking.

And now, it’s coming back. The second season of the series is starting on Sunday night at 9.30pm. Will it perform as well as the first?

If you still haven’t watched season one and are planning to catch up, and you’d prefer to avoid spoilers, consider this your warning to click away now.

It's been a year since the first season of the Irish version aired on RTÉ. RTÉ RTÉ

The first season was full of twists, suspense and memorable moments. Who could forget Garda Eamon’s rift with Paudie, the melodramatic funeral for Christine, or Oyin’s apparent clairvoyance?

It culminated in a final five with three faithfuls (Oyin, Vanessa and Kelley) and two traitors (Nick and Ben).

Oyin and Vanessa had a strong alliance, as did Nick and Ben, which meant the fate of the final all came down to Kelley. The way Kelley’s vote was being courted felt like watching a US election. Will she swing this way? Will she swing that way?

In the end, she put her faith in Oyin and Vanessa, and it paid off. The three women won the game and split the prize pot between them, each taking home around €14,000.

Kelley said afterwards that being the deciding vote was “a lot of pressure”, but that she’d always been inclined to stick with Oyin and Vanessa.

Although the show went down well overall, some viewers felt like the final was a bit of an anti-climax, saying that once Ben, a traitor, was eliminated at the last roundtable, they felt the ultimate outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Plenty of other viewers, though, were satisfied with how the finale played out as Oyin, Vanessa and Kelley emerged victorious. Host Siobhán McSweeney lauded it as a win for “mná na hÉireann”.

Twists

Will this season bring any new twists? One would expect so – but what could they be?

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Behind the scenes of The Traitors Ireland: here's what to expect from season two

In the BBC’s version in the UK, the new feature introduced in their second season was ‘shields’, which can be won by a player in the course of daily missions to protect them from murder that night. But we already got shields from the get-go in the Irish version. 

It’s classic Traitors for some players to be hiding a secret, like lying about their job or having a real-life connection with another player, like Paudie and Andrew hiding that they were father and son last year. No doubt this year’s crop of players will have at least a couple of secrets among them.

Would RTÉ consider introducing a ‘secret traitor’ player like we saw on season four of the BBC’s version? The secret traitor was a new feature that involved an additional player being selected as a traitor, but their identity initially being kept secret from the other traitors (and the audience).

The other traitors’ powers were limited until they got the chance to unveil the secret traitor, and the audience got a chance to play along and get a taste of how it feels to be a hapless faithful trying to figure out who the traitors are. 

Another twist we’ve seen previously on the UK version was ‘the seer’. Near the end of the third season on the BBC, players battled to win a special power. The successful player became the seer, gifting them the ability to invite one other player to a private meeting and find out definitively whether that player was a traitor or a faithful.

That could be a bit of a poisoned chalice, though – would that player be believed when they bring their information back to the rest of the group?

It would be particularly exciting if The Traitors Ireland turned out a twist that hasn’t already been seen in other versions of The Traitors. Some of last year’s daily missions had clear echoes of ones that fans would recognise from international shows (which, to be fair, isn’t unique to the Irish version – the UK and US editions, which share a filming location, often repeat missions the other has done).

Let’s hope season two is able to live up to the bar set by season one, and also manage to bring something new to the (round)table.