| company = talkbackThames
Quite Interesting Limited
| network = BBC Four
(initial screening)BBC Two
(repeated a week later)
| on_demand = BBC iPlayer
| first_aired = 11 September 2003
| last_aired = present
| num_episodes = 62 + 1 unbroadcast pilot
| list_episodes = List of QI episodes
| num_seasons = 5
| producer = John Lloyd
| related = ''The Museum Of Curiosity''
| imdb_id = 0380136
| website=http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/qi/
| production_website=http://www.qi.com/
}}
QI, standing for
Quite Interesting, is a comedy panel game television quiz show created and produced by John Lloyd, hosted by Stephen Fry, and featuring permanent panellist Alan Davies. New episodes are broadcast initially on BBC Four on Friday evenings at 22:30 and repeated on BBC Two the following Friday at 22:00. Syndicated episodes of previous series are shown on Dave.
QI has the highest viewing figures for any show on BBC Four and Dave.
[ QI.com Audience figures. Accessed 21 June, 2007.]It is distinguished by the awarding of points not necessarily for
correct answers, but rather, for (quite)
interesting ones. Many of the questions are extremely obscure, making it unlikely that the correct answer will be given. Points are deducted from a panellist who gives an
obvious but wrong answer, typically one that is generally accepted as true but is, in fact, false. Davies is usually in last place in the show as he consistently gives answers like these.
Format and conception
The panel consists of four panellists: three rotating and one regular, Alan Davies, who has the seat to Stephen Fry's right. Davies has appeared in every episode, except in one episode themed on "Divination". He appeared at the beginning, but "teleported" away during the buzzer demonstration. He was at a football match instead but was still able to play as communicated "from beyond."
He has only won six times: since he generally offers up most of the "obvious but wrong" answers, he usually finishes last. The show's other panellists mainly come from a stand-up comedy background, although there have also been guests from other fields, including Richard E. Grant, Jeremy Clarkson and Roger McGough.
Questions are sometimes misleading or very difficult. Providing an "obvious but wrong" answer results in a sequence of humiliating klaxons. In the first and second series, Fry produced the answer on a card to show the panellists, while it also flashed on the large screens behind them (except in the pilot episode and the first show of the first series, when only the cards were used).
In the third series and onward, Fry's answer cards were dispensed with altogether, leaving only the screens as proof that the answers given had been predicted.
Because of the show's expectation that hardly anyone would be able to give a correct answer without significant prompting, it instead encourages sheer interestingness, which is how points are mainly scored.
[QI Series 1 DVD Factoids] As such, tangential discussions are encouraged, for panellists are apt to branch off into frivolous conversations, give voice to train of thought, and share humorous anecdotes from their own lives.
The number of points given and taken away are normally decided by Fry or beforehand by the researchers, especially if the points given or taken are very large. For example, one episode asked, "What is the main ingredient of air?" If someone answered, "Carbon dioxide" then 3,000 points would have been deducted, but no-one gave this answer. However, Davies was deducted 10 points for saying, "Oxygen".
Fry once said:
"Now, the rules are simple. Scoring is my business. Points are given and points are taken away. They are taken away for answers which are both obvious and wrong, and they're given not so much for being correct, as for being interesting. Their level of interestingness is impartially determined by a demographically selected customer-service focus consultancy, broken down by age and sex - i.e. me. Because there is no-one more broken down by age and sex."
John Lloyd,
QI's creator, has admitted that not even he has any idea on how the scoring system works, but there is someone who is paid to check on the scores. Guests are allowed the right of appeal if they believe their score is wrong, but no-one has done this so far.
Buzzers
Each of the panel has a buzzer, the sounds of all four often being based along some sort of theme. The sounds are demonstrated at the beginning of the programme, but are sometimes changed in some way for repeated use. Davies's buzzer usually contradicts the others' in some amusing way, and has been the last to be demonstrated in every episode except for the unbroadcast pilot, in which he went first and Eddie Izzard, with a sillier buzzer, went last.
In one instance in Series A, rather than a comical buzzer, Alan set off the forfeit alarm, meaning he started the show on -10 points before a question was asked.
