Friday, September 10, 2010

Quiz Shows from Across the Pond #1

The first in an occasional series on British game shows from a North American perspective.

Subject: Pointless
Summary: Two-person teams attempt to find the most obscure answers to trivia questions.

Gameplay: Pointless is a trivia game which places a premium on obscure or esoteric knowledge. The game is run on a survey system, something like a reverse Family Feud. A 100 people are asked a question that has multiple answers (such as: Name as many countries with a Mediterranean coastline in 100 seconds). The job of the contestants is to find the correct answer selected by the fewest number of those surveyed. Teams score one point for each person in the survey group who gave the selected answer (So if 65 people answered the above question with Spain, then teams giving that answer would score 65). Incorrect answers (one team answered Mykenos, which is not a country) score 100 points. If a team comes up with a correct answer that no one in the survey group put forward, they score zero points, and money is added to the jackpot (in the game this is called a 'pointless answer'). At the end of each round, the team with the highest score is eliminated. In the final round, a team must find at least one pointless answer in order to win whatever money is in the jackpot. If they fail, they win nothing, and the jackpot rolls over to the next show.

Strategy: In principle, the game should be an interesting test of balancing risk and reward. Because obscure answers will score lower than more obvious ones, players face must choose between going for a known, but high-scoring response, and going for a half-remembered, and potentially incorrect one. The strategic implications of this setup, however, are seldom exploited by the players (see below).

The Game in Practice: The dynamic between safe, but high-scoring, and risky, but low-scoring answers is undercut somewhat. The players cast on the show are not particularly adept quiz show contestants (as one might find, say, on Mastermind or Jeopardy!), so they often struggle to even find an obvious correct answer to a given question (for example, one unfortunate contestent answered 'The Dominican Republic' to the aforementioned question about countries with a Mediterranean Coastline). It might be interesting to see a more 'serious' version of the game played (perhaps for a larger prize payout), but I think there is a deeper structural issue at play. The problem, I think, lies in the method used to determine the relative obscurity of the answers. The survey method means that the baseline is being set by a class of people not unlike the contestants- that is to say people who are struggling to come up with any correct answer. As such, even very obvious answers don't end up scoring very much-- meaning that winning margins in the game often are a matter of chance.

Presentation: The show is hosted by Alexander Armstrong, a sketch-show veteran with an aristocratic air and plenty of presenting experience (he's one of the more frequent guest hosts of Have I Got News For You). As Pointless airs on weekday afternoons, the tone is light (moreWheel of Fortune than Weakest Link) and Armstrong (who can be quite ribald on his sketch show) is in full Pat Sajak mode. Richard Osman (apparently a writer and production executive for a number of UK panel shows) acts as the on camera judge, who explains the questions and, at the end of the round, provides the best and worst possible answers. Armstrong and Osman have a pretty good rapport, but occasionally their jokes seem to fall flat with the studio audience.

The North American Perspective: Though not quite as Brit-centric as some shows (Only Connect, for example), North American viewers will probably want to watch the show with a wikipedia search page open nearby as there are a lot of questions about football, cricket, rugby, British celebrities, and cultural phenomena such as Eurovision, which will certainly not be familiar to most people on this side of the pond. I suspect that (if it hasn't been already), the show may be ripe for a North American remake, whenever the next quiz show boom finds its way to these shores.