It’s mid-October again and that means the most amazing British television quiz show QI is going to return this Friday, October 21 at 22:00 UK time on BBC2 with the episodes of series N recorded earlier this summer. The 45-minute XL versions will apparently air on Sundays now, with the first one slate for October 23 at 22:35 BST. This year it’s going to be somewhat different with Sandy Toksvig taking over the Quizmaster’s role from Stephen Fry, who left after thirteen years and 180 episodes in 2015. There is already a very promising – and surprising! – preliminary episode list with all the guests on Wikipedia.

I expect that the new QI will be a lot like the old QI, because Sandi Toksvig has been a guest on the show so often that she practically belongs to the team. She will be awesome as the new, but still familiar presenter and the fact that there have been no major changes behind the scenes is a good indicator that QI will continue to be the quite interesting quiz panel that it has always been. Sidekick Alan Davies reportedly almost quit together with Stephen Fry, but along with producers Pierce Fletcher and John Lloyd he’s still a part of the series. The QI Elves, are also busy researching in the background and have not only had their own podcast No Such Thing As A Fish for a while, but also recently branched out into their own tv series No Such Thing As The News!

Update 22.10.: The first episode aired last night and, as expected, it was amazing. I’m not going to write a full review because I fully agree with this Telegraph article that says everything I would have written. Sandi Toksvig has hit her stride immediately and the show was everything you’d expect it to be. This way only the 30-minute version, the XL 45-minute edition airs on Sunday and it’s probably going to be even better.