100% Endurance:The Traitors S3.

Towards the end of third series of The Traitors (BBC1/iPlayer) it suddenly struck me. What is it that I find so compelling, so absorbing, about what is in essence just another reality show? It dawned on me that what I liked most about it is simply how lovely it all is. Yes, the game is made up of lying, back-stabbing, and treachery but the contestants are forever telling each other how much they love each other, they're always talking about friendship, and when they appear on Uncloaked to talk about their experience on the show it is always overwhelmingly positive.

In an era of Donald Trump releasing murderers and rapists from jail so he can lock up medical professionals and political opponents, of Elon Musk doing Nazi salutes, of race riots, of horrific murders like those perpetrated by Axel Rudakubana in Southport, of Benjamin Netanyahu ordering his troops to kill Palestinian babies, of Hamas using those same babies as human shields, and of Tommy Robinson rallies in Trafalgar Square, we need something nice in the world to even it out - if only for a few escapist hours - and as the walking season tends to be fallow in January, The Traitors is just the tonic.

Games are fun and The Traitors is a fun game. But it's also a pretty serious one and it must feel like it to the players who pretty much live it for the best part of a month. For posterity, this year's players were a bloody lovely bunch but there were a lot of them and it took a couple of episodes to work out who everyone was.

There's Lisa, a 62 year old Anglican priest (though she's keeping schtum about that to begin with) who gives off something of a Polly Toynbee vibe, there's Freddie who, at 20, is the baby of the bunch and also the babe of the bunch if the scenes of him showering are anything to go by, and there's Minah, a 29 year old Liverpudlian call centre manager who I couldn't help warming too.

Armani is a 27 year old financial manager who is so full of confidence it seems likely to be her undoing, 25 year old Maia is Armani's more low key sister and they're not hiding their relationship from the others. Which is not something you can say about Leanne or Charlotte. 28 year old Leanne is a former soldier but she's posing as a nail technician and arrives dressed like Barbie. Charlotte, 32, is a business director from Hampshire but, for reasons best known to her, she has decided to pretend she's Welsh and talk in a fake Welsh accent.

A plan that looks decidedly risky when 24 year old Elen enters the fray. Elen is Welsh and even works as a Welsh translator. 29 year old Tyler is a lanky barber from Leicester who likes birdwatching and has never had a girlfriend, Yin is a 34 year old director of communications whose penchant for reading books renders her a threat from the start, and Jack, 24, is a mulleted market trader from Yorkshire.

65 year old Keith is an affable window cleaner, Anna (28) is a swimming teacher who rocks some pretty impressive nail varnish, 50 year old Fozia is an outreach manager who doesn't suffer fools glady, Nathan (39) is a property consultant, Alex (30) a pink haired care manager, Alexander (38) a well spoken former diplomat, and Livi (26) is a beautician and model.

33 year old Dan is a bank risk manager whose autism means he doesn't beat around the bush when conversing with others, Frankie (44) is an interior designer and seems as nice as she is posh, Leon (40) is a retail manager who never misses a chance to tell everybody what a proud family man he is, Kasim (33) is a doctor who is continually accused of being too nice and too clever, Jake (28) is a property manager from Barrow-in-Furness, and Joe is a 37 year old, and somewhat camp, English teacher. Then there's Linda, a retired opera singer who, at 70 years old, is the oldest person in there but who likes to describe herself as "wild" and "crazy" which seems like a very risky strategy in this game.

As ever, they're made to compete in all manner of challenges - or missions. Exploding crates (some with chests of gold in), dragon boats, Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire, caged people hanging from trees - described as like the 'Salem witch trials', a fire 'ceremony of truth' that sees the players getting gunged as if in Noel's House Party or something, Easter Island heads (with very phallic looking bodies attached), being suspended from helicopters, a massive chessboard, some haunted faiground carny stuff with the inevitable killer clowns, and, best of all, creepy dolls. One called Martha who sings Frere Jacques backwards and lots of others who say pretty unpleasant things. The best being "you're going to die soon".

All this high camp gothic nonsense is soundtracked to Nouvelle Vague style covers of songs like Smells Like Teen Spirit, The Fugees' Ready Or Not, Donovan's Season Of The Witch, Justin Timberlake's Cry Me A River, Fleetwood Mac's Lies (obvs), Duran Duran's Ordinary World, Maneater by Hall & Oates, and Cher's Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down). I even noticed, in the credits, that the incidental music came from Bleeding Fingers who are the in house composers at my current place of employment.

Proud I was. And excited too. But possibly not as excited as some of the players. There was lots of screaming (on seeing the castle, on meeting Claudia Winkleman - as brilliant as ever, at seeing their own portraits) and lots of crying - not all of it genuine. Some faked the crying better than others and some can spell better than others. They're lovely people but you think if you'd spent weeks inside a castle with a smallish group of people you would at least learn how to spell their names. One contestant needed to have Roman numerals explained to them. Poor Freddie is so young he'd never heard of Columbo.

There are, of course, more twists and turns than ever - including one on the train to the castle before the game had even officially started. There are coffins, people being buried alive, a reference to Harold Shipman, a 'deadly' game of cards in a cemetery at night, and there are at least two of the traitors who aren't very good at their job. Though there is at least one other who is very very good at their job indeed.

Alongside all these folk horror vibes, we get to meet Claudia's owl, to see her blow a Viking's horn, and hear a hell of a lot of talk about 'gut' from this group of quantifiers who all insist that they are 100% faithful. In fact I'm not sure I've ever heard the words 100% uttered so regularly and, in some cases, so falsely. I suspect The Traitors will jump the shark one year but for now it keeps improving. Even Stuart Heritage's curmudgeonly review in The Guardian gave the finale four stars out of five.

The Round Table is the best bit. Tense, emotional, often not what you expect. The sister scenario reaps expected rewards on the drama front and there's a lot more where that came from. There's a rare refusal of a faithful to be recruited by the traitors, and there are multiple occasions where perfectly innocent, or innocuous, comments or actions, are woefully misinterpreted by others which in some cases inevitably lead to 'murder' or banishment.

Each episode ends, of course, on a cliffhanger although superfans like me soon find themselves tuning in to Traitors Uncloaked with Ed Gamble where the night's action is analysed like a Premiership football game or a general election by Gamble and a selection of contestants from earlier series' and celebrities like Aisling Bea, Jo Brand, Nish Kumar, Rose Matafeo, Katherine Ryan, Oti Mabuse, Josh Widdicombe, Tom Allen, Chris McCausland, Sophie Willan and a few others I've never heard of. I drew the line at moving over to BBC Sounds for even more Traitors discussion though. I do need to eat, work, and sleep.

Watching The Traitors (with the advantages of knowing who is a faithful and who is a traitor) you can't help noticing that, as in real life, people mistake those on the same side as them for enemies and look to those who seek to hurt them as their saviours. Unlike real life, it's just a game and everybody stays friends afterwards. One contestant even talks about how he invited two of the others to his wedding.

Ultimately, they seem like a really genuinely lovely bunch of people who, sometimes, have to pretend to be nasty. What a nice change from some of the nasty bastards who are running the world right now and not even pretending to be nice anymore. Would I rather spend a month locked in a big Scottish castle with these traitors and faithfuls or ten minutes in The White House with Donald Trump and Elon Musk? I think you can guess the answer to that. 100%.