Pointless

This article is about the British quiz show. For other uses, see Pointless (disambiguation).

Pointless
File:Pointless titles.png
Genre	Quiz show
Directed by	Nick Harris Julian Smith Jonathan Glazier Richard Valentine Richard van't Riet Stuart McDonald (celebrity)
Presented by	Alexander Armstrong Richard Osman
Theme music composer	Marc Sylvan
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of series	24 (regular) 13 (celebrity)
No. of episodes	1,326 (regular as of 22 February 2021) 211 (celebrity as of 14 December 2019)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Pam Cavannagh (BBC) Tom Blakeson and David Flynn (both Brighter Pictures then Remarkable Television)
Producer(s)	Michelle Woods Ed de Burgh John Ryan
Production location(s)	Television Centre (2009–12, 2017) Elstree Studios (2013–)
Editor(s)	Hannah Barnes Peter Elphick David Horwell Neil Hunter Nick Parker
Camera setup	Multiple-camera setup
Running time	45 minutes (regular) 50 minutes (celebrity)
Production company(s)	Brighter Pictures (2009) Remarkable Television (2010–)
Distributor	Endemol (2009-2015) Endemol Shine Group (2015-2020) Banijay (2020-present)
Release
Original network	BBC Two (2009–11) BBC One (2011–)
Picture format	576i (16:9 SDTV) 1080i (HDTV)
Audio format	Stereo
Original release	24 August 2009 (2009-08-24) – present
External links
Website

Pointless is a British television quiz show produced by Banijay subsidiary Remarkable Television for the BBC. It is hosted by Alexander Armstrong with assistance from Richard Osman. In each episode four teams of two contestants attempt to find correct but obscure answers to four rounds of general knowledge questions, with the winning team eligible to compete for the show's cash jackpot. All questions used on the show are factual in nature, and are asked of a panel of 100 individuals in a pre-conducted public survey. Contestants seek to find correct answers that were given by as few of the survey subjects as possible ("points"); each round is won by the team with the fewest points. "Pointless" answers, given by nobody, score zero points, the best score. Every pointless answer given during the main game increases the jackpot by £250, and one such answer must be given in the final round in order to win it.

It debuted on BBC Two on 24 August 2009. The success of its first three series led the BBC to move it to BBC One from 2011. On occasions when BBC1 carries live broadcasts of major news or sport events, the programme is transferred to BBC2, for example during the pandemic of 2020. As of February 2021 the programme had been shown for 24 series and has had peak audience figures of over 7 million viewers. A celebrity version entitled Pointless Celebrities was first shown in 2011, and as of April 2020 had reached series 13. The format has been exported internationally.

Overview

The object of the game is for contestants to provide answers which are not only correct but also as obscure as possible. The game features four teams (previously five), each consisting of two contestants. In each round, the team with the highest score is eliminated; the other teams proceed to the next round. In the final round there is the chance to win the jackpot prize. Teams can appear on the show twice (only once if they have made it to the final round on their first attempt). The show's assistant is Richard Osman, styled as Armstrong's "pointless friend". During the course of the game, he gives information about the answers that are given, as well as statistics at the end of each round on the most common and most obscure answers.

Prior to the show, 100 people are each given 100 seconds to give as many answers as they can to the questions that contestants will be asked during the show. Correct answers are assigned a point value equal to the number of panellists who gave them, so that less commonly given answers have lower values than those given by many panellists. Contestants try to give answers worth as few points as possible, aiming to have the lowest score amongst the contestants in each round.

"Pointless" answers are those correct answers that none of the 100 panellists gave, making them worth zero points. Each time a contestant gets a pointless answer prior to the final round, £250 is added to the jackpot. An incorrect answer adds 100 points to the contestant's score. The format consists of two elimination rounds, a head-to-head round and the final round. If two teams are tied for the highest point value at the end of the first or second round, a sudden-death round occurs, with the highest-scoring team losing. The couple that wins the head-to-head round are awarded a Pointless trophy and the chance to win the jackpot by finding a pointless answer. If the contestants fail to find a pointless answer in the final round, the jackpot rolls over to the next show and is increased by £1,000. In the celebrity shows, the jackpot always starts at £2,500 but it will not be rolled over to the following show, and the jackpot will be reset to £2,500. For specials, the jackpot starts at £5,000 and goes up by £500 for each pointless answer, but as with the regular celebrity shows, the jackpot does not roll over to the following show.

