Double vision: why Traitors has a lookalike problem

The latest season is teeming with similar-looking young men, and it's making the backstabbing and double-crossing even more impenetrable than it usually is, says Katie Rosseinsky

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The Secret Traitor! The battle of the barristers! Fiona going all "J'accuse!" against co-conspirator Rachel! We've just about reached the halfway point of The Traitors' fourth season, and it's already been a vintage outing. Yet this time around, there's just one small issue that's blighting my viewing enjoyment ever so slightly. Here's my confession: I simply cannot tell the vast majority of the younger male contestants apart.

Matt. Sam. Reece. Adam. James. Every single time, I tune in, hear these names being bandied about in whispered conversations about who's displaying "traitorous behaviour" and who isn't, then utterly fail to match them to the correct twenty or thirtysomething bloke. They simply appear to me as a sort of generically nice-looking, vaguely amiable young man wearing lovely knitwear.

The only guy from this particular Traitors demographic (white man with hair colour ranging from sandy blond to mid-brown) whom I can repeatedly manage to identify from this near-homogenous gang is Stephen. That's largely because, in his role as a Traitor, he's had about as much screen time as all the members of the Faithful boyband put together (not least thanks to his plaintive, child-of-divorce expressions during Fiona and Rachel's slanging matches). Plus, he also has some great glasses.