48 Fun Facts About Barney Miller

In the Barney Miller episode "Hash", which home-baked treat does Wojo bring in to share with the squad?

Brownies baked by Wojo's new girlfriend turn out to be laced with hashish, and the detectives who eat them end up stoned on duty.

Barney Miller's detectives worked out of which fictional NYPD precinct?

The 12th Precinct met its end in the 1982 finale: its station house is declared a landmark and sold off, and the detectives are reassigned to other precincts.

In Barney Miller's three-part finale, an antique gun found in the station house is traced to which former president?

Theodore Roosevelt had been New York's police commissioner, so the find makes the building a landmark, and the city sells it, scattering the squad.

Which Manhattan neighborhood was home to Barney Miller's station house?

Greenwich Village was only the setting: the series was taped across the country in a Hollywood television studio.

Which actor played the big-hearted Detective "Wojo" Wojciehowicz in all eight seasons of Barney Miller?

Max Gail's Wojo cared too much to sit still: on learning New York had no citywide evacuation plan for an emergency, he panicked on the whole city's behalf.

Which Barney Miller squad member was known for making terrible coffee?

Nick Yemana's lousy coffee became such a running joke that his mug and desk nameplate went on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

What was the title of Detective Ron Harris's successful police novel on Barney Miller?

Blood on the Badge brought Harris money and trouble: a lawyer sued him for libel over how the novel portrayed him, and Harris lost.

Which Barney Miller detective was the squad's deadpan intellectual, ready with a learned answer on almost any subject?

Arthur Dietrich's actor, Steve Landesberg, had turned up on the show a few months before his debut as the detective, playing a con man posing as a priest.

Which actor played the dapper, novel-writing Detective Harris on Barney Miller?

Ron Glass, a devout Buddhist off screen, later swapped the detective's tailored suits for a Christian preacher's collar as Shepherd Book on Firefly.

On Barney Miller, Officer Carl Levitt kept reminding the captain that he was available for what?

Detective work was Levitt's obsession: he used his mail rounds to angle for plainclothes assignments, and his persistence finally won him part-time work with the squad.

The 1978 Barney Miller episode "Inauguration" unfolds on the day which real New York mayor takes office?

Ed Koch's big day brings Harris a tempting offer: a permanent place on the new mayor's security detail.

Before joining Barney Miller as Officer Levitt, Ron Carey guested as jewel thief Angelo Molinari, known by what nickname?

The Mole led Harris and Wojo on a chase through the sewers; the 5-foot-4 Carey then came back on the right side of the law, playing Levitt for six seasons.

In Barney Miller's two-part "Contempt", Captain Miller is jailed for refusing to do what?

Name an informant: Barney will not give one up in a drug case, is jailed for contempt of court, and Harris happily takes charge of the squad room while he is away.

Which producer co-created Barney Miller with Theodore J. Flicker and ran the show for all eight seasons?

Danny Arnold had worked nightclubs as a comic himself, befriended Jack Soo on that circuit, and years later cast his old friend as the squad's Yemana.

The Barney Miller theme opens with a distinctive line on which instrument?

Electric bass was what session player Chuck Berghofer had with him at the pilot's recording; asked by a producer to open a show about a New York cop, he improvised the line.

In Barney Miller's two-part "Quarantine", the squad room is sealed overnight because a collapsed suspect may have which disease?

Smallpox is the fear, though it may only be chickenpox, and the overnight wait leaves cops, suspects and visitors getting on one another's nerves.

In Barney Miller's "Dietrich's Arrest", the detective defies regulations and is locked up for joining which kind of protest?

An anti-nuclear rally lands Dietrich in his own precinct's cell, where his colleague Harris is handed the job of booking him.

Which future Diff'rent Strokes star played one of the foster kids on the Barney Miller spin-off Fish?

Todd Bridges had already faced Barney's squad: in the first season he played an 8-year-old stick-up kid on whom the captain's wife makes a citizen's arrest.

Which actress played Fish's wife Bernice on both Barney Miller and its spin-off Fish?

Florence Stanley made the part her own, but in the season 2 episode that tried out the spin-off idea, Bernice was played, just once, by Doris Belack.

Which Barney Miller star reprised his role as the captain in a brief cameo on the spin-off Fish?

Hal Linden's Captain Miller dropped in on a spin-off whose star was doing double duty: for several months Fish's actor worked on both series, until the detective retired from the squad in 1977.

Which actress left her recurring role as Barney Miller's Detective Janice Wentworth to star in her own CBS sitcom?

Linda Lavin left when her pilot for Alice sold; Wentworth, who had gone undercover as Wojo's wife, was seen again only in a flashback in the finale.

Which Barney Miller cast member had played the doomed mobster Tessio in The Godfather?

Abe Vigoda won the part of Fish at an audition where the producer looked him over and told him he looked like he had hemorrhoids; "What are you, a doctor or a producer?" he shot back.

Which magazine mistakenly described the actor who played Barney Miller's Fish as dead in 1982?

People called him "the late Abe Vigoda" in a piece on the show's wrap party; he was alive, on stage in Calgary at the time, and lived until 2016.

On which sitcom did Gregory Sierra play Puerto Rican neighbor Julio Fuentes before becoming Barney Miller's Detective Chano Amengual?

Sanford and Son made Sierra's easygoing Julio the target of Fred's insults; he was later written out of Barney Miller to star in a short-lived emergency-room sitcom.