Four episodes are recorded in one day.

Pointless was extended for another 204 episodes, giving three more series, taking the total commissioned to 13 in February 2014. A further 24 celebrity episodes were also ordered.

Format

The format and gameplay changed slightly between series. The game starts with elimination rounds (three in the first series, two in subsequent series) to whittle the starting lineup down to the two teams who contest the head-to-head; the winning team of the head-to-head plays in the final.

Elimination rounds

The teams are given a subject, and each team chooses one contestant from their team to answer the question first. Then the question within the subject is revealed. The order of play is determined by drawing lots in advance of recording. Play starts with the person at the podium nearest to Armstrong and ends at the farthest podium; this forms what is known as the "first pass". Then, the contestants at each podium switch to the second contestant, and the order is then reversed for the "second pass". During each of these rounds, teams may not confer.

Teams gain points depending on how many people answered the question with that answer. If the contestant gives an incorrect answer, they are awarded the maximum 100 points.

At the end of each round, the team with the highest score is eliminated from the game. In the event of a tie, the tied teams each give an extra answer each until the deadlock is broken and the team with the highest points eliminated. The teams are allowed to confer in the tie-break.

To complete each round, Osman reveals all the pointless answers, or the three least popular if there are no pointless answers, plus the top three answers, which would be worth the highest amount to any contestant.

There are five different formats of the elimination round which can be played: the first was introduced in the first series (and was the only version used in that run), with subsequent series introducing variant formats.

The original format has open-ended questions: contestants are given the question and a free choice of answer—no prompts or preset answers are shown. If the contestant's answer is correct, they score according to the poll results; an incorrect answer scores 100 points. In the first series, this game was played three times, in each of the elimination rounds, then in subsequent episodes the game would be played no more than once. A variant of this format was introduced in series 7, where a list of categories appears on the board after a question and contestants can give any answer that fitted into any of those categories (for example, they could name any member that was in any band on the list). Contestants usually identify the intended category along with their answer, though (unlike in the final round) they are not required to do so and they will be credited for a correct answer even if they attribute it to the wrong category. This variant enables the question setters to combine several smaller categories into a round (e.g. the films of several different actors) or to narrow down a wider category (for example, by limiting answers to those starting with certain letters).

The possible answers format, introduced as the new second elimination round format in series 2 and dropped in series 6, gave the question and a board of seven potential answers; each contestant in turn would pick one of the answers shown, scoring accordingly. Following the first pass, Osman would reveal the value of the remaining answers. The other team members would have a new set of answers to choose from. Each set of answers would include at least one pointless answer and at least one incorrect answer. Usually, the incorrect answer had some indirect link (often humorous) back to the question. As only the provided answers needed to be verified, this question format allowed categories to be used in which no commonly-agreed definitive list of correct answers exists.

The third format, clues and answers, was introduced in series 3. The teams are given a two-part subject, such as "Famous Battles and their Countries", and then a list of names relating to part of the question (for example, a list of historical battles). The contestants must select an item from the list and give the corresponding half of the answer (in this case, the modern-day country where the battle took place). All the options have a correct answer, and a more obscure answer will score fewer points. An incorrect answer to any question scores 100 points. (If the question was "the Battle of Hastings", the correct answer, "United Kingdom", might score 92 points, as most panellists would know this answer.) After the first pass, all the correct answers and their scores are revealed, with a fresh board of names for the second pass. Unlike the "possible answers" format, there is no guarantee that there will be a pointless answer on the board. Seven clues are provided on each pass if this format is played in the first round, six if played in the second round.

A fourth format, linked categories, introduced in series 5, provides the teams with two closely related categories (e.g. "Boy Bands" and "Rock Bands"). The first category is played on the first pass (by the teams' first contestant), and the second category is played on the second pass (by the second contestants). The questions are still played in an open-ended format and, so far, this format has only been played in the first round. It was rarely used and is no longer played.

A fifth format, introduced in series 7, shows the contestants a picture or pictures containing many people or objects (e.g. cartoon characters) and they have to identify the lowest-scoring person/object in it. This is only occasionally used and replaces an "original format" round when it does appear.

