68 Fun Facts About 2023 TV

Which character ends up as CEO of Waystar RoyCo when Succession's series finale airs in May 2023?

Tom Wambsgans becomes CEO after Shiv votes against her brother Kendall in the final board vote, handing the job to her estranged husband. Matthew Macfadyen won Emmys for the role.

In which season 4 episode of Succession does Logan Roy die?

"Connor's Wedding" keeps Logan's death off-screen aboard his jet while his children listen in by phone; to protect the twist, Brian Cox was later filmed in dummy scenes that were never meant to air.

Which mutated fungus turns people into infected in HBO's The Last of Us, which premiered in January 2023?

Cordyceps is the mutated fungus. The real fungus infects ants and hijacks their behaviour, which the show's 1968 talk-show cold open uses to make the outbreak feel plausible.

Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett play survivalists Bill and Frank in which episode of The Last of Us?

"Long, Long Time" takes its title from the 1970 Linda Ronstadt ballad that Bill and Frank bond over; Spotify streams of the song jumped 4,900% in the hour after the episode aired.

Who plays Joel and Ellie in HBO's adaptation of The Last of Us?

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey had both been in Game of Thrones, as Oberyn Martell and Lyanna Mormont, but in different seasons, and they had never met before filming began.

Which comedy stars Jeremy Allen White as Carmy Berzatto and won Outstanding Comedy Series at the 75th Emmys?

The Bear took ten Emmys across the main and Creative Arts ceremonies for its first season, and its second season had already arrived on FX on Hulu in June 2023.

Steven Yeun and Ali Wong play strangers whose road-rage run-in spirals out of control in which 2023 Netflix series?

Beef premiered in April 2023 and won Emmys for both its leads; creator Lee Sung Jin based the story on a road-rage encounter of his own.

Ronald Gladden was the only one not acting during a fake trial staged for which Amazon Freevee series?

Jury Duty surrounded Gladden with actors, including James Marsden playing a version of himself; when the hoax was revealed in the finale, he was handed $100,000.

Jason Sudeikis first played Ted Lasso in 2013 promos for which US network's Premier League coverage?

NBC Sports ran the Ted Lasso promos in 2013 and 2014 to launch its Premier League coverage, before the character was expanded into the Apple TV+ series that debuted in 2020.

Which musician completed an EGOT at the 75th Emmys with a farewell concert special from Dodger Stadium?

Elton John became the 19th EGOT winner without being in the room: he was recovering from a knee operation, so producer Ben Winston collected the Emmy for him.

Which Black-ish star hosted the strike-delayed 75th Emmys when the ceremony finally aired in January 2024?

Anthony Anderson brought his mother Doris along as the night's "play-off mama": in place of the usual music, it was her job to tell winners when their speeches had run long.

Lars Mikkelsen played which villain in live action for the first time in Ahsoka (2023)?

Grand Admiral Thrawn was already Mikkelsen's part: he had voiced the character in the animated Star Wars Rebels before Ahsoka let him play the role in person.

Ahsoka's first episode was dedicated to which actor, who played Baylan Skoll and died in May 2023?

Ray Stevenson, known for Rome and the Thor films, died on 21 May 2023. Rory McCann, Game of Thrones' Hound, was later cast to take over Baylan Skoll for season two.

Netflix's live-action One Piece, released in August 2023, was filmed mainly in which city?

Cape Town, South Africa hosted the shoot at Cape Town Film Studios; Netflix had promised creator Eiichiro Oda the series would not be released until he was satisfied with it.

How much was the single cash prize in Netflix's 2023 reality show Squid Game: The Challenge?

The $4.56 million prize echoes the 456 players who entered, and Netflix billed it as the largest single cash prize in reality TV history. Player 287, Mai Whelan, won it.

Kelsey Grammer's 2023 Frasier revival moved the character to which city?

Frasier returns to Boston, becoming a lecturer at Harvard, back in the city where Cheers introduced him. David Hyde Pierce declined to return as Niles.

Which Oscar winner joined Loki's second season in 2023 as Ouroboros, the TVA repairs technician O.B.?

Ke Huy Quan signed on in 2022, months before Everything Everywhere All at Once won him his Oscar, so Marvel's new repair man was an Academy Award winner by the time the season aired.

