50 Fun Facts About Current TV Shows

Which rock legend co-wrote and sings Strange Game, the theme song of the spy drama Slow Horses?

Mick Jagger wrote it with composer Daniel Pemberton, who had emailed him out of the blue, and the song went on to earn an Emmy nomination.

Which comedy film star is the executive producer and main director of the thriller Severance?

Ben Stiller began developing the thriller with creator Dan Erickson in 2015, four years before Apple ordered it to series.

Which playground game, refereed by a giant robot doll, is the first deadly contest in Squid Game?

Red Light, Green Light is played under a doll modeled on Young-hee, a character from the covers of 1970s South Korean school textbooks.

Mike White, creator of The White Lotus, finished runner-up on which long-running reality competition?

Survivor placed him second in its David vs. Goliath season, and several of his fellow castaways have since appeared in cameos at his fictional resorts.

Which Netflix hit sent Kate Bush's 1985 single Running Up That Hill to number one decades later?

Stranger Things featured the song in its fourth season in 2022, and it went on to pass a billion streams on Spotify.

Which actress, Wednesday Addams in the 1990s films, joined Netflix's Wednesday as a botany teacher?

Christina Ricci plays Marilyn Thornhill, reuniting with director Tim Burton, her collaborator on the 1999 film Sleepy Hollow.

Bluey, the hit cartoon about a Blue Heeler puppy and her family, is animated in which country?

Australia is home to Ludo Studio, which animates the cartoon in Brisbane and bases its parks and shopping centers on real places in the city.

Which ER veteran returned to scrubs as Dr. Robby in The Pitt, where each episode covers one hour?

Noah Wyle is also an executive producer, reuniting with ER colleagues John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill for the Pittsburgh hospital drama.

Which pop star solves crimes with Steve Martin and Martin Short in Only Murders in the Building?

Selena Gomez plays Mabel Mora, a young artist renovating her aunt's apartment who grew up solving pretend mysteries with her friends.

In The Bear, chef Carmy Berzatto inherits a Chicago family shop known for which sandwich?

Italian beef is the specialty of The Original Beef of Chicagoland, the failing shop Carmy takes over after a career in fine dining.

Which comedian created Abbott Elementary and stars as second-grade teacher Janine Teagues?

Quinta Brunson named the school after Joyce Abbott, one of her favorite teachers, and drew on her mother's 40-year career in the classroom.

In The Last of Us, a mutated form of which real fungus turns people into zombie-like creatures?

Cordyceps is a real parasite of insects, and the effects team studied time-lapse videos of its growth to animate the infected.

Which film star played ranch patriarch John Dutton in Yellowstone before leaving during season five?

Kevin Costner led the Montana drama as the owner of the state's largest cattle ranch, and its success launched the prequels 1883 and 1923.

House of the Dragon follows a civil war inside which dragon-riding royal family of Westeros?

Targaryen heirs fight a war of succession known as the Dance of the Dragons, set nearly 200 years before the events of Game of Thrones.

Which actress won an Emmy for every season of Hacks as Las Vegas comedian Deborah Vance?

Jean Smart won five times in all, becoming the first actress to win an Emmy for every season of a show that ran for more than two seasons.

Which Oscar-winning Dame is heard but never seen as gossip writer Lady Whistledown in Bridgerton?

Julie Andrews was cast in 2019 to voice the author of the scandalous society newsletter, and her voice-overs explain much of the action.

In Ted Lasso, an American college football coach is hired to manage which fictional English club?

AFC Richmond belongs to Rebecca Welton, who won it in her divorce and hires the inexperienced Lasso secretly hoping he will wreck the team.

Which radio and television presenter replaced the retiring Pat Sajak as the host of Wheel of Fortune?

Ryan Seacrest, long the face of American Idol, started with the game show's 42nd season after Sajak announced his retirement.

Which 74-game Jeopardy! champion became the quiz show's host after the death of Alex Trebek?

Ken Jennings was a software engineer before his 2004 winning streak, and he came back to the quiz in 2020 as a producer.

Grey's Anatomy, a medical drama that began in 2005, is set in which US city?

Seattle is where the surgeons work, but the long-running drama is filmed mostly in Los Angeles.

Which comic actor co-created The Studio and stars as Matt Remick, the new head of Continental Studios?

Seth Rogen also directed every first-season episode with his creative partner Evan Goldberg, playing a film lover torn between art and profit.

Which film legend plays Paul Rhoades, a senior therapist with Parkinson's disease, in Shrinking?

Harrison Ford took the part despite once saying he was content to work only once a year, and it brought him awards nominations.

Amazon's Reacher, about a hulking former military policeman, is based on novels by which author?

Lee Child's first novel about the drifter, Killing Floor, was the basis for the first season, while the second skipped ahead to the eleventh book.

In The Boys, which power-hungry hero leads the Seven, Vought's premier superhero team?

Homelander is played by Antony Starr, and his corporate bosses work to make sure the public sees their superpowered stars as heroes.

Diego Luna first played rebel spy Cassian Andor in which Star Wars film, before the series Andor?

Rogue One came out in 2016, and the prequel series covers the five years before it, showing how a thief became a committed rebel.

On Love Is Blind, singles date and get engaged sight unseen from inside private rooms called what?

