There are not many plaudits left for The Celebrity Traitors, which has delivered tension, crowd-pleasing ineptitude and the most famous fart in television history.

Yet for all the show’s achievements, one in particular – a feat that TV executives across the globe have been desperate to deliver – may stand out as the most impressive: it has got gen Z watching live TV.

There has long been fretting that viewers under the age of 25 have moved away from watching once-dominant linear television, lost to the algorithmic fix of digital platforms such as YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. Yet the treachery of the turret appears to have dragged them back to the TV.

The overnight ratings for The Celebrity Traitors – which measures the number of people watching live or later that evening on iPlayer reveal that more than half of the people aged between 16 and 24 viewing the show within that time slot watched every episode of The Celebrity Traitors as it was broadcast.

The show’s finale broke records. Its overnight average audience was more than 11 million, the biggest of the year and the biggest since the Gavin & Stacey special on Christmas Day. It was watched by 81% of the viewers aged 16-24 who were watching linear TV in that time slot, according to Digital i.

“At a time when younger audiences are increasingly turning away from