Miranda Hart murdered on Celebrity Traitors, leaving 10 players and a tied vote

A murder at the castle

Comedian Miranda Hart, 53, was murdered by the Traitors in episode eight of The Celebrity Traitors series two, leaving 10 of the initial 21 players. Hart had helped unmask two Traitors, including mathematician Hannah Fry, before her own exit. Maya Jama, King Kenny and James Acaster, the Traitors in the game, chose her as their target. Acaster explained the decision on the show:

She's a good detective, she's looking at all of us, she is the most likely to wake up one day and say, 'it's Maya, Kenny and James'.

Hart reacted with disbelief and blamed herself for focusing on her theory about Joanne McNally, a suspicion she had raised just hours earlier. She then reflected on her return to work and her personal life after years of health problems.

I am so cross with myself, I was wholly focusing on my Joanne issue.

Hart, who has spoken previously about fatigue from a chronic illness, said the show had let her return to the work and the personal life she loves. McNally, the subject of Hart's theory, called her a powerful figure after the murder.

She was really powerful, Miranda was like the mother.

The mission and the dagger

The episode also featured a mission in which the Faithful were told to blow up the heads of pumpkin scarecrows bearing the names of players they did not want to receive a superpower. Every scarecrow except those of Maya Jama, James Acaster and King Kenny was destroyed, so the three Traitors were left untouched. Kenny was selected to receive a dagger during the mission, which gives him two votes at the Round Table. Jama and Acaster were the other two players deemed the most trusted.

The Round Table and the cliffhanger

At the Round Table, Sharon Rooney and Joanne McNally both fell under suspicion and received an equal number of votes. A second vote was forced, with the deciding vote in the hands of King Kenny, who held a double vote from the dagger. The episode ended before viewers learned who had been banished, leaving the pair's futures hanging in the balance.

What comes next

Celebrity Traitors returns on Thursday, 29 October at 8pm. Two of the remaining traitor hunters, James Blunt and Michael Sheen, were described by Acaster as 'Holmes and Watson', and he added that they were 'completely looking in all the wrong places'. Leigh-Anne, who lost her Big Mix dance partner from episode six, said she was praying the heat on her would go away. Jade Thirlwell, of Little Mix, told BBC News at the Mercury Prize ceremony that Leigh-Anne was a real life faithful through and through.

Behind the format

Creator Marc Pos drew the idea from the 1628 Batavia shipwreck, where shipmates turned on each other, and the format was first made in the Netherlands in 2021 as De Verraders. UK production company Studio Lambert later took on the UK and US rights and began adapting the Dutch format.