70s Sitcoms Trivia
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100 free 70s Sitcoms trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The 1970s were the decade the American sitcom grew up: Norman Lear's Bunkers, Jeffersons and Findlays argued about race and politics, M*A*S*H mixed surgery with slapstick, MTM built the workplace comedy, and Garry Marshall's Milwaukee gave the world Fonzie, Laverne, Shirley and a spaceman from Ork. This 70s sitcom trivia quiz covers all of them, plus Three's Company, Sanford and Son, Good Times, Taxi, WKRP, Barney Miller, The Bob Newhart Show, Welcome Back Kotter, Soap, Alice, The Odd Couple, The Partridge Family and The Brady Bunch: the settings, the catchphrases, the spin-offs, the British originals many were based on, the ratings and the Emmys. The 100 questions and answers range from easy ones for anyone who grew up with the reruns to hard ones about creators, casting near-misses and network decisions, so it works for a family game night, a retro pub quiz or a senior centre. Every answer has been checked against documented broadcast records rather than copied from another trivia list.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01All in the Family was based on which British sitcom?
Till Death Us Do Part
Till Death Us Do Part gave the BBC the bigoted Alf Garnett, the model for Archie Bunker; ABC rejected two pilots of the American remake before CBS aired it and saw it top the ratings for five straight years.
Q 02In which New York City borough do Archie and Edith Bunker live?
Queens
The Bunkers live at 704 Hauser Street in Queens; their neighbours the Jeffersons eventually 'move on up' from there to a high-rise on Manhattan's East Side.
Q 03What disparaging nickname does Archie Bunker use for his wife Edith?
Dingbat
Dingbat was Archie's word for Edith, whom he also told to 'stifle'; the show's creator modelled him on his own father, who called his son 'Meathead' and told his wife to stifle herself.
Q 04Which continuation series picked up where All in the Family left off in 1979?
Archie Bunker's Place
Archie Bunker's Place moved the story to Archie's bar and ran four seasons; when Jean Stapleton chose to leave, Edith was written out, dying of a stroke between the first and second.
Q 05M*A*S*H's 4077th is stationed near which South Korean town?
Uijeongbu
The 4077th MASH is set near Uijeongbu, north of Seoul; the show ran 11 seasons, 1972 to 1983, far longer than the three-year Korean War.
Q 06Which writer developed M*A*S*H for television from Robert Altman's 1970 film?
Larry Gelbart
Larry Gelbart wrote the pilot and ran the show with producer Gene Reynolds; the two wanted no laugh track, and CBS agreed only to drop it from the operating-room scenes.
Q 07Which actor joined M*A*S*H as Colonel Sherman Potter, the 4077th's new commander after Henry Blake?
Harry Morgan
Harry Morgan arrived as Colonel Potter after Henry Blake was written out, his plane shot down on the way home, an ending that brought the producers a flood of letters, many of them angry.
Q 08What is the title of the M*A*S*H theme, played without its lyrics on the television series?
Suicide Is Painless
Suicide Is Painless was written for the 1970 film: Johnny Mandel composed it and director Robert Altman handed the lyrics to his teenage son Mike. The series used only the tune.
Q 09Happy Days is set in which Midwestern city?
Milwaukee
Happy Days is set in 1950s Milwaukee, Wisconsin; after two modest seasons it was retooled as a broader comedy and climbed to the top of the ratings.
Q 10Happy Days began as an unsold pilot shown as a segment of which ABC anthology series?
Love, American Style
The pilot aired in 1972 as a segment of Love, American Style; George Lucas saw it and cast Ron Howard in American Graffiti, which revived ABC's interest.
Q 11What business does Richie Cunningham's father Howard own on Happy Days?
A hardware store
A hardware store is Howard Cunningham's business; Richie's older brother Chuck simply vanished from the show after season two.
Q 12Which phrase comes from a Fonzie stunt in a 1977 Happy Days episode?
Jumping the shark
Jumping the shark, now said of a show past its peak, recalls the episode in which Fonzie, still in his leather jacket, water-skis over a shark; far from finished, Happy Days ran on until 1984.
Q 13Laverne and Shirley work as bottle-cappers at which brewery?
Shotz
Laverne and Shirley cap bottles at Shotz Brewery until 1980, when the show packed them and their friends off to Burbank, California.
