The unspectacular joy of quiz shows

Quiz shows on TV – the kind you can join in with at home by shouting the answer at the screen, rather than panel games or tests of skill – seem to be surging with renewed popularity. At its peak last year, Pointless drew in over 7 million viewers, while The Chase averages 3 million viewers an episode and as recently as last week 3.8 million people tuned in to watch The Weakest Link.

Although they’ve been an embedded fixture of television since its inception, quizzes with at least a component of general knowledge involved are taking up more and more of the schedules. A time-travelling viewer from the 70s and 80s would be surprised to discover that pre-watershed comedy or serious discussion programmes had all but vanished in the 2020s, but quiz shows – light and ephemeral – have remained intact. 

Revivals of old quiz brands are now heading our way, with Freddie Flintoff helming darts contest Bullseye and Holly Willoughby fronting You Bet! This is on top of the staples – The Chase, Pointless, The Weakest Link – that have sat squarely in the daytime schedule for years.

Why do quizzes remain so popular, when so many other TV formats that we thought would endure forever have curled up and died? I think it’s because it’s really incredibly hard to tamper with their basics.