Barney Miller's Jack Soo spent part of World War II where?

Internment camp: Topaz, in Utah, held Soo and his family, and there he made a name entertaining his fellow internees at camp shows and dances.

How did the Barney Miller cast salute Jack Soo to close their 1979 retrospective episode?

They raised their coffee cups to end an unscripted episode in which the cast, out of character, traded stories about Soo, who had died of cancer that January.

In the Barney Miller episode "The Sighting", what does Wojo tell Barney he saw?

A UFO near Staten Island is Wojo's excuse when Barney asks why he has turned up late for work.

Which soap opera won Max Gail Daytime Emmys in 2019 and 2021, decades after Barney Miller?

General Hospital brought Gail in to play Mike Corbin, a mob boss's father who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the role won him both awards.

Which old-timer, forever recalling his 1940s partners Kleiner, Foster and Brown, kept visiting the Barney Miller squad?

Inspector Luger lived so far in the past that, late in the series, he sent away for a mail-order bride, then tried to duck out once she arrived.

Barney Miller regular James Gregory played a McCarthy-like senator in which 1962 political thriller?

The Manchurian Candidate cast Gregory as Senator John Iselin, a blustering front man whose wife does the scheming; on TV he had already played a real New York detective in The Lawless Years.

On Barney Miller, Lieutenant Ben Scanlon belonged to which unit?

Internal Affairs was Scanlon's perch: he arrived with a voice analyzer one year and a planted bribe another, always hoping to catch Barney's detectives out.

Which actress played Liz Miller, the captain's wife, a Barney Miller regular in season one who was rarely seen afterward?

Barbara Barrie's Liz was seen less and less after the first season; in the fifth, the scripts put the Millers through a trial separation before Barney moved back home.

Which shoplifter, played by Jack DeLeon, was among American TV's earliest recurring gay characters on Barney Miller?

Marty Morrison first pleaded his case in the show's second episode and was still dropping by, boyfriend Darryl in tow, to say goodbye in the 1982 finale.

In Barney Miller's two-part "Movie", Harris is assigned to make which kind of film?

An adult film is meant to get the police inside the theaters that show them, and Harris enjoys the job so much that he runs well over his budget.

Why did Barney Miller stop taping in front of a live studio audience?

Late rewrites ran past midnight: scripts were rarely finished by show night, so the cast waited on stage for new pages and sometimes learned scenes at 2 a.m.

Barney Miller finally won the Outstanding Comedy Series Emmy in 1982, ending which sitcom's three-year winning streak?

Taxi had won in 1979, 1980 and 1981; Barney Miller, nominated and beaten six years running, took the prize only after its final episode had aired.

Who beat Barney Miller's star to the Lead Actor Emmy three years running?

Carroll O'Connor won as Archie Bunker in 1977, 1978 and 1979; the captain's actor went on losing even in 1982, when the series itself finally took the comedy Emmy.

In the Barney Miller episode "Atomic Bomb", who built the device?

A college student had built it without meaning any harm, yet the device worked, so the bomb squad and federal agents descended on the squad room.

Barney Miller's lead actor won the 1971 Tony for Best Actor in a Musical for which Broadway show?

The Rothschilds won him the Tony and, by his account, the television role too: the show's creator saw him in it and asked for him over the network's list of names.

Which Barney Miller actor hid his age so well that obituaries in 2010 first reported him as 65 rather than 74?

Steve Landesberg had dodged the question for decades, convinced a late start hurt him with casting directors: "Let's just say I started late," he told one interviewer.

In Barney Miller's "The Harris Incident", who mistakenly opens fire on Detective Harris while he is making an arrest?

Uniformed police officers take the Black detective for the burglar, and the mistake leaves the normally unflappable Harris on edge around his own colleagues.

Across Barney Miller's run, Captain Miller is repeatedly passed over for promotion to which rank?

Deputy inspector eluded him for years: in the season 6 episode "Fog" he is passed over for the third time, and news on the promotion comes only in the finale.

In a 2005 op-ed, New York detective Lucas Miller wrote that real police life is more like Barney Miller than which drama?

NYPD Blue had the action, but Miller wrote that a real detective's day is mostly squad-room reports and jokes; ex-Chicago cop Dennis Farina likewise called the sitcom TV's most realistic cop show.

In a Barney Miller Christmas episode, Fish goes undercover to catch a mugger who has been robbing whom?

Department-store Santas were the mugger's targets, so the world-weary Fish had to put on a Santa suit himself on Christmas Eve to catch him.

Why did Barney Miller end in 1982 after eight seasons?

Its creator chose to stop: unable to find new writers he trusted, he had tried to end the show a year earlier, and network pressure bought only one more season.

At the start of Barney Miller's seventh season, a department shake-up briefly turns the squad into a unit handling only what?

Homicides alone were the new brief, starting with a man who killed his barber; Barney set out to get the order reversed after it cost an old friend his life.

In one Barney Miller episode, what does an exterminator hunting roaches find hidden in the squad room?

A listening device turns up where the roaches should be, which gives the episode its punning title, "Bugs", and leaves the detectives paranoid about who is eavesdropping.

On Barney Miller, which desk sergeant "downstairs" was often phoned and mentioned but no longer seen after the second season?

Kogan shared a surname with his actor, Milt Kogan, who appeared in the first two seasons; after that he was only the man Barney phoned when the detectives needed reinforcements.