In which Rian Johnson mystery series does Natasha Lyonne play drifter Charlie Cale, solving a new murder each episode?

Poker Face gives Charlie an uncanny knack for telling when anyone is lying; Rian Johnson built it as a Columbo-style "howcatchem" that shows each killing before she turns up.

Which veteran film star plays therapist Paul Rhoades in Apple TV+'s Shrinking?

Harrison Ford said he took the part of Paul Rhoades, a senior therapist living with Parkinson's, because he wanted to try new things after working less than he liked during the pandemic.

In which 2023 Apple TV+ drama, based on Hugh Howey's Wool, does Rebecca Ferguson play engineer Juliette Nichols?

Silo is a 144-level bunker whose ten thousand residents don't know why they live there; Hugh Howey first self-published Wool as a short e-book before it grew into a trilogy.

In Netflix's The Diplomat, Keri Russell's Kate Wyler is the new US ambassador to which country?

United Kingdom is a posting Kate never wanted: she was preparing for Kabul when the president sent her to London instead, with her husband Hal, a career diplomat himself, in tow.

Gabriel Basso mans an emergency phone in the White House basement in which 2023 Netflix thriller?

The Night Agent, adapted from Matthew Quirk's novel, drew so many viewers in its first days that Netflix ordered a second season within a week of its release.

What is the title of the fictional band's album in Daisy Jones & the Six?

Aurora became a real record: Atlantic released the album in the week the show premiered in March 2023, with Riley Keough and Sam Claflin singing the lead vocals themselves.

Which 2023 Prime Video spin-off of The Boys is set at Godolkin University?

Gen V premiered in September 2023 with Jaz Sinclair as Marie Moreau, whose power is manipulating her own blood. After Chance Perdomo died in 2024 his role was written out rather than recast.

Which Star Wars actor plays ruthless family fixer Arthur Pym in Netflix's The Fall of the House of Usher?

Mark Hamill's lawyer is nicknamed the Pym Reaper, and he has nerve to match: when the shape-shifting Verna offers him immunity for his crimes, he turns her down.

Who plays corrupt North Dakota sheriff Roy Tillman in Fargo's fifth season?

Jon Hamm plays Tillman, a constitutionalist sheriff hunting Juno Temple's Dot. Sam Spruell's hired killer Ole Munch is revealed to be a 500-year-old Welsh sin-eater, one of the season's stranger swings.

Lance Reddick played which Greek god in Disney+'s Percy Jackson and the Olympians?

Reddick played Zeus; he died in March 2023, before the series premiered that December. Courtney B. Vance took over the part for the second season.

Bill Hader plays a hitman who stumbles into an acting class in which HBO comedy that ended in May 2023?

Barry's final season jumped eight years ahead, and its last episode went out on HBO on the same night as Succession's finale.

The Crown's sixth and final season, released in two parts in late 2023, ends with which royal wedding?

Charles and Camilla's 2005 wedding closes a finale in which the Queen weighs abdicating; Claire Foy and Olivia Colman return as her younger selves to argue it out with Imelda Staunton.

Which series was 2023's most-streamed show on Nielsen's chart, with 57.7 billion minutes?

Suits had ended in 2019, yet its arrival on Netflix in 2023 made it the year's most-streamed show, breaking a record The Office had held since 2020.

After Pat Sajak announced in June 2023 that he would retire from Wheel of Fortune, who was named his successor as host?

Ryan Seacrest took over the wheel in 2024, but Sajak did not leave entirely: he agreed to stay on as a consultant and came back to host Celebrity Wheel of Fortune.

Which sitcom star, who died in October 2023, had published a bestselling memoir about addiction a year earlier?

Matthew Perry's Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing laid bare decades of addiction; he said he wanted to be remembered for helping fellow addicts ahead of his acting.

Which TV producer behind All in the Family died in December 2023 aged 101?

Norman Lear was honoured the night after his death when all five US broadcast networks aired the same in-memoriam card at once, at the start of prime time.

Bob Barker spent decades ending episodes of The Price Is Right with a reminder to do what?

Have your pets spayed or neutered was Bob Barker's sign-off until he retired in 2007; he also paid for an anti-whaling ship for Sea Shepherd, which named the vessel the Bob Barker.

Andre Braugher, who died in December 2023, spent eight seasons as deadpan boss Raymond Holt on which sitcom?