The games which were played in each series were arranged as follows:

• Series 1 used three rounds of "original format".
• Series 2 used a round of "original format" and a round of "possible answers".
• Series 3 used a first round of either "original format" or "possible answers", and a second round of either "possible answers" or "clues and answers" ("possible answers" would not be played twice in the same show).
• Series 4 and Series 5 used a first round of either "original format" or "possible answers", and a second round of "clues and answers". As mentioned above, in series 5, the first round was occasionally replaced by the "linked categories" round.
• Series 6 saw the "possible answers" round scrapped. The two elimination rounds are "original format" and "clues and answers" in either order. As mentioned above, starting in series 7, the "original format" round would occasionally be replaced by the picture round.

Whatever the format, the two teams remaining from the elimination rounds go forward to the head-to-head round.

Head-to-head round

Series 1

The lowest scoring team overall is given a choice of two categories and picks one, they are allowed to confer. Each team takes it in turns to give as many correct answers as possible to the single question while still keeping their scores as low as possible. The round ends when one team goes above 100 points, after both teams have had the same number of turns. If both teams go above 100, then the team that is nearer to 100 goes through to the final.

Series 2–5

The format of the head-to-head changed from series 2 to a multi-question best-of-five (best-of-three from series 3).

The remaining two teams face off in a head-to-head battle. The team who acquired the fewest points in the first two rounds gets to go first. A question is asked which has a minimum of 4 answers, then the teams get to confer and give one answer in turn. The scores for both answers are then revealed and the team with the lower score get a point and the opportunity to answer first on the next question. The first team to get three points (2 points from series 3) wins the Head to Head and enters the final.

Series 6–present

The head-to-head format kept its previous format of a multi-question best-of-three, but each question is in a "clues and answers" format. There are three kinds of question in this round:

• A picture question, which up until series 10 was always the first question in this round, unless a picture question was used in either of previous rounds. (From series 10, it is sometimes played as the second question instead.) Five pictures on a common theme are shown, labelled A to E, and contestants must identify the subject of the picture (for example, if the theme is waterfalls, "A, Angel Falls" would be a possible way for a pair to answer);
• Facts about a subject. Five clues to these facts (essentially questions about the subject) are presented, and each pair must give an answer to one of them;
• Word puzzles. The answers are typically titles of works, quotations, or names of people, and the clue might be an anagram, an initialism, or all words except one of the quote or title. For example, if the theme is Shakespeare quotes, a typical clue might be "Fire burn and cauldron ____", to which the contestants must supply the missing word "bubble";

After both contestants have submitted an answer, the scores are revealed, and the lowest scoring pair wins the point, as per normal.

Final

The aim of the Final is to get one pointless answer to win the jackpot. For reaching the final the team receives a "coveted" (as Armstrong always describes it) Pointless trophy, regardless of what happens in the final. Any team that makes it through to the final cannot return for the next show, even if it is their first appearance. The trophy is made from a 120mm tall block of optical quality crystal, 3D laser-engraved with a stack of 100 Pointless discs and the Pointless logo. It is manufactured by Laser Crystal Ltd, based in Poole, Dorset.

The team is given a choice of five categories (three in Series 1–5, and in these series, the categories stayed either for 5 days or until they were picked. Since Series 6, unchosen categories return at irregular intervals and not in consecutive shows). After choosing one, they get the question, and have 60 seconds to give three answers for that category. If any individual response is a pointless answer, the team wins the jackpot and the jackpot is reset to £1,000 for the following game. If not, £1,000 is added to the jackpot. In celebrity episodes, if the celebrity duo do not win the jackpot, a consolation prize of £500 is given for their respective charities.

A record jackpot of £24,750 was won in the episode broadcast 8 March 2013. Beginning with broadcast episode 501, which aired 7 June 2013, a new format was introduced for the final jackpot. Contestants are given four categories to select from, and are given 60 seconds to find a pointless answer by picking three answers from any or all of three subcategories. Contestants are required to state which subcategory each answer belongs to, and it must be pointless within the nominated subcategory in order to win the jackpot.

Development

The show's format (originally to be called "Obviously") was conceived by Tom Blakeson, Simon Craig, David Flynn, Nick Mather, Richard Osman and Shaun Parry, producers at Endemol UK, in 2009. They envisaged it as a "reverse Family Fortunes....rewarding obscure knowledge, while allowing people to also give obvious answers....a quiz which could be sort of highbrow and populist simultaneously". Osman was not originally intended to be co-presenter, primarily fulfilling the role only as part of a demonstration laid on for the BBC. However the BBC executives asked him to continue when they commissioned the first series. Osman then approached comedian Alexander Armstrong, a peer of Osman's during their university days, to be the main presenter. Armstrong, who the previous year had been lined up to present Channel 4's Countdown only to back out for fear of being pigeon-holed as a presenter, agreed to present what was perceived as a lower-profile show, with the presence of Osman helping to convince him.

