Classic TV Trivia
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157 free Classic TV trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
107 free Classic TV trivia questions with answers. Classic TV trivia for seniors, built from the shows a generation actually grew up watching: I Love Lucy and The Honeymooners, Gunsmoke and Bonanza, Ed Sullivan and Johnny Carson, Andy Griffith's Mayberry, The Twilight Zone, All in the Family, M*A*S*H, The Waltons, Dallas, Cheers and The Golden Girls. The questions lean on the things a viewer remembers - catchphrases, theme songs, addresses, who played whom - alongside a few real production facts: the three-camera rig invented for a 1951 sitcom, the letter campaign that bought Star Trek one more season, the bar picked out of a Boston phone book. The 157 questions run from easy ones any rerun-watcher will get to a handful that will make even a devoted fan pause, so the set works as a warm-up at a senior center, a family game after dinner, or a solo trip down memory lane. Each question comes with four choices, instant scoring and a one-line explanation that adds a detail you may not have known. Every answer was checked against a reference page and carries its source, so if a grandchild argues about who shot J.R., you can settle it.
30 of 157 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In a famous I Love Lucy scene, what do Lucy and Ethel fall behind wrapping on a speeding conveyor belt?
Chocolates
Chocolates outran Lucy and Ethel in 1952's 'Job Switching', so they stuffed the ones they had missed into their mouths and hats before the supervisor came back.
Q 02Which studio did Lucille Ball run on her own from 1962, backing Star Trek and Mission: Impossible?
Desilu Productions
Desilu Productions blended the names of Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball, who founded it in 1950; after their divorce Ball bought out his share in 1962 and ran the studio herself.
Q 03Little Ricky is born in which I Love Lucy episode, watched by more Americans than Eisenhower's inauguration?
Lucy Goes to the Hospital
'Lucy Goes to the Hospital' drew about 44 million viewers on 19 January 1953, against 29 million for the inauguration a day later; Lucille Ball gave birth to her real son, Desi Arnaz Jr., that same day.
Q 04Which pair played the landlords and best friends of the Ricardos?
Vivian Vance and William Frawley
Vivian Vance and William Frawley played landlords Ethel and Fred Mertz; friends on screen, they disliked each other so much that Vance turned down a spin-off for the pair.
Q 05What is the title of the 1983 M*A*S*H finale, one of the most watched US broadcasts ever?
Goodbye, Farewell and Amen
'Goodbye, Farewell and Amen' ran two and a half hours on 28 February 1983 and ends with Hawkeye lifting off by helicopter to find that B.J. has spelled GOODBYE in stones below.
Q 06Which star of M*A*S*H also directed its record-breaking 1983 finale?
Alan Alda
Alan Alda directed and co-wrote the finale, which about 106 million Americans watched; when a brush fire destroyed the outdoor set during filming, the writers worked a fire into the story.
Q 07What is the number of the army hospital unit where M*A*S*H is set?
The 4077th
The 4077th was invented by novelist Richard Hooker, a surgeon who based it on the real 8055th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, where he had served as a young doctor.
Q 08M*A*S*H outlasted which war it depicted?
Korean War
The Korean War lasted three years, 1950 to 1953, while M*A*S*H ran 11 seasons, more than three times as long; its makers also used the setting to comment on Vietnam, where fighting continued as the show began.
Q 09Who created and presented The Twilight Zone?
Rod Serling
Rod Serling had won Emmys for live dramas, but sponsors and censors kept cutting his scripts, so he turned to fantasy, where he could slip social comment past them.
Q 10Which future Star Trek star sees a gremlin on the wing in The Twilight Zone's 'Nightmare at 20,000 Feet'?
William Shatner
William Shatner plays a nervous flyer just out of a sanitarium, so nobody believes him about the gremlin on the wing; in the end he opens the emergency exit and shoots at it himself.
Q 11How did the fourth season of The Twilight Zone differ from the rest?
Episodes ran about 51 minutes
Episodes ran about 51 minutes in the fourth season because CBS stretched the show to an hour against its creator's wishes; he feared padded stories, and it went back to half-hours for its final year.
Q 12What is the registry number of the starship in Star Trek's original series?
NCC-1701
NCC-1701 is the USS Enterprise's registry; designer Matt Jefferies chose digits that are hard to misread on screen, and later Enterprises added letters such as NCC-1701-A.
Q 13Which Star Trek actor stayed in the cast after Martin Luther King Jr. urged her not to quit?
