Last year, comedians were saying the same thing about format shows: they’re sustainable. New guests, same rules, endless content. The success of India’s Got Latent only accelerated the trend, triggering a wave of game and panel shows.
Most of those shows found their audience by putting funny people in a room and letting chemistry do the heavy lifting. The Nation Wants To Guess, which recently wrapped up its 13-episode first season, has taken a different approach. While the format bears some resemblance to Britain’s QI—absurd questions, arbitrary scoring and comedians attempting to arrive at answers through increasingly ridiculous logic—it has been reworked for Indian sensibilities. The questions aren’t just funny. They’re rooted in Indian politics, popular culture and the strange contradictions of living in this country.
What truly distinguishes the show is how comfortably it mines Indian public life for comedy. Politics, bureaucracy, media narratives and internet discourse regularly find their way into the questions, though rarely as direct commentary. Instead, they’re disguised as clues, category titles and misdirects. The result is a quiz show that doubles as a running catalogue of modern Indian absurdities—one where the joke often begins before the contestants have even heard the question.
That distinction matters because The Nation Wants To Guess isn’t really testing knowledge. If anything, it actively discourages it.
Many of the questions are so obscure, bizarre or rooted in some hyper-specific corner of Indian culture that the panel has little realistic chance of arriving at the correct answer immediately. Which means the comedians do what comedians are supposed to do: chase the laugh. Thanks to the scoring system, that’s often the smartest strategy anyway. An applause break is usually worth more than the correct answer. Give three comics an absurd premise and permission to prioritise punchlines over facts, and the result is usually good old-fashioned chaos.
The writing team of Gursimran Khamba, Rohan Desai and Aman Jotwani clearly understand this. Their questions don’t simply seek answers; they generate comedic possibilities.
The best example is the second round, Pick Me Behaviour. Structured like a Jeopardy! board, contestants pick categories that almost always contain a hidden misdirect. Star of David turns out to be about Govinda. AIB is a question about Afghanistan International Bank. Large Language Model leads not to artificial intelligence but Shashi Tharoor.
The category itself is often the first joke.
Then come the flourishes. Pakistan is described as India’s “crazy ex”. Antilla is dubbed a “huge middle finger to Mumbaikars”. None of these embellishments are necessary for the format to function. The question would work perfectly well without them. But they reveal a writers’ room that refuses to settle for the first funny version of an idea.
Across the season it is immediately obvious that every category and segment has been carefully worked on. Every clue on the last game Who Am I?, has been sharpened. Every misdirect has been carefully engineered. The writing never calls attention to itself, but plays a huge role in elevating the entire experience.
That attention to detail extends beyond the game itself. Almost every episode opens with a sketch about the team’s ongoing struggle to secure sponsorships, a running gag that evolves across the season. And when sponsors do eventually arrive, the integration rarely plays out as a straightforward brand plug. Like the questions, it’s usually built around a misdirect, a punchline or some unexpected turn. When Shreya Priyam Roy picked the “furniture” category, they somehow went from tables to comfor-table to the title sponsor of the show DaMENSCH, a men’s wear brand. It’s a small touch, but one that reinforces what makes the show stand out: every part of the episode feels considered, right down to the bits most viewers would normally skip past.
And that’s where The Nation Wants To Guess distinguishes itself from many of its contemporaries.
The Nation Wants To Guess achieves something harder: you come for the panel, but stay for the questions, and every episode feels capable of surprising you.
Most format shows eventually become personality-driven. Audiences return for the performers more than the game itself. That’s not necessarily a criticism. Some of the world’s most successful panel shows function exactly this way. But The Nation Wants To Guess achieves something harder: you come for the panel, but stay for the questions, and every episode feels capable of surprising you.
That feels significant at a moment when Indian comedy is still figuring out what format shows can become. In Britain, panel shows didn’t simply create content; they shaped comedy culture itself. They rewarded improvisation, encouraged collaboration and created audiences who enjoyed comedians outside the confines of stand-up specials. Indian comedy appears to be heading in a similar direction. But if that future is going to be interesting, it cannot be built on repeatability alone.
The best format shows aren’t funny because of the rules. They’re funny because somebody cared enough to make the material exceptional. After one season, The Nation Wants To Guess feels like one of the clearest examples of how to adapt a global format without merely copying it. It takes the structure, filters it through Indian politics, culture and absurdity, and produces something that feels distinctly its own. In a landscape increasingly optimised for volume, it’s a welcome reminder that craft still matters.
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