General Ignorance
In a parody of ubiquitous general knowledge quizzes, the final round is off-topic and called "General Ignorance", focusing upon seemingly easy questions which have
obvious but wrong answers. Whereas in the main rounds of the show, the panellists' use of buzzers is not usually enforced, the "General Ignorance" questions are introduced by Fry's reminder to keep "fingers on buzzers".
Due to the large number of "obvious but wrong" answers, panellists usually incur the greatest point losses in this round. In the second series' Christmas episode, Davies stated his refusal to participate in General Ignorance, saying that he "will not
be humiliated at Christmas". In response, Fry offered to switch places with him, to the delight of the audience. Despite the seeming spontaneity of the swap, it was undoubtedly planned (at least on the part of Davies and the producers), as evidenced by the fact that Davies, in turn, produced his own set of questions on loose-leaf paper (most of which he directed at Fry), and also by the photographs and obvious-answer graphics which accompanied Davies's questions. At the end of the show, Fry announced that the game's loser was, in fact, Fry himself, as a result of his falling into many of Davies's traps.
Extra tasks
In some episodes, panellists are given an extra task to complete during the course of the game. Those who do the best are often awarded extra points. Past tasks have included drawing contests (in which John Sessions has shown a particular talent);
or looking for a specific hidden thing over the course of the show, such as a squirrel or a cuttlefish.
Panellists were also once given a card covered with magnetic letters with which to create words over the course of one show. Jimmy Carr successfully used all of his letters to create, "Put Smarties tubes on cats legs, make them walk like a robot."
In the fifth series, all the episodes have the same extra task - "The Elephant in the Room". In each episode, at least one of the answers is related to elephants, the panellists being required to wave an elephant on a stick when they believe it is the appropriate moment.
Production
Writer and former BBC producer John Lloyd devised the format of the show, and it is produced by Quite Interesting Ltd, an organisation set up by Lloyd.
QI was originally seen as being an "Annotated Encyclopędia Britannica? the world's first non-boring encyclopędia."
As a panel game, it was conceived as a radio show, with Lloyd as chairman. When it was decided that the show would air on television, Michael Palin was offered the job of chairman with Fry and Davies as captains of "clever" and "stupid" teams respectively. However, when Palin decided not to take the job, Fry stepped in, making Davies the only regular panellist, thus changing the entire format of the show.
[ Chortle.co.uk "Last among eQIals" Written 21 December, 2006. Accessed 21 June, 2007.]The research for the show is mostly carried out by seven people called the
QI Elves, a team which currently includes Justin Pollard and Vitali Vitaliev.
[ www.qi.com The QI Elves, accessed 24 September 2007] The "elves" devise the questions, and are able to contact Stephen during the show to provide and correct information.
[ QI.com The QI Elves, accessed 17 January 2007] Other people involved in researching questions and compiling the scripts are John Mitchinson and Piers Fletcher, known (along with Justin Pollard) as the
Question Wranglers,
whose research includes both Encyclopędia Britannica and Wikipedia.
The
QI website also has a large forum that currently has over 3,000 members.
[ QI.com, Talk forum Accessed 15 June, 2007.] The forum contains several sections including the "Quite Interestrings", for general topics, the "Series Talk" section which are dedicated to different series, indicated by a letter of the alphabet, and "The Forum of General Ignorance", dedicated to things that are often misunderstood by most people. Some of the material written in the forums is used in the TV series.
The theme tune was composed by Howard Goodall, who has twice appeared as a panellist on the show. The theme music was originally going to be the song Wonderful World, sung by Herman's Hermits, which was used in the unbroadcast pilot. However, they were forbidden the use of the song, and the DVD recording of the pilot now uses the theme music composed by Goodall.
The makers of the show insist that the questions are not given to the panellists beforehand so that they can rehearse them.
[ QI.com QI: The BBC Television Series. Accessed 27 July, 2007.] The panel are given a list of questions set to be asked just about an hour before the show, and before recording starts, they run through a series of "warm up" questions; this is the only assistance the panellists receive. They are forbidden to ask for preparatory materials or other help.
It is known that Davies never does any preparation at all.
The show uses a warm-up comedian before recording begins, credited as the
Audience Wrangler. In the forthcoming series, Stephen Grant provided the warm-up for ten of the twelve episodes, and Gordon Southern did so for the other two.
