Take away the polls and strip the reality show to its essentials and you get something as compelling as last night’s Traitors finale
Wow, well most of us have been Mollie here…. when you fall for someone, think the world of them….. would do anything for them….. then they stab you in the back totally brutal but much needed tv from the BBC gracefully edited 💔💔#TraitorsUK pic.twitter.com/7XK3OmgGh6
— SJP 🇬🇧 🇪🇺🏳️🌈 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 (@SJP74) January 27, 2024
I studied tragedy at college and there was something about the catastrophy of that denouement that grips you like the death of Cordelia or the fate of Oedipus or Antigone. And if that sounds high-fallutin’ -so be it – we were in bits and I couldn’t imagine an audience in Athens or Stratford that could find the drama more compelling.
Hi-brow and lo-brow don’t mean much when you watch the the awful moment of revelation that makes sense of what has come before. That sense that after this, nothing will ever be the same again. The dreadful loss of innocence, the triumph of careless evil. All of these things and a lot more captured in that incredible scene between Jaz, Mollie and Harry.
And of course we have seen it coming, known all along that Mollie couldn’t but trust the lad who was betraying her, any more than Othello couldn’t trust Iago. Jaz would not be listened to any more than Kent was listened to by Lear, Harry wins but is he hero or villain? And in the end was this tragedy or comedy – is Harry Hamlet?
A young man for whom everything is a game, ends up master of everything but the rogue of the castle and the slayer of his Ophelia. We see him with his £95k – the rest is silence!
One thing is for sure, it was great and made my licence fee renewal a formality!
