here is an amazing moment in ITV’s springtime 2020 drama Quiz when the producers of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? are in an office, discussing the possibility of contestant Major Charles Ingram having cheated on the show. It is all very earnest until someone knocks on the door and suggests they turn the television on. It’s 11 September 2001, and a larger narrative is about to overwhelm their reality and render their concerns somewhat trivial. This depiction of the jarring intrusion of momentous real-world events into an essentially frivolous scenario felt particularly poignant in March 2020. The Covid-19 pandemic was rapidly rearranging our lives – and every night, life gatecrashed art as Quiz was followed by ITV News at Ten, a realm in which horror and disorientation seemed to know no limits. For the previous hour, Quiz had felt like a safe space; a refuge in the past and in a set of strictly defined parameters that we could understand. In some ways, 2020 was the year of the quiz. There was the Zoom quiz, of course: a staple of the first lockdown during which many of us combined video-conferencing technology and general knowledge in order to stay both vaguely sane and in touch with our friends. But also, TV quizshows seem to have colonised greater chunks of the schedules. On Mondays in the run-up to Christmas, for example, the BBC saw to it that most of the early evening could be spent watching quizzes: Pointless was followed by Richard Osman’s House of Games, then Only Connect, then University Challenge. The Chase has continued to do the business for ITV, even finding a place at the heart of its Christmas Day offering. Meanwhile, The Wall (a glossy game of chance and skill featuring Danny Dyer at his blustering best) and The Wheel (Michael McIntyre puts experts on the spot as they help contestants win cash prizes) jostle for position on Saturday evenings. There is an obvious practical element to this: the quizshow is filmed in a controlled and contained environment and was therefore, from a logistical point of view, easier to bring back under pandemic conditions than drama. But there is something else at play, too, connected to both the tone and the content of these shows. The quiz is the oldest TV format of them all; the earliest TV shows were quizzes adapted from radio. And it looks set to live for ever. But why do they work? And why, particularly, do they work now? James Fox is a man who should have a handle on these questions. He’s the executive producer of both Pointless and Richard Osman’s House of Games and also worked on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?. “There are probably four rules to a good quizshow,” he reckons. “Obviously the game’s got to work; there’s got to be something intrinsic about it that sustains itself, day in, day out. It has to have an element of proper jeopardy: lots of the best ones hinge round a single decision – to play on or not, to take the money or not take the money? The hosts are key: whether they’re Danny Dyer or Alexander Armstrong, they need to establish an atmosphere. And there’s got to be something familiar yet slightly different – whether it’s thinking of the answer no one else can think of on Pointless or beating the best quiz minds in the business on The Chase.” The Chase is an interesting phenomenon, given that it started as a marginal, late-night concern, and is now routinely Britain’s most popular daytime programme, regularly breaking its own viewing records. Format, personnel and atmosphere dovetail to perfection – and arguably with even more intensity on its new spin-off Beat the Chasers. Host Bradley Walsh is an earthy counterpoint to the amusingly nicknamed array of quiz demons (The Dark Destroyer! The Vixen! The Sinnerman!) whose job it is to wreck contestants’ dreams by knowing lots of stuff. The gameplay produces moments of genuine, watch-through-the-fingers tension; in early January, a contestant on Beat the Chasers agonisingly missed four chances in an excruciating 15-second period to win £100,000. If The Chase fits Fox’s formula perfectly, that’s partly because of its sheer, melodramatic theatre. But the formula is adaptable and The Chase is not necessarily typical of the modern quizshow’s appeal. A good quizshow’s qualities can be less tangible. At the other end of the spectrum, there is something wonderfully gentle, even pure, about Pointless, effortlessly relaxing into its good-natured banter, dangling the carrot of a life-enhancing rather than life-changing sum of money. There’s the natural chemistry between Armstrong and Osman; their expertise at establishing tone and putting contestants at ease makes it intensely relaxing viewing. There’s a reminder of friendship; of the kind of valuable camaraderie we have recently been denied. Or there is Richard Osman’s House of Games, which Fox correctly describes as “just this lovely half hour of fun and silliness”. The tone is subtly different – the presence of celebrities means a touch more minor teasing is in order – and the self-aware bathos of the prizes (a Richard Osman fondue set, anyone?) feel like a nicely judged parody of shiny-floor hysteria. But still, Osman’s ability to create an atmosphere in which participants and viewers alike can decompress is striking. During an era of increased home-working, many of us have come to measure our days in quizshows: instead of the commute, the end of a working day might now be marked by the hour and a quarter of quizzes that begins with Pointless at 5.15pm on BBC One. As one structure of routines disintegrates, another solidifies. But this is an era of intense anxiety, too. One of 2020’s oddest components was its combination of predictable, reassuring domesticity and deep, existential worry about where the unfolding situation might be leading. At a time when many of us have learned to doubt anything claiming to represent objective fact, could quizshows be a rock to cling to? The media academic Tina Dixon thinks so. “There is something about a quiz that is solid in the sense that you’re either right or wrong,” she says. “There is a truth.” Nowadays, anyone who owns a smartphone essentially walks around with Wikipedia in their pocket. Quizshows are a reminder of something we are in danger of losing. “Anyone can look up an answer on their phone,” says Dixon. “But having the knowledge of something is affirmation. In terms of this particular year, that affirmation is probably more necessary than ever because everything has been so uncertain. The certainty of knowledge is a comfort in itself; you could even say it was an affirmation of humanity in relation to technology. There’s comfort in knowing that you’re not totally reliant on it.” There is a wider, more obviously political component, too. Since 2016, we’ve lived in a world of endless gaslighting; of bad faith; of so-called alternative facts. During the EU referendum campaign, Michael Gove suggested that people “have had enough of experts”. For a while, it seemed he might be right. But for all of its misery, 2020 was arguably the year expertise flexed its muscles and restated its fundamental value. Populist politicians the world over did their best to wish the pandemic out of existence. But after this magical thinking failed, a chink of light was provided by scientists. There is reassurance to be found in objective truth, and virtue in knowledge and expertise. Dixon points to the modesty of many current quizshows in comparison with the feverish hype machines of old. “We don’t tend to psych people up with money any more,” she says. “There’s more emphasis on achievement. I’ve noticed it on both Pointless and Only Connect. There’s a real joy for the contestants in simply knowing that they’ve won.” Nostalgia was important to 2020. Whether we were looking back at the certainty of knowledge, or formative cultural experiences, or simply the company of family and friends, it was hard to escape. It helps to explain the appeal of Quiz and it helps to explain the appeal of quizshows, too. Pre-internet, there was a premium on knowing things – and recent experiences suggest that perhaps there still is. But there was also the reborn sense of television as a collective event; something people did together. Isolation has led to viewers grasping on to any form of connection with others, either virtually or within a domestic unit. Quizshows – the original interactive TV – feed into this perfectly. After all, who can resist the surge of petty pride at shouting out a correct answer while watching University Challenge? They make most sense in a communal context – and for people trying to fill an unusual amount of family time, that’s valuable. James Fox recalls talking to a fellow parent at his daughter’s school who claimed not to watch television. “Then he asked me what programmes I’d made,” recalls Fox. “And when I told him, he said: ‘Oh yeah, we love Pointless! And I really like that other one with Richard Osman, too!’” Almost without us fully realising it, quizshows become part of our ambient environment and anchor us. Richard Osman’s House of Games, like Pointless, Only Connect and many others before it, shows no sign of slowing down. When times are serious, sometimes trivia is the best escape of all.