Netflix's Million Dollar Secret Is the Perfect Reality TV Binge Until The Traitors Comes Back

There will inevitably be comparisons between The Traitors, the current king of reality TV (and the crown is well deserved), and Netflix's new series Million Dollar Secret. And executive producer Glenn Hugill, one of British TV's top reality minds, with a credit list that includes The Mole, Deal or No Deal, and Hulu's upcoming Got to Get Out, is more than OK with that. 

"I f---ing love The Traitors!" Hugill told TV Guide. "I'm thrilled that people are comparing [Million Dollar Secret] to The Traitors. It's the Sistine Chapel of reality shows."  

He didn't have to tell me twice. Having gleefully torn through every edition of The Traitors available on Peacock (three seasons of U.S., three seasons of U.K., two seasons of Australia, and one season of New Zealand), I was naturally curious about Netflix's attempt at the reality competition genre that's steeped in perception and deception, with endless iterations of strategy and outcomes. And you know what? It's pretty good!

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Here's how Million Dollar Secret works: Twelve contestants are invited to a gorgeous mansion in Kelowna, British Columbia, in Canada, and the game officially starts when they each unlock a box that has been left in their rooms. One of those boxes contains one million dollars in cash, making the person who opens it the designated millionaire. It's up to the other players to sniff out the millionaire and eliminate them in a group vote every night at a fancy Michelin-star dinner; if the millionaire is caught and eliminated, the cash is randomly assigned to someone else's box, but if the group guesses incorrectly, the person they guessed is sent home and the millionaire is one step closer to winning. And in certain circumstances, the millionaire can voluntarily hand the cash to someone else randomly if the heat is too high, hoping to get it back later in the game. Whoever ends up with the cash at the end of the show is a million bucks richer. It's like Hot Potato, except the spud is a million bucks that you want to be the last one holding.

You can see The Traitors' DNA all over that — there's even a charming host (Peter Serafinowicz) from the U.K. — but it's just the base game. As Hugill puts it, Million Dollar Secret wouldn't exist if The Traitors hadn't renewed interest in these psychological reality competition shows, but he didn't set out to make his own version of The Traitors. He and the other crafters of the game, including showrunner Charles Wachter, loved the basis of what makes The Traitors work but wanted to make their own game from the ground up.

"We love shows about people who've got a secret," Hugill, who calls Million Dollar Secret "the backstabbing Olympics," told TV Guide. "How can we Netflix that? How can we make the biggest version of that possible, the sexiest, you know? What is the apotheosis of that idea?"

The answer to that is, in part, money. A whole lot of money. Rather than have contestants build up a pot through challenges like The Traitors does, Million Dollar Secret starts big with someone "winning" a huge pot right off the bat. 

"Somebody wins a million in the first minute, and now they're thinking, 'Sh--. Do I really want this?'" Hugill said. "Because to get rid of the target on their back, they've got to give away a million dollars with absolutely no guarantee that they're going to get it back at all. Could you do that? Would people do that? That was our starting point." (By comparison, the most recent season of The Traitors split a final pot of just over $200,000 between the winners.)

From there, Hugill and his team created enough wrinkles around the familiar core gameplay to make Million Dollar Secret stand out on its own while also inviting in fans of The Traitors. Some of the most interesting mechanics are the agendas — tasks similar to Big Brother's secret missions, such as getting other players to say a certain phrase — that the millionaire must perform in order to gain an advantage in the game (and in some cases, if they fail, they are harshly penalized). It's the type of risk-reward system that ramps up the tension of the game, while providing an advantage to the millionaire if they play it right. It also leads to some of the season's best moments as the millionaires craft more and more creative ways to accomplish these agendas without putting a target on themselves for suspicious behavior. 

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Million Dollar Secret has also focused on the impact of winning its challenges. The weakest part of The Traitors is the challenges — it's OK to admit that — which are used to increase the pot and only occasionally offer rewards like immunity shields, but in Million Dollar Secret, winning a challenge always results in a gameplay advantage, whether that be for everyone or for certain individuals, and of course, those who win have the option to choose how or if they dispense valuable information, or even manipulate the information to their advantage. 

But Million Dollar Secret's best secret is its diabolical endgame. I can't spoil it here, but it's such a simple concept that amounts to nothing short of mental torture for the finalists, as a pressurized decision means the difference between winning and losing. It's one final test of deception and anticipation, with many possible outcomes that leave everyone in the running for the grand prize right up to the last second, without it coming down purely to luck. And Season 1 ends on an incredibly satisfying note.

What struck me the most about Million Dollar Secret was its focus on gameplay. Without the (admittedly entertaining) distraction of combative reality star personalities that you see in The Traitors U.S., Million Dollar Secret is all about the game. Solo interviews with the competitors are open about strategy, hangout time is full of paranoia and planting ideas, and after a few days of getting used to the game, some moves made late in the season are genius. The Traitors likely won't return until next year. Million Dollar Secret is, for now, the next best thing.

Million Dollar Secret premieres Wednesday, March 26 on Netflix with its first three episodes. Three more episodes air the following Wednesday, and the final two episodes air Wednesday, April 9.