Series two of BBC One’s The Traitors came to its wonderfully tense conclusion on Friday night and, after all the social media speculation and general hysteria, it somehow managed to live up to the hype.

In a dramatic conclusion, 23-year-old Harry Clark betrayed best friend Mollie to walk away with the entire prize fund. Her reaction as he revealed that he’d been lying to her from day one was genuinely heartbreaking. After a brief and understandable bout of stunned swearing, she walked out of the room to silence.

Usually a big emotional release, this victory was muted and exactly as uncomfortable as it should have been considering the circumstances. As Claudia looked on, Harry had the fixed smile and searching eyes of a man who didn’t know how to feel and neither did we.

When the host shepherded him outside and handed him some bubbly, he tried to give the cameras a bigger reaction but he seemed paralysed by how that might look.

It was a game show and he had played it perfectly. We were complicit as he let us in on every detail of his dastardly plan to rob his fellow competitors at the eleventh hour. And we enjoyed it. Up until that final moment where he might as well have kicked the paper hate off a sad-eyed puppy.

This show is dramatic irony wrapped in portentous gloom. A game of cod-goth wink murder so dastardly and yet so simple, that we can’t look away from it. The premise: watch nice people tell each other bare-faced lies for a month and then observe the fall-out.

It is our omniscience that makes it fun. But when the dread moment finally came, did you really want him to walk away with the cash? Because I don’t think I did, despite, within the context of the game, him absolutely deserving to.

Fellow contestant Jaz (nicknamed Jazatha Christie by online fans) had begun to work out Harry’s game in the days leading up to the final, but he wasn’t able to convince lovely, open-hearted Mollie of her friend’s guilt. And this is what sticks in my craw. Evil won out over good, and none of us need to see that right now.

In a perfect moment of agony, Mollie wrote Harry’s name on her chalk board when asked to banish again before the game could end. And even though she knew it was Jaz who had requested another round of banishments, she didn’t clock that there would be no reason for him to do this if he was a traitor. If he was guilty, he wouldn’t be sharing the money anyway. Her love for Harry was totally blind.

Social media filled with videos of people in pubs, clutching their heads and screaming, “Mollie noooooooo” at giant pub screens like they were watching the FA Cup final. The audience investment was total. It was absolutely wonderful television.

Last year, traitor Wilfred Webster, another cheeky chap with a twinkle in his eye who got almost all the way to the prize, was tripped up at the last moment and looked genuinely happy when his faithful friends shared the prize money. It was the ultimate feel-good ending.

But the 2024 season very much ended on an eighties note as the nice guys finished last and could only gawp on as Harry was introduced to his massive pile of gold.

The slightly sour taste his victory leaves is all part of the journey. You wanted this. You rooted for him because you enjoyed the way he played the game. The whole point was to lie.

Harry has to ask himself now: is the £95k worth it when he’s effectively just won World’s Best Liar in front of a rapt nation? His brilliance throughout the game only serves to highlight his incredible ability to shape-shift. Would you trust him if you met him now?

After that finalists’ dinner party, where the last five swapped their stories of hardship and triumph over adversity, our appetites were whetted for a happy-ever-after.

I’m not sure Harry’s hopes to get the bill at a family trip to the carvery quite matched Mollie’s life-changing surgery, Andrew’s near-fatal car accident or Jaz’s blind-siding family breakdown. But, by the nature of the show, the sole victor was never going to be the moral one. The real emotions at play are essential to our enjoyment of the game.

And there is no finer shepherd for them than Claudia Winkleman. In Noel Fielding’s borrowed knitwear, she holds the entire format up with a kohl-lined laser focus on the fun. She knows. Her semi-final appearance in the blackened hide of a yeti was a masterstroke from her and her ingenious stylist, Sinead McKeefry. A wookie at a funeral, face straight, camp off all known charts.

The Australian version was on BBC Two straight after the spin-off show, Traitors Uncloaked, and I lasted 10 minutes. Their host is just an affable man in a suit. Borrr-ring.

But it’s over. I hope Mollie goes onto a brilliant media career in which she earns considerably more than £95k. I hope the fact that Harry, like Icarus who actually made it to the sun and is now reclining on its boiling surface, cocktail in hand, doesn’t let the power go to this head.

And I hope the makers of The Traitors carefully guard the flame of what makes this show the best thing on television: the players. As long as they continue to cast it this brilliantly, nothing else can touch it.

Applications for series three close on 11th February 2024.

You can apply here: https://studiolambert.com/project/take-part-the-traitors-uk/