Countdown review: Anne Robinson is about as warm as Maleficent in her quiz show comeback

The one-time Queen of Mean is a surprisingly progressive presence on the show, finally breaking up its queasy gender dynamic

Anne Robinson on the famous ‘Countdown’ set (Channel 4)

It’s a wonder it took so long to get Anne Robinson back on television. A veteran broadcaster who has always spoken in 2021 newspaper headlines, even back at the turn of the century, she is a walking soundbite. Young people, political correctness, feminism, plastic surgery – put an interviewer’s dictaphone in front of her and she’ll go to town on all of them. The strange thing is, though, that Robinson’s comeback – nine years after her majestically cruel quiz show The Weakest Link drew to a close – is taking place on the nicest show on television: Channel 4’s Countdown.

Countdown is the TV equivalent of those wordsearch magazines you see on sale at the airport. You don’t know who they’re for, no one actually admits to being a fan, and you’ll be hard pressed to ever experience someone actually enjoying them. Yet they’re always there, day in and day out, and will probably still be there once humanity is nuked into oblivion has wiped itself out. The show, now in its 38th year, is almost unbearably cosy, too, with stakes so low they’re practically buried beneath the floorboards. Having the one-time Queen of Mean fronting it, then, is the most revolutionary departure in its history.

Based on her first episode as presenter, Robinson can’t help but exude a feeling of menace whether she likes it or not. She seems to speak through gritted teeth, while empathy is not her strong suit. A contestant making a mistake? “Oh, dear,” Robinson says, with all the warmth of Maleficent.

She’s also still trapped by her past. When a contestant named Shelley mentions that she’s from Newcastle, you half expect Robinson to announce that she can’t bear Geordies and wishes them all dead – she is, after all, the same woman who caused a scandal in the halcyon days of 2001 by declaring the Welsh “irritating and annoying”. But, here and now, she… loves Newcastle? “So beautiful in the countryside up there!” she insists, everyone’s sarcasm detectors coming up empty.

Apart from a Weakest Link nod via Robinson signing off her first episode with a wink, this is very much the same Countdown as always. There is, though, something undeniably progressive about Robinson’s presence here. As “dictionary corner” guest Rory Bremner remarks, there have been more men named Des that have presented Countdown – two – than there have been women: zero. Robinson’s hiring finally abandons the somewhat queasy gender dynamic that the show has always perpetuated – the quick-witted, older gentleman host sat behind the desk, and the attractive young woman doing the maths and reaching for the letters.

But advancement like that has long been Robinson’s modus operandi. Yes, she’ll complain about “wokeness” and what she apparently can and can’t say anymore, exhausting everyone listening in the process, but she’ll also break glass ceilings while she does it. It’s never perfect, but it’s something.