Hill Street Blues Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
59 free Hill Street Blues trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Hill Street Blues changed what a television drama could look like: overlapping storylines, handheld cameras, a roll call to open every episode and a captain who spent his nights arguing with a public defender. This quiz has 56 free Hill Street Blues trivia questions with answers covering the whole run, from the January 1981 pilot to the 1987 finale. You will find the easy stuff (who said "Let's be careful out there", who composed the theme) alongside genuinely hard material: Bobby Hill's boxing nickname, the city Bochco had in mind, the season-1 ending that was re-edited, the spin-off that was cut short, and which cast member was Emmy-nominated every single year. Every question was checked against the show's Wikipedia entries and the cast's own pages, and each one carries a citation, so you can settle any argument at trivia night with a source rather than a hunch.
30 of 59 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What does the 'Blues' in the title Hill Street Blues refer to?
Uniformed police officers
Uniformed police officers were the 'blues', named for the colour of their uniforms; each episode followed them through a single day, from the morning roll call on.
Q 02Which new 1982 sitcom shared Hill Street Blues' NBC night?
Cheers
Cheers narrowly escaped cancellation in that first season, when it sat near the bottom of the ratings, then grew into a top-ten hit that ran for eleven years.
Q 03Steven Bochco co-created Hill Street Blues with which writer?
Michael Kozoll
Michael Kozoll wrote the pilot with Bochco in ten days, but the two clashed and he left the show after its second season.
Q 04Which production company made Hill Street Blues?
MTM Enterprises
MTM Enterprises, Mary Tyler Moore's company, got its writers to take on a cop show only after the network promised to leave them completely alone.
Q 05Who composed the theme music for Hill Street Blues?
Mike Post
Mike Post's theme became a hit single in 1981, and cast members recall hearing it over and over as the show swept that year's Emmys.
Q 06Three consecutive season 3 episodes of Hill Street Blues are titled 'Moon Over' which planet?
Uranus
Uranus was Bochco's schoolboy joke on NBC's censors, who objected to the title; he answered by calling the next two episodes 'The Sequel' and 'The Final Legacy'.
Q 07Which actress, later Betty Applewhite on Desperate Housewives, won a 1984 Emmy for a Hill Street Blues guest arc?
Alfre Woodard
Alfre Woodard won the supporting-actress Emmy for just three episodes as Doris Robson, a mother whose young son is shot by a policeman; it was the first of her four Emmys.
Q 08Which drama took Hill Street Blues' time slot in 1986?
L.A. Law
L.A. Law, co-created by Bochco after he was fired from Hill Street Blues, began on another night, then pushed his old show out of its slot for its final months.
Q 09Which desk sergeant closed each roll call with 'Let's be careful out there'?
Phil Esterhaus
Phil Esterhaus's warning ended when actor Michael Conrad died of cancer during season 4; the writers then wrote the sergeant's own death into the show, with a different cause.
Q 10Which sergeant, played by Robert Prosky, took over roll call after season 4?
Stan Jablonski
Stan Jablonski was written as a rougher, old-school foil to his fatherly predecessor after actor Michael Conrad's death left the roll call without its sergeant.
Q 11Which roll-call sign-off did Robert Prosky's sergeant use?
Do it to them before they do it to us
'Do it to them before they do it to us' reversed his predecessor's fatherly caution and marked the new sergeant as a harder, more bitter man.
Q 12How was Hill Street Blues' desk sergeant written out after actor Michael Conrad's death in 1983?
Died in bed with his lover
He died in bed with his lover, Grace Gardner; Furillo broke the news at roll call in an episode punningly titled 'Grace Under Pressure'.
Q 13Which drama broke Hill Street Blues' record for first-season Emmys in 2000?
The West Wing
Q 21What was Joyce Davenport's job for most of Hill Street Blues?
Public defender
Public defender Davenport spent her days fighting Hill Street's arrests in court, while keeping secret that she spent her nights with its captain.
Q 22What did Furillo affectionately call Joyce Davenport?
Counselor
'Counselor' was the captain's teasing name for the lawyer he fought over arrests all day and went home to at night.
Q 23What pet name did Joyce Davenport use for Frank Furillo?
Pizza Man
Pizza Man was borrowed by the writers from a Los Angeles pizza chain, and became her private nickname for the buttoned-up captain.
The West Wing won nine Emmys for its debut season, one more than Hill Street Blues managed in 1981, yet Martin Sheen never won one for playing its president.
Q 14Which actor won a 1984 Emmy as detective Mick Belker?
Bruce Weitz
Bruce Weitz was first sounded out for the smoother J.D. LaRue, but told Bochco he would rather read for the snarling Belker.
Q 15Which series ended Hill Street Blues' run of best-drama Emmys in 1985?
Cagney & Lacey
Cagney & Lacey took the award in 1985, and Hill Street Blues, which had won it for each of its first four seasons, never won it again.
Q 16What does Hill Street Blues keep secret about the city where it is set?
Its name
Its name is never given: the producers even hid the first letter of local TV and radio call signs, which would have shown which side of the Mississippi the city was on.
Q 17The police station seen in the credits of Hill Street Blues is a real building in which city?
Chicago
Chicago's old Maxwell Street station supplied the exteriors, yet the cast worked in Los Angeles and Bochco never set foot in the building until 1996.
Q 18Dennis Franz later won four Emmys playing which TV detective?
Andy Sipowicz
Andy Sipowicz began NYPD Blue as the second lead, but its first star quit early in season two and Franz's bigoted detective carried the show through twelve seasons.
Q 19Who played Captain Frank Furillo?
Daniel J. Travanti
Daniel J. Travanti had mostly played villains before Furillo, the hardest part to cast, won him the lead-actor Emmy two years running.
Q 20What is Captain Frank Furillo recovering from when Hill Street Blues begins?
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is the captain's private battle, and it sharpens his clashes with hard-drinking detective J.D. LaRue, whom he very nearly fires.
Q 24Which actress played Joyce Davenport on Hill Street Blues?
Veronica Hamel
Veronica Hamel's Davenport kept her affair with the captain hidden from the precinct until the third season, when the two came out as a couple and married.
Q 25Detective Mick Belker was notorious for doing what to suspects?
Biting them
Biting them went with a warning growl, and the actor who played Belker says the growl and the insults were the writers' invention.
Q 26Which insult was a Belker trademark?
Hair bag
'Hair bag' and 'dog breath' were coined by the writers, not the actor, and a season 3 episode is even titled 'Requiem for a Hairbag'.
Q 27Which future NYPD Blue star played Irish gang leader Tommy Mann in Hill Street Blues' early seasons?
David Caruso
David Caruso played the gang leader a decade before NYPD Blue made him a star as a detective, a job he quit early in its second season to chase a film career.
Q 28Despite his Southern drawl, Officer Andy Renko says he was born in which state?
New Jersey
He also claimed never to have been west of Chicago, which made his country-and-western persona pure affectation.
Q 29What nickname did Bobby Hill use for his partner Renko?
Cowboy
'Cowboy' suited the drawl and the boots; Renko was scripted to die in the pilot, but tested so well with audiences that NBC had him kept alive.
Q 30On Hill Street Blues, who keeps phoning detective Mick Belker at his desk?
His mother
His mother, unseen and needy, keeps calling in mid-booking, and the growling detective turns soft at once: 'Hi, Ma... I'm booking a pickpocket.'