The Traitors - Series 4
Breakdown of credited production team
On the 26th of January 2026, appearing before the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, Hayley Valentine, Director of BBC Scotland, was asked the following question (167) by the MP for Bathgate and Linlithgow:
Kirsteen Sullivan: “I wondered if you could provide the number of Scotland-based production staff who worked on series 4 of "The Traitors" and the seniority of those roles?
Hayley Valentine: Absolutely. The last time I talked about this I think we
had just finished series 3. It was this summer, and we had about 60 Scottish staff working on the programme. For series 4 we had over 70 Scottish staff working on the programme, so it is going up year on year, series on series, in fact.
Source: https://lnkd.in/gjdEa45f, page 14.
Looking at the geographical distribution of off-screen talent listed in the production credits for S3, as previously published, just 13 of 218 “Staff” were based in Scotland, 5.96%.
The breakdown for S4, (sampling episodes 1, 2, 11 & 12), reveals that just 31 of 210, 14.3%, of the production team are based in Scotland.
As we saw on the celebrity version, the biggest increase from series 1-3 is across junior roles such as runners, researchers and APs. Many of these additional Scottish hires have been paid for by tax payer money through Screen Scotland. Their ‘cost’, as Ofcom categorises off-screen talent, was not met by the production budget i.e. Studio Lambert and the BBC.
Overall percentages based in Scotland, in order of production:
Series 1 - 6.94%
Series 2 - 7.58%
Series 3 - 5.96%
Celebrity - 13.64%
Series 4 - 13.8%
The percentage of off-screen talent based in Scotland hired to work on S4 compared to the average for S1-3 increased by 6.8%. To Celebrity Traitors, just 0.16%, most likely explained by these two production essentially being filmed back to back.
If we are generous and suggest a roughly 8% increase from series to series, the increase from S3 to S4, it will take a further 6 series before the show reaches a 50% threshold.
If you add up every Scotland-based credited name from every series of The Traitors, the number of Scottish hires stands at 70, not over 70 as Hayley Valentine told the Committee and is now a matter of public record.
If you look at the spread of opportunity, counting each person on the production team across successive series just once, the number would be far lower than 70.
The Traitors is a BBC Network Scottish commission, made with licence fee money raised in Scotland, and used to meet it’s commitment to spending 8% in Scotland.
Anonymised dataset: https://lnkd.in/gZRg8T2k