The first series aired on the BBC's second channel BBC Two between August and October 2009, with the corporation announcing on the day of the final episode's broadcast that they had commissioned a second series. The series' audience had peaked at 1.69 million viewers, 17.2% of audience share for the timeslot, while averaging around 1 million viewers per episode. The second series saw audiences grow modestly and the format was tweaked prior to the start of series three, reducing the number of rounds and giving more time for banter between the hosts which had previously been edited out. The change saw strong viewer growth with the show subsequently moved to the BBC's main channel BBC One in 2011. By 2013, the programme was averaging 3.6 million viewers daily, and starting to gain more viewers than ITV game show, The Chase, which also airs in roughly the same time slot.

Pointless Celebrities

Pointless Celebrities is a celebrity edition of Pointless. It airs on Saturday nights during prime time and usually features a theme regarding the celebrity contestants.

Transmissions

Regular series

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes	Notes
1	24 August 2009	6 October 2009	30	No episode on 31 August or 10 September 2009
2	8 March 2010	16 April 2010	30
3	30 August 2010	22 December 2010	50	Series 3 took breaks from 4–14 October and 22 November–21 December 2010. Episode 50 was a celebrity special
4	14 March 2011	26 August 2011	65	Series 4 took a break from 18 April–8 July 2011
5	29 August 2011	6 February 2012	60	Series 5 took a break from 17 October–30 December 2011
6	13 February 2012	24 August 2012	70	Series 6 took breaks on 23 March, from 2–27 April, on 3 May and from 4 June–10 August 2012
7	29 August 2012	5 December 2012	70	No episode on 16 November 2012
8	2 January 2013	2 April 2013	65
9	3 April 2013	25 September 2013	55	Series 9 took breaks from 29 April–24 May and 24 June–30 August 2013
10	26 September 2013	19 March 2014	70	Series 10 took breaks from 7 to 25 October, 2 December 2013 to 3 January 2014, and 3 to 21 February 2014
11	20 March 2014	29 September 2014	55	Series 11 took breaks from 21 April to 23 May, and 19 June to 5 September 2014
12	28 October 2014	25 February 2015	55	Series 12 took a break from 20 November 2014 to 2 January 2015
13	23 March 2015	28 July 2015	51	Series 13 took breaks from 13 April to 3 May, 25 May to 11 June, and 25 June to 10 July 2015
14	29 July 2015	29 February 2016	55	Series 14 took breaks from 3 August to 4 September, 30 September to 23 October, 17 November 2015 to 1 January 2016, and 27 January to 26 February 2016
15	1 March 2016	20 September 2016	55	Series 15 took breaks from 21 March to 19 April and 24 May to 26 August 2016
16	24 October 2016	15 March 2017	55	Series 16 took breaks from 21 November to 9 December, 15 to 28 December 2016 and 24 January to 23 February 2017.
17	19 April 2017	29 September 2017	55	Series 17 took a break from 7 June to 1 September 2017
18	2 October 2017	12 February 2018	55	Series 18 took a break from 6 November 2017 to 1 January 2018
19	2 April 2018	15 June 2018	55	Series 19 had no breaks.
20	19 June 2018	25 January 2019	55	Series 20 took breaks from 20 June to 31 August and 19 October to 27 December 2018. There was no episode on 1 January 2019.
21	28 January 2019	29 May 2019	55	Series 21 took a break from 13 February to 29 March 2019
22	2 September 2019	6 April 2020	55	Series 22 took breaks from 16 October 2019 to 1 January 2020 and from 27 January to 27 March 2020
23	7 April 2020	6 October 2020	55	Series 23 took breaks from 20 April 2020 to 25 June 2020 and from 30 July to 4 September 2020
24	7 October 2020	22 February 2021	55	Series 24 took breaks from 3 November to 1 January 2021
25	6 April 2021		55

