Shows Like
Shows Like The Traitors for Backstabbing Fun
By Jordan A. · · 4 min read
The Traitors turned lying to your friends into appointment television, and the franchise is not slowing down. A new season, The Traitors: New Blood, premieres September 17 with Alan Cumming back in his cape and his scheming, and the flagship US show still lives on Peacock for anyone who needs to catch up. The trouble with loving The Traitors is the wait between seasons. So here are the shows that scratch the same itch, the ones built on alliances, betrayal, and the sick thrill of watching someone lie to a friend's face.
Every pick below leans on the two ingredients that make The Traitors sing: a hidden game underneath the friendly one, and players forced to trust people they absolutely should not.
The Mole
If you want the closest cousin to The Traitors, start here. The Mole, streaming on Netflix as a slick reboot of the cult-classic format, drops twelve players into a series of challenges while one of them secretly sabotages every mission from the inside. Your job as a viewer is the same as theirs: watch everyone, trust no one, and try to spot the saboteur before the game does. It is paranoia as a sport, and it rewards the same detective brain that The Traitors demands.
The Circle
The Circle, also on Netflix, swaps a Scottish castle for a set of apartments where players never meet face to face. They communicate only through a social app, which means anyone can pretend to be anyone. Catfishing is not cheating here, it is strategy, and the show becomes a masterclass in reading people through a screen. The social manipulation that makes The Traitors so tense is the entire engine of The Circle, just pointed at profile pictures instead of dinner tables.
The Devil's Plan
For viewers who love the raw strategy of The Traitors more than the theatrics, The Devil's Plan is the upgrade. This Korean competition on Netflix locks a group of sharp players in a facility for days and hands them brutal logic games where alliances form, shatter, and re-form by the hour. It plays like a chess tournament with feelings, and the betrayals land harder because the players are so clearly smart enough to know better. If you finish a season of The Traitors wishing the games were tougher, this is your show.
Big Brother
Before The Traitors, there was Big Brother, the granddaddy of the alliance-and-backstab format. Contestants live together under constant surveillance and vote each other out one by one, which turns every friendship into a potential weapon. The long-running staple, carried by CBS and its Paramount Plus home, moves slower than The Traitors, but that slow burn is the point. You watch trust get built over weeks specifically so you can watch it get demolished in a single vote.
Squid Game: The Challenge
Netflix took its own global phenomenon and turned it into a real competition with Squid Game: The Challenge, and the result is betrayal at a scale The Traitors can only dream of. Hundreds of players face childhood games with life-changing money on the line, and the alliances that form are as fragile as they are desperate. It is the same moral rot that powers The Traitors, just stretched across a giant, ruthless playing field. When someone turns on a friend here, the stakes make it sting.
Where to start
Pick your entry point by what you love most about The Traitors. If it is the hunt for the hidden villain, go straight to The Mole. If it is the psychological warfare, The Circle is your fastest hit. If it is the pure strategy, The Devil's Plan will chew up your weekend. Big Brother is the deep-cut commitment for people who want to live inside the game for weeks, and Squid Game: The Challenge is the spectacle when you want betrayal with a blockbuster budget.
What ties all of them together is the same thing that makes The Traitors must-watch: they trust their players to be a little bit awful, and they trust you to enjoy it. That honesty about human nature is rarer than it sounds, and it is why these shows travel so well from one country to the next.
Reality obsessives will also want our take on reality dating shows like Love Is Blind UK, which run on the same mix of alliances and heartbreak. And if you just want the most addictive picks across every genre, our list of the most binge-worthy shows, ranked is a good place to build your next queue.
It is a format that travels because it taps something universal. Everyone has wondered whether they could keep a straight face while betraying a friend, or whether they could spot the liar across a dinner table. These shows let you test that instinct from the safety of your couch, and that vicarious thrill is exactly why the genre keeps spreading from one country to the next, spawning new versions faster than anyone can keep up with.
The Traitors proved that the most gripping drama on television is often just people lying to each other for money. These shows keep that engine running long after the round table goes dark, and they give you five different flavors of the same delicious backstabbing.
Not sure which betrayal to start with tonight? BingeNext reads across Netflix, Peacock, and everywhere else to find the strategy game that fits your mood. Get TV recommendations and let the scheming begin.
Topics covered: the traitors, reality competition shows, social deduction tv, peacock reality, backstabbing game shows
About the author
Jordan A., Founder, BingeNext
Jordan A. is the founder of BingeNext and is responsible for every guide published on this site. He built the recommendation engine after one too many nights lost to the streaming menu. Dates, season counts and where-to-watch details in these guides are checked against official sources before publishing, and corrections are welcome at Jordan@Bingenext.com.