Brooklyn Nine-Nine cast Braugher against type: his two Emmys had come for dramas, the first as fiery detective Frank Pembleton on Homicide: Life on the Street.

The 2023 strike podcast Strike Force Five featured five hosts from which corner of TV?

Late-night talk shows were taken off the air by the writers' strike, so Colbert, Fallon, Kimmel, Meyers and Oliver made the podcast and gave its proceeds to their out-of-work staff.

Who led the Screen Actors Guild in 1960, when actors and writers last struck together before 2023?

Ronald Reagan was in his second spell as guild president when actors joined the striking writers in a fight over payment for films sold to television, 20 years before he won the White House.

Quinta Brunson's mockumentary Abbott Elementary is set in a public school in which city?

Brunson grew up in Philadelphia and named the school after her own sixth-grade teacher there. At the delayed 75th Emmys she became the first Black woman to win lead actress in a comedy since 1981.

Fox News paid $787.5 million in April 2023 to settle a defamation suit by which ballot-machine maker?

Dominion Voting Systems had sued for $1.6 billion over false claims about the 2020 election; the deal was announced just as opening statements were about to begin.

Which prime-time host's exit did Fox News announce on April 24, 2023, days after settling a major defamation suit?

Tucker Carlson was dropped on the same day CNN fired Don Lemon; six weeks later he relaunched his show on Twitter, now X.

Who headlined the halftime show of Super Bowl LVII in February 2023?

Rihanna's set was her first live performance in more than five years, and she used it to reveal her second pregnancy. Fox's telecast averaged 115.1m viewers as the Chiefs beat the Eagles 38-35.

Which series, joined by Elijah Wood in 2023, follows a girls' soccer team stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash?

Yellowjackets' creators were spurred on by online comments insisting teenage girls could never descend into Lord of the Flies savagery, a claim they found deeply wrong.

Reservation Dogs, which ended in September 2023, follows four Indigenous teenagers in which state?

Oklahoma is home for the four friends, who open the series by stealing a delivery truck to help pay for their dream of escaping to California.

Which That '70s Show couple are the parents of Leia, the lead of That '90s Show?

Eric and Donna's daughter Leia visits her grandparents Red and Kitty for the summer of 1995 and falls in with a new generation of Point Place kids.

Who plays Bo-Katan Kryze, the Mandalorian leader central to season 3 of The Mandalorian in spring 2023?

Katee Sackhoff had voiced Bo-Katan in The Clone Wars and Rebels from 2012 before playing her in the flesh from season 2. Season 3 centres on retaking the Mandalorians' home planet.

In Lessons in Chemistry, what is the TV cooking show Elizabeth Zott ends up hosting called?

Supper at Six is Zott's answer to being fired from her lab: she turns a 1950s cooking show into chemistry lessons for housewives, with her dog Six-Thirty voiced by B. J. Novak.

Which rock star co-wrote and sings the theme for Gary Oldman's spy series Slow Horses?

Mick Jagger co-wrote and sang Strange Game after composer Daniel Pemberton, whom he didn't know, emailed him out of the blue to ask.

In which era of Japanese history is Netflix's 2023 animated series Blue Eye Samurai set?

It is set in the Edo period, when Japan's closed borders make Mizu's mixed parentage a mark of shame. Maya Erskine voices Mizu and Kenneth Branagh voices the villain Abijah Fowler.

In Star Trek: Picard's 2023 final season, Jack is revealed as Picard's son with which character?

Jack Crusher is Picard's son with Beverly Crusher, who raised him without telling Picard. Amanda Plummer played the villain Vadic in the ten-episode season, which ran on Paramount+ from February to April 2023.

Who won the first Masters tournament of Jeopardy!, aired on ABC in May 2023 with Ken Jennings hosting?

James Holzhauer took the $500,000 prize under the eye of host Ken Jennings, the rival who had beaten him to the title in 2020's Greatest of All Time tournament.

Which two film stars joined Only Murders in the Building for season three in 2023?

Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep: Rudd's Ben Glenroy drops dead on opening night of Oliver's play Death Rattle, and Streep's Loretta Durkin becomes Oliver's love interest.

In which state do Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder film their HGTV-style show in The Curse?