Celebrity editions

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes	Notes
1	4 July 2011	8 July 2011	5	Daily at 5:15 pm
2	25 February 2012	16 June 2012	8	On selected dates across four months
3	20 October 2012	27 December 2012	9	Weekly on Saturday evenings at 5:40. Episode 9 was broadcast on a Thursday due to Christmas schedules
Daytime	10 December 2012	21 December 2012	10	Daily at 5:15 pm
4	16 February 2013	7 September 2013	6	On selected dates
5	14 September 2013	21 December 2013	12	On Saturdays at selected times
6	28 December 2013	3 January 2015	31	On Saturdays at selected times. The series took a break midway through.
7	11 April 2015	26 September 2015	7	On Saturdays at selected times
8	29 August 2015	30 January 2016	17	On Saturdays at selected times
9	9 January 2016	3 September 2016	8	On Saturdays at selected times
10	14 May 2016	31 March 2018	45	On Saturdays at selected times
11	23 December 2017	1 June 2019	39	On Saturdays at selected times
12	31 August 2019	14 March 2020	23	On Saturdays at selected times
13	25 April 2020	TBC	TBC	On Saturdays at selected times

Specials

Date	Entitle
16 November 2012	Children in Need Special
2 March 2013	Comic Relief Special
6 June 2013	500th Episode
16 January 2017	1,000th Episode
23 March 2019	The Good, the Bad and the Bloopers

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Result
2012	National Television Awards	Comedy Panel Show	Longlisted
	TV Choice Awards	Best Daytime Show	Nominated
2013	National Television Awards	Most Popular Daytime Programme	Longlisted
2014	National Television Awards	Most Popular Daytime Programme	Nominated
2015	The Television and Radio Industries Club Awards	Daytime Programme	Winner
2016	National Television Awards	Most Popular Daytime Programme	Nominated

Controversy

Following a celebrity news-themed edition of the show which aired in October 2014, several fans expressed annoyance at former The Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie's appearance as a guest. This was in reference to MacKenzie's infamous "The Truth" front page report concerning the 1989 Hillsborough disaster. Osman responded to this criticism with at least twenty comments on Twitter, stating that he did not know MacKenzie would appear until "about an hour before" recording and that he had "strongly argued against it".

International versions

Country	Title	Translation	Host(s)	Network	Premiere date
Czech Republic	Míň je víc!	Less is More!	Jan Smetana	ČT1	5 January 2015
Croatia	Tog se nitko nije sjetio	No one thought of that	Antonija Blaće Krešimir Sucevic-Mederal	RTL	29 April 2013 – 7 June 2013 (series 1)
France	Personne n'y avait pensé!	No one had thought of it!	Cyril Féraud	France 3	16 July 2011 – 31 December 2011 Summer 2015
Germany	Null gewinnt	Zero wins	Dieter Nuhr Ralph Caspers	Das Erste	Summer 2012
Macedonia	Без Поени!	Bez Poeni! No Points!	Snezana Velkov	Sitel	1 November 2014
Netherlands	Pointless		Lucille Werner Owen Schumacher	NPO 1	27 July 2015
Poland	Tylko Ty	Only you	Tomasz Kammel Radosław Kotarski	TVP2	27 February 2014
Serbia	Toga se niko nije setio	No one thought of that	Tamara Grujic Dragan Ilic	Prva	5 April 2014
Switzerland	Weniger ist mehr	Less is more	Patrick Hässig	SRF1	20 August 2012

Merchandise

On 26 February 2014, the Pointless Quiz app was released for iOS, with an iPad, Android and Amazon version released a few months later. The Pointless app features animated versions of Alexander Armstrong and Richard Osman and allows the player to tackle questions in a similar format to the TV show. Four books have been released of the show, The 100 Most Pointless Things in the World, The 100 Most Pointless Arguments in the World, The Very Pointless Quiz Book and The A-Z of Pointless: A brain-teasing bumper book of questions and trivia. All four were released by Coronet. In the books, Armstrong and Osman give their insight to pointless matters. Three editions of the official board game have also been released, plus two mini-sized versions, each of which contain updated questions.

In popular culture

Pointless appeared in the BBC sitcom Not Going Out (series 7, episode 5); Armstrong and Osman both played themselves.

External links

• Pointless at BBC Programmes
• Pointless at IMDb
• Pointless at TV.com
• Pointless at UKGameshows.com
• Pointless Celebrities at BBC Programmes
• Pointless Celebrities at IMDb
• BBC Press Release