[ Stephen Grant.com, Warm Up Accessed 23 June, 2007.]The headquarters of
QI is the
QI club, in 16 Turl Street, Oxford, on the corner of Turl Street and Ship Street. It is a four-storey Georgian building, erected in 1785 by Mr. Priddy to provide accommodation for the scholars of Exeter College.
[ QI.com, "History of the QI Building" Accessed 15 June 2007.] In 1820, it became a coffee house, and between 1945-1998 was the popular Taj Mahal Indian Restaurant (with several other businesses running on different floors, together with 'Staircase 15' of Exeter). When
QI took over, they bought the entire building, uniting all floors and restoring its Georgian appearance. The building itself consists of a bookshop, a café-bar and a vodka bar, as well as a number of rooms devoted to use by the private members club. The bookshop arranges the books in whimsical, loosely-defined categories that mingle fiction and non-fiction, thus meaning people come across books at random, making it more interesting.
Episodes
In
QI, every series is themed around a different letter of the alphabet, starting with the letter "A". Series are therefore referred to by letter rather than number. The first series started on 11 September, 2003, and consisted of topics beginning with A, including a round on people called "Alan".
The second series consisted of topics beginning with "B", except in two episodes, one about "Music" and one about "Colour" (both of which can be considered "Blues" episodes).
Series D differed from the previous three as all episodes focused upon a single "D" topic. Series E also deals with single topics. A video podcast was also planned, but this was instead turned into a set of "Quickies" featured on the BBC homepage for
QI, although are still referred to as "vodcasts" by the panellists introducing them.
Two episodes have the distinction of being won by the audience - Death, a special Halloween episode in the D series and England in series 5.
Corrections and mistakes
Although most of the facts presented on the show are correct, some facts have been disputed or corrected in a following series. For example, in Series A, the show claimed that the longest animal in the world was the lion's mane jellyfish,
but this was later corrected in Series C, saying that the longest animal in the world is the bootlace worm.
Members of the public and members of the
QI website contact the show to correct information. In one case, a letter was read out when one episode in Series B claimed that language spoken by children's TV characters Bill and Ben was called, "Flobbadob" and was named after the sound made by creator Hilda Brabban's younger brothers having flatulent moments while in the bath.
However, in Series D, Fry read out a letter written by Silas Hawkins, the son of Peter Hawkins, who provided the original voices of the characters. The letter read:
"The fart-in-the-bath story was trotted out last year in an episode of Stephen Fry's otherwise admirable quiz show QI. It (the story) first appeared some twenty years ago in a newspaper article, to which my father immediately wrote a rebuttal. It was obviously ferreted out by some BBC researcher for QI. It may be quite interesting, but in this case, it simply isn't true."
Fry then apologised and corrected the fact, saying, "Their language is called 'Oddle poddle'. 'Flobbadob' means 'Flowerpot' in Oddle poddle. I cannot believe I just said that", at which point he started laughing in disbelief.
At the end of the third series, Dara Ó Briain was deducted points for having stated, in the series before, that the triple point of water is zero degrees Celsius, an answer which earned him 2 points at the time.
Viewers however, wrote in to say that the triple point of water is in fact
0.01 degrees, and so the 2 points awarded Dara in the previous series were revoked and he received a further deduction of 10 points for saying a now
obvious answer. Dara humorously retorted with, "How many people sat at home watching that and said, 'It's just a comedy show, but I'm not letting that fecker get away with that!?'"
Culture
QI has stated it follows its own philosophy, which is that everything in the world, even that which appears to be most boring, is quite interesting if looked at in the right way. The website states that:
"We live, they say, in The Information Age, yet almost none of the information we think we possess is true. Eskimos do not rub noses. The rickshaw was invented by an American. Joan of Arc was not French. Lenin was not Russian. The world is not solid, it is made of empty space and energy, and neither haggis, whisky, porridge, clan tartans nor kilts are Scottish. So we stand, silent, on a peak in Darien: a vast, rolling, teeming, untrodden territory before us. QI country. Whatever is interesting we are interested in. Whatever is not interesting, we are even more interested in. Everything is interesting if looked at in the right way. At one extreme, QI is serious, intensely scientific, deeply mystical; at the other it is hilarious, silly and frothy enough to please the most indolent couch-potato."[ QI.com, Philosophy. Accessed 15 June 2007.]
