Following the announcement of its biggest programme yet earlier this month, SCENE: Manchester’s LGBTQIA+ Film and TV Festival, has today confirmed that BBC One and BBC iPlayer phenomenon The Traitors will officially open this year’s festival with an exclusive live event at Aviva Studios, home of Factory International, on Thursday 20 August.
Hosted by TV journalist Scott Bryan, The Traitors panel will reunite some of the show’s most memorable players to relive the betrayals, banishments and twists that made the series a national obsession.
Confirmed guests so far include Amanda Collier (Series 4), Maddy Smedley (Series 1) and Wilf Webster (Series 1), with more to be announced.
READ MORE: Workerbee to produce £501,000-prize Luke Littler-fronted Netflix darts challenge
Following the discussion, audiences are invited to continue the celebrations at a Traitors-inspired opening party, complete with music, themed cocktails and plenty of opportunities to toast their fellow Faithfuls.
The Traitors event joins an already star-studded SCENE programme, announced earlier this month, featuring Russell T Davies, Nicola Shindler, Alice Oseman, cast from Rivals, I Kissed A Boy and I Kissed A Girl, alongside preview screenings of Pedro Almodóvar’s Bitter Christmas, Gregg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and much more.
A report last year revealed that the smash hit Traitors franchise had generated an estimated £21.8 million boost in Gross Value Added (GVA) to Scotland’s economy since filming began at Ardross Castle, about 30 miles North of Inverness in the Scotish Highlands, in 2022.
The show, a Studio Lambert format hosted by Claudia Winkleman, was the BBC’s most watched show of 2025 with almost 10m viewers tuning in for the series three finalé within a month of its initial broadcast. It has been syndicated globally to markets including the USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Denmark and Ireland and was named format of the year at the 2024 MIPTV Festival. Last Autumn’s celebrity iteration of the show on BBC One and iPlayer averaged 14.8m viewers per episode as Alan Carr famously manipulated his way to the grand prize.
The full SCENE programme, along with tickets for all events, is available now.
