The Traitors has begun filming for the second series after their hugely successful first season.

Contestants for the BBC's hit competition show have started to arrive at their new home - Ardross Castle in the Scottish highlands - for the next few weeks.

A total of 22 competitors are set to battle it out for a £100,000 prize reports the Mirror. Last year, the murder mystery series aired over Christmas, with this year's instalment expected to start around the end of November.

And despite the premise of the show lacking festive spirit, it bagged itself the BBC's biggest new series for young audiences in 2022.

Now, viewers are gearing up for the new season which will see host Claudia Winkleman select three contestants to be 'traitors'.

The ceremony is kept under wraps from the rest of the team, keeping them guessing which individual is actually a 'Traitor' - secretly lurking, sabotaging efforts and picking off contestants one by one - and who is a 'Faithful'.

The Traitors then meet secretly every night to work out who to murder. BBC bosses have confirmed that the ultimate game of detection, backstabbing and trust, is set to be a "different game" this time around.

Toni Ireland, executive producer, spoke at the Screen Summit in May, saying: "The difficult second album (is what) we're calling it. We're really excited about doing series two, We can't give too much away at the moment, obviously, but we're really looking forward to it. I'm excited because the game's going to be different, people have watched the show now.

"When this cast came to us, they had never seen the show, they were just playing with their gut instinct and just going: 'This is how I'm going to play this game.' Now, I imagine a [new] cast will have seen it, They're going to come to us with pre-planned ideas of the way they think it's going to go, and obviously, it's our job to make sure that they're always kept on their toes and they don't know what's around every corner."

BBC Unscripted Editor Syeda Irtizaali added: "I'll tell you the tagline for series two, which is, 'You think you know how to play the game, you don’t know anything.' That's all we're [going to] say."

And host Claudia also admitted she got over-involved in the show. At the launch, she said: "I was in deep. I cry at the end. I haven't cried in, like, 20 series of Strictly - with this I was on the floor sobbing. Inconsolable. It's a game of smarts, not a game of luck. It's a game of wit. It's an awful lot of money. I was myself and at the end, I'm sobbing on the floor. There are so many twists."

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