After being ill and restricted to bed for a week or so I discovered the delights of daytime TV. Failing having a few hundred grand to spend on a house in Spain or an attic full of antiques to flog at auction, however, there is little on before 6pm to interest me! Of course there's always the quiz shows, isn't there? I used to love quiz shows but even the ones which used to be so good, Who Wants To be a Millionaire etc have become boring.

Quiz shows have needed a few new ideas for a while. When a new one crops up, especially shown during the day, I generally expect a poor quality show with a weak format. So with some reluctance I switched on to watch Pointless, on my mum's recommendation. I was pleasantly surprised.

Pointless is presented by Alexander Armstrong and most recent series of Pointless has just finished but was shown on BBC1 weekdays at around Pimm's, sorry, 4 O'clock. Hopefully the BBC will do another series as it is a great new format for a quiz show, simple yet effective. Of course they may just repeat the previous series a few hundred times instead.

The best way I can describe Pointless is like a backwards Family Fortunes. The Pointless team have asked a panel of 100 people various questions and instead of the contestants guessing the most popular answers, they must guess the answers no one thought of, but of course must be correct. For example if the question was 'Beatles Songs' the contestants would try and think of the most obscure ones they could, with the goal of having the lowest number of people saying that answer, and ultimately getting a 'Pointless' answer, which of course is an answer no one else has thought of. Of course these answers have to be right and an incorrect answer, or indeed no answer at all would automatically get you 100 points.

The rest of the format is pretty standard, the contestants work in pairs and a number of them begin and are whittled down over the rounds until there's one team standing for the final round, the team with the lowest score, who play to win the dosh.

The prize money is relatively tame compared to a lot of game and quiz shows nowadays, a few thousand, however this rolls over if no ones wins it, so it could potentially get quite exciting. The jackpot also goes up by £250 every time someone guesses a 'Pointless' answer. The final round doesn't differ that much from the previous ones. The contestants must choose a category from three, and are then given their question. The must think of three answers to that question and if one is 'Pointless' they win the money.

It is a simple concept but strangely compelling. Alexander Armstrong is a great host and his side kick, Richard Osman who puts us out of our misery after each question and tells us what the lowest scoring and indeed 'Pointless' answers there were and, the ones to avoid, the highest scoring answers.

I think the great thing about this show is no one can be 'good at it'. For example, I was well away on the topic 'Johnny Depp Films' but given 'People who have married into the Royal Family' I could only name the most popular. For that reason I think it's a great show. It's got that element that makes you try like mad to rack your brains for a great answer and then shout it at the TV when you've come up with one.

I'm not sure I could watch it every day for the 30 or so episodes that have been shown, even the best ideas get boring after a while. Providing the BBC don't milk it too much, and just give us a series from time to time, I reckon it's a show to look forward to. Quizztastic!!