The hit show has been compared to cosy crime drama. But it also has parallels with Hilary Mantel’s historical masterpiece

Doomy towers, candlelit assignations, whispers in corridors, banishments in the dead of night and a cruel and capricious master – The Traitors has more in common with the prestige historical drama Wolf Hall than you might expect. Based on Hilary Mantel’s Booker prize-winning trilogy following the life of Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror and the Light, its final instalment came to its bloody end in December. In January, the treacherous skies over 16th-century Hampton Court shifted to storm clouds swirling over Ardross Castle in Scotland for the return of the hit reality TV show. Dark times call for dark television.

The Traitors might be a spin on the cosy crime formula (strangers in a country house, murder and amateur sleuthing), but the parallels with Mantel’s trilogy are also striking. The English Reformation divided the faithful, after all. In the politics of the Tudor court and castles, it’s all about manipulation, power and self-preservation. Everyone is jockeying for favour, watching their backs, backstabbing and trying to fill the coffers for themselves and their cronies. By the final episode, most of the main characters end up with their heads on the block. All of which makes Claudia Winkleman Henry VIII, but with better hair and knitwear.