The town is Española, New Mexico, where the couple shoot their eco-home show Fliplanthropy. The finale sends Fielder's Asher floating up into the sky after gravity reverses for him alone.

Michael Cera and the cast of a 2010 Edgar Wright film returned as voices for which 2023 Netflix anime?

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off looks like a remake until the first episode ends: Scott loses his very first fight and is seemingly killed, leaving Ramona to work out what really happened.

Marvel's Secret Invasion (2023) drew backlash over its opening titles because they were made using what?

Generative artificial intelligence made the titles just as AI was a flashpoint in the writers' strike; Method Studios replied that the tools had cost no artists their jobs.

In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, what is the name of Midge's manager, played by Alex Borstein?

Susie Myerson won Alex Borstein two Emmys, and the final season's flash-forwards end with Susie and Midge in old age, a continent apart, watching Jeopardy! together by phone.

Dominique Fishback plays Dre, murderously obsessed with pop star Ni'Jah, in which 2023 series?

Swarm is the name of Ni'Jah's fanbase, a nod to Beyoncé's devoted following; Dre's victims are people who dared to insult the star online.

Which cartoon overtook Cocomelon in 2023 as the most-streamed children's show in the US?

Bluey's creator Joe Brumm built the Blue Heeler family's games on what he saw raising his own two daughters; dad Bandit is an archaeologist and mum Chilli works in airport security.

Melissa Rauch leads the 2023 revival of which 1984-92 sitcom?

Night Court returned in January 2023 with Rauch as Abby Stone, daughter of Harry Anderson's Judge Harry Stone. John Larroquette came back as Dan Fielding, now a public defender rather than a prosecutor.

Who hosted the 80th Golden Globes in January 2023, the ceremony's return to TV after a year off air?

Jerrod Carmichael fronted a comeback: the 2022 ceremony had gone untelevised after a boycott over the organisers' finances and the lack of diversity among their voters.

Which actor plays business negotiator Sam Nelson aboard a hijacked Dubai-London flight in Apple TV+'s 2023 thriller Hijack?

Idris Elba's Sam Nelson is no hostage expert but a corporate deal-maker, and the story unfolds in real time: seven episodes for a seven-hour flight.

Which two actors play memory-wiped spies Mason Kane and Nadia Sinh in Citadel?

Richard Madden and Priyanka Chopra Jonas lead a series whose cost reportedly climbed to $300 million after a creative overhaul forced extensive reshoots.

In Prime Video's 2023 Dead Ringers, Rachel Weisz plays twin doctors of what speciality?

The Mantle twins are gynecologists, gender-flipped versions of the characters Jeremy Irons played in David Cronenberg's 1988 film, running a Manhattan birthing practice.

FUBAR (2023) gave which film star his first leading role in a scripted live-action TV series?

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Luke Brunner, a CIA operative who discovers his daughter Emma is also secretly a CIA agent; Netflix released the series in May 2023.

In Black Mirror's 'Joan Is Awful', which film star does Annie Murphy's Joan watch playing her on Streamberry?

Salma Hayek plays a version of herself who learns she has licensed her likeness to Streamberry for anything at all, so she joins Joan in a raid to destroy its quantum computer.

Elizabeth Olsen plays acquitted Texas axe killer Candy Montgomery in which 2023 miniseries?

Love & Death retells the 1980 killing of Betty Gore in Wylie: Montgomery struck her 41 times, yet walked free after pleading that Gore confronted her over an affair with Gore's husband and came at her first.

Which Sex and the City star made a one-scene cameo by phone in And Just Like That's 2023 season finale?

Kim Cattrall filmed Samantha's phone call with Carrie in a single day, without seeing or speaking to any of the show's stars, amid her long-running feud with Sarah Jessica Parker.

Who plays Purdue Pharma's Richard Sackler in Netflix's 2023 opioid drama Painkiller?

Matthew Broderick is the second Richard Sackler in two years: Michael Stuhlbarg played the Purdue boss in Hulu's Dopesick, and here Clark Gregg appears too, as his uncle Arthur.

Which Alicia Keys song, reworked for Queen Charlotte, earned an MTV VMA nomination?

If I Ain't Got You was re-recorded by Keys with Queen Charlotte's Global Orchestra, an ensemble made up of women of colour, and its video earned a Video for Good nomination.