Game Show Review: Pointless (UK)

Can you name a film that Robert Redford has acted in or directed? Sure, most people probably can. But can you name one that nobody else has even heard of? That's the name of the game in Pointless. 100 people are given 100 seconds to name as many as they can, and then those results are put to the test by 4 teams of 2 contestants. The less people that can name a film means less points the team earns, and the team with the most points loses. If you score no points at all (In other words, none of the 100 surveyed people said your answer), you also add money to the bonus jackpot, which is played for at the end of the show.

Clearly, this is not an easy feat to do.

Pointless's rounds are sometimes different. In some cases, teams may need to associate two things together (e.g. Given a capital city, name the country it's located in), or they may need to unscramble answers. Teams always play twice, unless they make it to the final jackpot round. In this round, the last team is given a list of four categories, and within each category, there is a list of three questions that they can answer from, and they can give a total of 3 answers from any or all of the categories. If even one answer is Pointless, they take home the entire jackpot (Sorry, there's no bonus for multiple Pointless answers). If none are Pointless, the jackpot rolls over onto the next show.

Wait, HOW many people said North Pole?

Overall, I find Pointless to be a fun and highly engaging show (except when the questions are about non-American sports or about UK-specific things, but then again, this show IS based in the U.K.). It certainly makes you think, and like Family Feud here in the U.S., it's fun to see contestants get wrong answers once in a while (or, in the case of the video above, how high or low some of the obvious ones get). However, I don't like that they introduce rule changes seemingly in the middle of the running season (the most recent occurance being the final round, which just changed about 3 months ago, in the middle of their 9th season). Pointless is definitely worth 45 minutes of my time every weekday (Oh, did I mention there's no commercials, since this airs on BBC?) 4/5.