Nichelle Nichols
Q 21In which fictional town is The Andy Griffith Show set?
Mayberry
Mayberry is widely said to be modelled on Andy Griffith's home town of Mount Airy, North Carolina, which now trades on the link with an annual Mayberry Days festival.
Q 22Who whistled the theme in The Andy Griffith Show's opening credits?
Earle Hagen, who composed it
Earle Hagen, who composed it, whistled the tune himself and said he had never whistled before and never did again; lyrics came later for a sung version, 'The Fishin' Hole'.
Q 23Where did The Andy Griffith Show rank in the Nielsen ratings in 1967–68, the year it ended?
Top of the chart
Nichelle Nichols had handed in her resignation to try Broadway when Martin Luther King Jr., a fan of the show, told her that Uhura mattered too much for her to leave.
Q 14What made Star Trek a phenomenon after NBC cancelled it?
Syndicated reruns
Syndicated reruns found Star Trek a larger audience in the 1970s than its 79 NBC episodes ever had, which led to fan conventions and, in 1979, the first feature film.
Q 15How did the Cheers producers find the Boston pub that inspired the bar?
They picked it out of a phone book
They picked it out of a phone book: Boston's Bull & Finch Pub, whose owner Tom Kershaw let the show use its exterior for one dollar and then made millions selling Cheers souvenirs.
Q 16What was Sam Malone's career before he bought the bar?
Relief pitcher for the Red Sox
Sam Malone was a relief pitcher for the Red Sox, nicknamed 'Mayday' on the mound; alcoholism ended his career, which is why the bar's owner never drinks.
Q 17Who played Sam Malone, the bar owner on Cheers?
Ted Danson
Ted Danson played Sam through all eleven seasons of Cheers, a show that came close to cancellation in its first year and then spent most of its run in the top ten.
Q 18Who turned out to have shot J.R. Ewing?
Kristin Shepard
Kristin Shepard, Sue Ellen's sister and J.R.'s mistress, pulled the trigger; to keep the secret until the November reveal, the producers filmed every cast member, even Larry Hagman, firing the shot.
Q 19In which American city is Happy Days set?
Milwaukee
Happy Days is set in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, through the 1950s and early 1960s; the city unveiled the Bronze Fonz statue of Arthur Fonzarelli on its RiverWalk in 2008.
Q 20Which song opened the first season of Happy Days?
Rock Around the Clock
Rock Around the Clock opened Happy Days in a version Bill Haley re-recorded for the show in 1973, and in 1974 his original 1954 single climbed back into the US charts.
The Andy Griffith Show finished at the top of the chart in 1967–68, never having ranked below seventh; Griffith chose to leave anyway, and CBS reworked the series around a new lead.
Q 24What is the name of the boat that runs aground in Gilligan's Island?
The SS Minnow
The SS Minnow was creator Sherwood Schwartz's dig at FCC chairman Newton Minow, who in 1961 had called television 'a vast wasteland'.
Q 25How long was the boat trip in Gilligan's Island supposed to last?
Three hours
The lyrics promise 'a three hour tour', so the trip was meant to last three hours; the castaways instead spent three seasons (1964–67) stranded, with an improbable amount of luggage.
Q 26Which phrase stood in for the Professor and Mary Ann in Gilligan's Island's first-season theme?
'And the rest'
'And the rest' was all the Professor and Mary Ann got until season two, after the actor playing Gilligan lobbied the producers to have both characters named in the lyrics.
Q 27What was Ralph Kramden's job in The Honeymooners?
Bus driver
Ralph Kramden was a bus driver for the Gotham Bus Company, and the role stuck so firmly that a Brooklyn bus depot was renamed for Jackie Gleason in 1988.
Q 28Art Carney's character Ed Norton did which job for New York City?
Municipal sewer worker
Ed Norton was a municipal sewer worker who grandly described his post as sub-supervisor in subterranean sanitation; Art Carney even recorded 'The Song of the Sewer' in character.
Q 29At what Brooklyn address did the Kramdens and Nortons live in The Honeymooners?
328 Chauncey Street
328 Chauncey Street put the Kramdens on the Brooklyn street where Jackie Gleason himself grew up; their bare apartment set held little more than a table, a curtainless window and an old icebox.
Q 30All in the Family was adapted from which British sitcom?
Till Death Us Do Part
Till Death Us Do Part, the BBC sitcom about the bigoted Alf Garnett, came to America when Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin bought the rights; Lear softened Archie, modelling him partly on his own father.