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50 free Barney Miller trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Barney Miller ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982 and almost never left the squad room of Greenwich Village's fictional 12th Precinct. This quiz covers the whole run: Captain Miller and his detectives, the pilot that aired under a different title, the theme's famous bass line, the Fish spin-off, the episodes that broke the one-set rule, the awards, and the real police officers who still call it the most realistic cop show ever made. Easy questions ask which network aired it, who played Barney and what Yemana was famous for making badly. Harder ones get into Abe Vigoda's audition, Jack Soo's final episodes, Barbara Barrie's disappearing wife, the aborted Wojo spin-off, and why the show stopped taping in front of a live audience. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the series, its spin-off and its cast, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which network did Barney Miller air for its entire run?
ABC
It ran on ABC from January 1975 to May 1982, and the network was reluctant to let it go when its creator decided to end it.
Q 02Barney Miller's detectives worked out of which fictional NYPD precinct?
The 12th
The station house was placed on East 6th Street, and the squad room set barely changed in eight seasons.
Q 03Which actor played Captain Barney Miller?
Hal Linden
He was a Tony-winning Broadway musical star before the role, and later said leaving Broadway for the show was his most irrational act and one of his best decisions.
Q 04Which Manhattan neighborhood was home to Barney's station house?
Greenwich Village
The station was placed on East 6th Street, in what the article calls Greenwich Village in Lower Manhattan.
Q 05Which sad-faced detective was famous on the show for his hemorrhoids and his ever-phoning wife Bernice?
Fish
The actor got the part after showing up to the audition exhausted from a five-mile jog and being told he looked like he had hemorrhoids.
Q 06Which member of the squad was known for making terrible coffee?
Nick Yemana
Yemana's other hobbies were horse racing and Japanese cooking, and he made only token efforts at the precinct's paperwork.
Q 07What was the title of Detective Ron Harris's successful squad-based novel?
Blood on the Badge
Harris moonlighted as a writer of fiction, and his pursuit of the money the book brought in ate up many of his working hours.
Q 08Which detective replaced Fish on the squad after he retired?
Arthur Dietrich
Dietrich was the squad's walking encyclopedia, trained in both medicine and law, and away from work he played the clarinet badly.
Q 09Which future Firefly actor played the impeccably dressed Detective Ron Harris?
Ron Glass
Glass later played Shepherd Book on Firefly and Serenity, and voiced Randy Carmichael on Rugrats.
Q 10Officer Carl Levitt's running gag was that he never stopped reminding Barney he was available for what?
Detective work
Levitt delivered the daily mail, and his persistence eventually earned him part-time work with the detectives.
Q 11How tall was Ron Carey, the actor who played the perpetually overlooked Officer Levitt?
5 feet 4 inches
Every one of the show's stars stood six feet or taller, which is why Levitt seemed permanently dwarfed in the squad room.
Q 12Before he became Officer Levitt, Ron Carey first appeared on the show as a criminal with what nickname?
The Mole
He played Angelo Molinari, aka The Mole, in season 2 before joining the recurring cast for the final six seasons.
Q 13Which unsold pilot, aired in 1974 on the ABC anthology Just for Laughs, launched the series?
The Life and Times of Captain Barney Miller
Q 21Which future star of Alice played Detective Janice Wentworth, Wojo's love interest, in the early seasons?
Linda Lavin
Lavin left when her CBS pilot Alice sold, and Wentworth was glimpsed again only in a flashback in the series finale.
Q 22Which cast member had played Salvatore Tessio in The Godfather three years before joining the squad?
Abe Vigoda
Vigoda won the Godfather part at an open call for actors without agents, and the producers knew him from it when he auditioned for Fish.
Q 23Which magazine mistakenly described the actor who played Fish as dead in 1982?
People
He responded by posing in Variety sitting up in a coffin holding the erroneous issue, and actually lived until 2016.
Only the actors playing Barney and Fish carried over from that pilot; Abby Dalton played Barney's wife before Barbara Barrie took the role.
Q 14Which producer of That Girl co-created Barney Miller with Theodore J. Flicker?
Danny Arnold
Arnold's obsessive rewriting became legendary, and he eventually won a $50 million settlement over the show's profits.
Q 15The show's theme opens with a distinctive line on which instrument?
Electric bass
Studio musician Chuck Berghofer improvised the line after being asked to start it out with the bass because the hero was a New York cop.
Q 16How many episodes of Barney Miller did director Noam Pitlik helm?
102
Pitlik, a former character actor, directed the majority of the show's 170 episodes.
Q 17In the 1977 spin-off Fish, Fish and Bernice became foster parents to how many children?
Five
The kids were known as PINS, Persons in Need of Supervision, and a future Diff'rent Strokes star was among them.
Q 18Which future Diff'rent Strokes star played one of Fish's foster kids in the spin-off?
Todd Bridges
Bridges had also appeared as a different character during Barney Miller's first season, and he later blamed the star's salary demands for the show's cancellation.
Q 19Which actress played Bernice Fish, the wife who was almost always heard on the phone rather than seen?
Florence Stanley
Stanley later voiced Wilhelmina Packard in Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire and appeared in My Two Dads.
Q 20Which Barney Miller regular made a wordless, uncredited cameo in an episode of Fish?
Hal Linden
Steve Landesberg's Dietrich made a proper crossover appearance in episode 8; the captain himself turned up briefly and silently in episode 10.
Q 24On which sitcom did Gregory Sierra play Puerto Rican neighbor Julio Fuentes before becoming Detective Chano Amengual?
Sanford and Son
Sierra spent two seasons on Barney Miller and later played Lieutenant Lou Rodriguez in the first four episodes of Miami Vice.
Q 25Jack Soo, who played Yemana, was born under what name?
Goro Suzuki
He was born on a ship crossing the Pacific and adopted the name Soo to sidestep anti-Japanese prejudice while working nightclubs after the war.
Q 26During World War II, Jack Soo was interned at which relocation center?
Topaz
Fellow internees remembered him as a camp favorite who sang at dances and events; he later broke through in Broadway's Flower Drum Song.
Q 27How did the cast pay tribute to Jack Soo at the end of the fifth-season retrospective episode?
They raised their coffee cups
The cast appeared as themselves on the squad room set to share stories about Soo, who had died of cancer in January 1979.
Q 28Which pilot for a second spin-off, starring Max Gail, aired as a one-hour episode in January 1979?
Wojo's Girl
Wojo's girlfriend Nancy was a former prostitute played by Darlene Parks; the pilot didn't sell and she was never seen again.
Q 29Which soap opera earned Max Gail two Daytime Emmys decades after Barney Miller?
General Hospital
Gail won in 2019 and 2021 for playing Mike Corbin, and he had earlier played Dodgers manager Burt Shotton in the film 42.
Q 30Which old-timer, forever recalling his 1940s partners Kleiner, Foster and Brown, kept visiting the Barney Miller squad?
Inspector Luger
Luger lived alone with a hot plate and an antique DuMont TV, and near the end of the series sent for a mail-order bride from the Philippines.