‘The Celebrity Traitors’ Finale Draws Record Audience To BBC

The Celebrity Traitors bowed out with record ratings on Friday.

The Claudia Winkleman-fronted BBC series drew an average overnight audience of 11.23 million viewers, topping the previous high of 11 million for last year’s finale.

The 80-minute-long episode peaked with 11.6 million viewers as a winner was crowned, though Deadline is choosing not to publish any spoilers in this story. It will almost certainly be the biggest TV audience of the year outside of the FIFA World Cup.

Season 2 of The Celebrity Traitors has not been without its difficulties for the BBC and producer Studio Lambert, not least Richard E. Grant unmasking himself as a traitor early in the game.

The troubles haven’t affected ratings, however. The show has averaged 9.7 million overnight viewers over the course of its nine episodes, which was more than 2 million viewers up on Season 1’s average of 7.5 million.

The Celebrity Traitors has been piling on more than 5 million viewers over the course of seven days, once catch-up and streaming ratings are included. The first four episodes have averaged a seven-day audience of 15.2 million.

The Celebrity Traitors is produced by Studio Lambert Scotland for BBC One and iPlayer and has been commissioned by Kalpna Patel-Knight, Head of Entertainment Commissioning for the BBC.

The executive producers for All3Media-backed Studio Lambert are Mike Cotton, Sarah Fay, Lewis Thurlow and Katy Fox, with production executives, Lynette Woods-Reynolds, Gemma Scholes and Faye Donaldson. The commissioning editors for the BBC are Neil McCallum and Michael Jochnowitz.

The Traitors (Dutch title: De Verraders) was created and developed by IDTV in cooperation with RTL Creative Unit. All3Media International is global partner for The Traitors and handles format and tape sales worldwide.