Pods keep the contestants apart for 10 days of talking, and couples only meet face to face once they are engaged.

Which Scottish actor became the host of the US version of The Traitors, filmed at a Highland castle?

Alan Cumming presides over a game adapted from the Dutch series De Verraders, in which hidden Traitors try to eliminate the Faithful.

Which actress stars as Captain Olivia Benson on the long-running Law & Order: Special Victims Unit?

Mariska Hargitay has played Benson since the show began in 1999, and in 2019 her police drama became the longest-running primetime live-action series on American television.

In Nobody Wants This, Kristen Bell's agnostic podcaster falls for a man with which job?

Rabbi is the calling of Adam Brody's character, who is hoping for promotion at his synagogue when he meets Joanne, just after a long relationship ends.

Which Irish actor reprised his role from The Batman as Gotham gangster Oz Cobb in The Penguin?

Colin Farrell plays the role under makeup by Mike Marino, who returned from the 2022 film and refined the look for television.

Which writer-director created Tulsa King and Landman after co-creating the ranch saga Yellowstone?

Taylor Sheridan earned an Oscar nomination for writing the film Hell or High Water before he built a television empire of Westerns and crime dramas.

Which action star plays Dwight Manfredi in Tulsa King, his first lead role in a scripted TV series?

Sylvester Stallone plays a New York Mafia captain who is sent to Oklahoma straight out of prison and builds a new criminal outfit there.

Which Oscar winner stars in CBS's Matlock as a lawyer back at work after decades away?

Kathy Bates plays a wealthy woman posing as a hard-up widow, in a reboot that shares little but a name with the Andy Griffith original.

Carrie Preston first played Elsbeth Tascioni, star of the spin-off Elsbeth, in which legal drama?

The Good Wife introduced the unconventional attorney, though her creators say her detective spin-off was really inspired by Columbo.

Which former Disney Channel star won two lead actress Emmys as teenage addict Rue Bennett in Euphoria?

Zendaya was 24 at her first win, then the youngest ever in the drama lead actress category, and her character also narrates the story unreliably.

In The Mandalorian, what is the real name of the Force-sensitive infant that fans nicknamed Baby Yoda?

Grogu went unnamed until the second season, when the former Jedi Ahsoka Tano learned his name by communicating with him through the Force.

In Yellowjackets, a 1996 plane crash strands a New Jersey high school girls' team from which sport?

Soccer is the Yellowjackets' game: the girls were flying to a national championship tournament when their plane went down in the wilderness.

Which actress plays Charlie Cale, who can always tell when someone is lying, in Poker Face?

Natasha Lyonne's drifter crosses America in a 1969 Plymouth Barracuda, on the run from a casino boss after a suspicious death.

In The Diplomat, Keri Russell plays a career envoy suddenly made US ambassador to which country?

United Kingdom is the posting that drops Kate Wyler into an international crisis, and an English country estate, Wrotham Park, stood in for the ambassador's London residence.

Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage follows the older brother of which character from The Big Bang Theory?

Sheldon Cooper's brother Georgie grew up on screen in the prequel Young Sheldon, and this sitcom picks up his story directly afterwards.

In Severance, Adam Scott's Mark Scout works in which strangely named department of Lumon Industries?

Macrodata Refinement left the screen in 2025, when Apple rebuilt its office inside a glass box at Grand Central Terminal before the second season.

Which filmmaker based Squid Game on his own money troubles, a decade before Netflix backed it?

Hwang Dong-hyuk wrote the story in 2009 but could not find a production company to fund it until Netflix took an interest around 2019.

Which PlayStation studio developed the video games that HBO's The Last of Us adapts?

Naughty Dog's concept artists advised the show's effects teams, and game writer Neil Druckmann co-created the adaptation with Craig Mazin.

Which Japanese star won an Emmy as Lord Toranaga in Shōgun, a drama on which he was also a producer?

Hiroyuki Sanada led a mostly Japanese cast speaking mostly Japanese, and the first season won 18 Emmys, the most for a single season at the time.

What is the name of the Manhattan apartment block at the heart of Only Murders in the Building?

The Arconia is home to all three amateur sleuths, who turn each killing there into a season of their own true crime podcast.

House of the Dragon adapts which George R. R. Martin book, written as a history, not a novel?

Fire & Blood is told by a fictional historian working from second-hand accounts, which leaves its version of events open to doubt.

Which actress plays Ava Coleman, the tone-deaf school principal in Abbott Elementary?

Janelle James plays a boss who got the job by blackmailing the superintendent and who constantly bullies eager teacher Janine.

Which actor, who won two Emmys as Roy Kent in Ted Lasso, co-created the Apple comedy Shrinking?

Brett Goldstein was first hired on the football comedy as a writer, and it was his writing that led to him being cast as the ageing player.

Which writer of the Bourne films and director of Michael Clayton created the Star Wars spy drama Andor?

Tony Gilroy replaced the original showrunner in April 2020, after discussing the first story details with star Diego Luna the year before.

Which showrunner created Pluribus, starring Rhea Seehorn as a novelist immune to a hive mind?

Vince Gilligan wrote the lead for Seehorn after years on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul left him weary of writing bad guys.