STANDING eerie against a Highlands backdrop, the goings-on in a Scottish castle and specifically who is loyal and who a traitor have all of Britain transfixed.
The twist? This is not the present day, faces are painted not radioactive orange but cadmium white, and the successful traitors are not rewarded with a low five-figure reward but with death.
Newly discovered diaries from the show’s star – one Mary, Queen of Scots – detail the premise of this proto-reality show: “I am told this will prove of much interest to the nation. If so, the nation is of less intellect than I had sworn.
“Really? An undistinguished castle wherein dwell several whose true loyalties are by no measure easily ascertained to gossip about it all the day? It seems no divertissement to me, not when bear-baiting yet draws crowds.
“Still we indulge in this intrigue, with players eliminated – my husband fled to Norway, not months after murdering my last – all but at whim. My own one-year-old son, James VI, was deemed more loyal than I. Surely these rules are arbitrary.
“Yes, I must don hooded robes and attend midnight meetings, but such is Catholicism for you. Yes, there are secret allegiances. Still, that the public should watch on appalls me, especially as the previous game of thrones that so enthralled them ended so pitifully.”
Despite Mary’s objections, the long-running entertainment of her incarceration in castles while her loyalty was questioned ran for two decades and toured a number of locations before it was cancelled in 1587 with her beheading.
Next week: to 1977, when Pink Floyd discover you can get away with only having three songs on an album if you stretch them out enough.
