Tonight’s ‘of interest’ is the 2,000th episode of Pointless (7:30pm, BBC1) and if you’re pondering yes 16 years feels like a long time to reach that figure for a daily show with weekend celebrity specials (although it took eight years to hit 1,000 episodes so actually it tracks), but it was apparently recorded over two years ago (as indeed first run episodes on Saturdays recently have been).
We remember the heady excitement of the first time getting to be in the Pointless 100 and hopefully helping people to win on questions on rugby league and opera, two things I know next to nothing about. We also remember how much fun going to see the show being filmed was – they’re all audienceless since COVID which is a pity. We also remember when it used to kerbstomp The Chase in the ratings, when everyone would playalong on Twitter, but whilst it’s has been in decline for a number of years it’s still doing well enough that “what do we replace it with?” is a problem without a good answer. We’ve enjoyed watching it go around the world but apparently be so British it’s succeeded pretty much nowhere else (although surely France must be due another go). One of its hosts left and it’s been fine.
It was, I think, the first show to eke out new episodes by frequently repeating old ones in between in a way that was quite clever but quite annoying and now that’s a feature of lots of daily quizzes (well, The Chase and Tipping Point). It was the first show to not just call its celebrity episodes Celebrity Pointless (the joke is, right,) and play with the form and now everybody does it, but everyone just ends up calling it Celebrity Tipping Point anyway.
Congrats Pointless!