It was devised by Fintan Coyle and Cathy Dunning and developed for television by the BBC Entertainment Department.

After two players are left, they play in a head-to-head penalty shootout format, with five questions asked to each contestant in turn, to determine the winner.

It ran in different variations, originally as a daytime series but also at primetime and with celebrity contestants playing for charity with a modified set and format.

[1] On 22 April 2011, Anne Robinson announced that she would end her role as the quiz show's presenter by the time her contract would expire as she had served longer than she had originally intended.

[2] In November 2017, The Weakest Link returned for a celebrity Children in Need edition, marking the 1,694th episode of the programme.

[10] The original format features nine contestants, who take turns answering general knowledge questions.

The objective of every round is to create a chain of nine correct answers in a row and earn an increasing amount of money within a time limit.

During the voting process, the narrator reveals to the viewers, though not the players, who the statistical strongest and weakest links were.

The first primetime version of the show was Weakest Link: Champions' League, which premiered a few months after the original daytime run on 31 October 2000 and ran on Tuesdays.

These episodes normally featured standard contestants with some celebrity editions and ran from January to March 2001 on Mondays, with the last of the series airing on a Thursday.

Shortly after, there were a few specials that aired between 2001 and 2002 that were similar to that of Champions' League featuring returning contestants, although once again these were just standard daytime episodes.

An April Fools' Day show that aired in 2003 featured Robinson being strangely and uncharacteristically nice to the contestants and abandoning her traditional black wardrobe in favour of a metallic pink overcoat.

Another variant of the daytime show was the 1,000th episode, which aired in December 2006, with the contestants featured being fan-favourites from previous editions (mostly from the prime-time series).

In the end, Miss Evans (who had previously appeared on the Strong Women special but had lost out to curate Emma Langley) defeated Basil Brush, winning £2,710, which she split with her co-finalist to give to charity.

A normal daytime edition of the show was made, with some of Robinson's favourite contestants from over the years taking part, and with no audience present during filming or changes to the money tree (see above).

The last UK winner was Archie Bland, the editor of The Independent newspaper's Saturday edition, who won £2,090.

She was already famous in the UK for her sarcasm while presenting Points of View and the consumer programme Watchdog, and Weakest Link saw her develop this further, particularly in her taunting of contestants.

Her sardonic summary to the team, usually berating them for their lack of intelligence for not achieving the target became a trademark of the show, and her call of "You are the weakest link—goodbye!"

[citation needed] In autumn 2001, for the first time, Weakest Link was placed directly head-to-head with Millionaire in the television schedules.

[17] The format has been licensed across the world, with many countries producing their own series of the programme and is the second most popular international franchise, behind only the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

[38] In a New Scientist blog article, Erica Klarreich argues that there are only two sensible strategies in Weakest Link (the American edition) when it comes to banking money.

has made several appearances in pop culture, including references in Family Guy, Scary Movie 2, How I Met Your Mother, The Garfield Show and The League of Gentlemen.

Two fictional television shows, Doctor Who and My Family, have depicted their own versions of Weakest Link in their episodes.

A later special edition of Weakest Link featured nine cast members of Doctor Who playing the game, and the show was introduced by the Anne Droid.

The real Anne walked on stage almost instantly as the droid began the show, unplugged it, and said, "I don't think so.

In the seventh series of the British television show My Family, broadcast in 2007, the main characters Ben, Susan, Janey, Michael, Abi, Roger, and Alfie, along with Susan's mother and her husband, went on the show for a special family edition, after Michael forged all of their signatures to get on it.