Reception
QI has received positive reception by viewers. It is the most popular programme of any kind on BBC Four,
[ QI.com Audience figures. Accessed 15 June 2007.] and one of its books,
The Book of General Ignorance, reached Number 1 on amazon.co.uk's best-seller list.
QI has been generally supported by nearly all critics. Peter Chapman said, "When the schedules seem so dumbed-down, it's a delight to encounter the brainy and articulate Stephen Fry. He excels in this format, being both scathing and generous."
Another critic, Laura Barton said, "
QI and its canny coupling of Stephen Fry and Alan Davies, which manages to condense tweedy goodness, cockney charm, pub trivia and class war into one half-hour."
An American critic, Liesl Schillinger described
QI as, "
Jeopardy with Stephen Colbert as host, with Steve Martin and Ellen DeGeneres as guests, working off a game board loaded with unanswerable questions."
Critics have questioned the way the show is edited. One critic said, "At one point in tonight's show, Fry (normally urbanity itself) yells an obscenity at Rich Hall, the result of, I guess, a long interchange between the two but, as most of it appears to have been cut out, the outburst comes out of the blue, making Fry look as if he's flipped his lid."
Awards
In 2006, Fry won the Rose d'Or for "Best Game Show Host".
[ talkbackThames, "Three Rose D'or wins for talkbackThames Written 1 May, 2006. Accessed 25 July, 2007.] The British Sitcom Guide gave
QI the Best Comedy Quiz Show of 2006 and Best Panel Show of 2007.
[ British Sictom Guide Awards 2006. Accessed 5 July, 2007.] has been nominated for four BAFTAs. Fry has been nominated for "Best Entertainment Performance" three times, in 2004, 2005 and 2007.
[ List of 2007 BAFTA Winners and Nominess Written 21 May, 2007. Accessed 25 July, 2007.] John Lloyd and
QI's director Ian Lorimer were nominated for the Lew Grade Award in 2005.
In 2007,
The Book of General Ignorance was nominated by the British Book Awards in the TV and Film Book of the Year Category.
[ Channel 4 - The 2007 Winners. Accessed 5 July, 2007.]
Media releases
QI has released DVDs and books, most notably
The Book of General Ignorance It was published on 5 October 2006 in hardback by Faber and Faber, written by John Lloyd and
QI's head of research, John Mitchinson, with a foreword by Stephen Fry and "Four words by Alan Davies" - "Will this do, Stephen?". It contains a list of 200 popular misconceptions, most of which have appeared in the "General Ignorance" round of
QI. On 8 December 2006, the book reached the top of amazon.co.uk's best-seller list. The book was published in America (with a different cover) on 7 August 2007.
A second book,
The Book of Animal Ignorance was released on 4 October 2007. An annual was published on 1 November 2007.
[ QI Talk Blog - QI Book Releases For 2007. Created 19 April 2007. Accessed 15 June 2007.]Three DVDs have also been published by
QI. The DVD of the first series was released after an internet petition signed by 1,821 people persuaded the BBC to release it.
On 14 November 2005 an interactive
QI DVD game, called
QI: A Quite Interesting Game, was released by Warner Home Video. A second game DVD, QI Strictly Come Duncing was released in UK on 26th November 2007.
[ QI Talk Blog - The second interactive QI DVD Created 10 May, 2007. Accessed 15 June, 2007.] The BBC's DVD division, 2 entertain released the first TV series on DVD on 6 November 2006. The DVD also contains the pilot, which has never been broadcast, and features to date the only appearances of Eddie Izzard and Kit Hesketh-Harvey as panellists. The DVD of series B has been announced and will be released on 17 March 2008.
[ QI Talk Blog - QI Series B on DVD Created 4 July, 2007. Accessed 4 July, 2007.]A
QI feature has appeared in
BBC MindGames magazine from its fifth issue and is based on facts and questions in the sphere of General Ignorance. From 10 February 2007 a weekly QI column began in
The Telegraph with 52 columns planned.
QI has an internet show called
QI News, a parody news show which broadcasts "News" items about things which are "quite interesting".
QI News stars Glenn Wrage and Katherine Jakeways as the newsreaders, Bob Squire and Sophie Langton.
QI also has a website, and a column in
The Daily Telegraph.
References
External links
BBC television programmes Panel games2000s British television series2003 television series debutsTelevision programs that use Wikipedia
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