Q 21How did Sherman Hemsley say he learned The Jeffersons had been cancelled in 1985?
By reading it in the newspaper
By reading it in the newspaper, Hemsley said; CBS ended the show abruptly in 1985 after 11 seasons and the cast never got a proper finale.
Q 22Which sitcom followed Florida Evans, once Maude's housekeeper, and her family in a public housing project?
Good Times
Good Times spun Florida out of Maude, but stars John Amos and Esther Rolle both departed after clashing with producers over the clowning of son J.J., whose catchphrase was 'Dy-no-mite!'
Q 23Taxi's cabbies work the night shift at which fictional New York garage?
Q 14Michael McKean and David Lander played which duo of Laverne & Shirley's oddball neighbours?
Lenny and Squiggy
Lenny and Squiggy, played by McKean and Lander, lived upstairs and had one unfailing gag: whenever the girls mentioned something revolting, the door flew open and Squiggy brayed 'Hello!'
Q 15Three's Company was adapted from which British sitcom?
Man About the House
Man About the House, ITV's 1973-76 flat-share comedy, took ABC three pilots to remake: the women's roles were recast along the way, and only the third version sold.
Q 16Why does Stanley Roper let Jack Tripper move in with Janet and Chrissy?
He is told the new tenant is gay
He is told the new tenant is gay, a fib that Jack then has to keep up, camping it up whenever the suspicious Mr Roper comes to the door.
Q 17In which California city is the Three's Company apartment building?
Santa Monica
Santa Monica is where Janet and Chrissy find Jack asleep in their bathtub the morning after a party; on learning that he can cook, they offer him the spare room.
Q 18Redd Foxx's junkyard sitcom was adapted from which British series about rag-and-bone men?
Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son, the BBC's comedy about a father-and-son junk business in London, was licensed for America, where the feuding pair became Black junk dealers in Watts, Los Angeles.
Q 19What is the first name of Fred Sanford's long-suffering son?
Lamont
Lamont, played by Demond Wilson, is the target of Fred's favourite trick: clutching his chest in a fake heart attack and calling to his late wife, 'I'm coming to join you, Elizabeth!'
Q 20George Jefferson made his money with a chain of what?
Dry cleaners
Dry cleaners made George's fortune: his chain of seven stores paid for the 'deluxe apartment in the sky' on Manhattan's East Side.
Sunshine Cab Company
Sunshine Cab Company grew out of a New York magazine article about night-shift drivers at a real New York cab garage; the show's creators bought the rights to it.
Q 24Who played the burnt-out hippie 'Reverend' Jim Ignatowski on Taxi?
Christopher Lloyd
Christopher Lloyd first played Reverend Jim as a one-off, marrying Latka to a stranger in season one, and was brought back as a regular for season two.
Q 25What job did Andy Kaufman's Latka Gravas hold on Taxi?
Mechanic
Mechanic Latka was written in after the producers saw Andy Kaufman's stand-up act, built around a character called Foreign Man, and wanted that character in their garage.
Q 26On WKRP in Cincinnati, which birds does the station drop from a helicopter?
Turkeys
Turkeys plummet onto a shopping centre in the Thanksgiving promotion as the station's newsman reports in horror, and the boss insists, 'As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.'
Q 27Which WKRP in Cincinnati character was played by Howard Hesseman?
Dr. Johnny Fever
Dr. Johnny Fever, Howard Hesseman's burnt-out DJ, had been sacked by a Los Angeles station for saying 'booger' on air, and he marks WKRP's switch to rock by saying it again.
Q 28Barney Miller's 12th Precinct squad room is in which Manhattan neighbourhood?
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village is home to the show's 12th Precinct, whose shabby squad room was almost its only set; Abe Vigoda's weary Detective Fish left it in 1977 for a spin-off of his own.
Q 29Mary Richards works at which Minneapolis TV station?
WJM
WJM is the lowest-rated station in town; Mary applies there to be a secretary and is instead made associate producer of the six o'clock news.
Q 30Which Mary Tyler Moore Show character got a spin-off drama?
Lou Grant
Lou Grant, Mary's gruff boss, moved from the Minneapolis newsroom to the city desk of a Los Angeles daily in 1977; Ed Asner won Emmys for the same character first in a sitcom and then in a drama.