50 Fun Facts About TV Crime Dramas

Breaking Bad is set in which New Mexico city, chosen over Riverside, California, for its tax breaks?

Albuquerque was Sony's suggestion: Vince Gilligan's early scripts were set in Riverside until New Mexico's production incentives moved the show, and the city became a character in its own right.

Which actor, who lost his right eye to cancer at three, played the rumpled Lieutenant Columbo?

Peter Falk's artificial eye gave Columbo his trademark squint, and the shabby raincoat was Falk's own coat. He won four Emmys in the role between 1972 and 1990.

Which future Doctor Strange played Holmes opposite Martin Freeman's Watson in the BBC's Sherlock?

Benedict Cumberbatch won a 2014 Emmy for the role on the same night Martin Freeman won for Watson and Steven Moffat for writing. Only 13 episodes were made across seven years.

Former police reporter David Simon set The Wire's drug corners, docks and schools in which US city?

Baltimore was Simon's beat at The Baltimore Sun, and each season of The Wire takes on a different institution of the city, from the port to the schools to the newspaper itself.

Which band's 1978 single, written by Pete Townshend, is the theme of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation?

The Who's "Who Are You" opens every episode, and singer Roger Daltrey later guest-starred as mobster Mickey Dunn in the season-seven episode "Living Legend".

The Sopranos ended with a sudden cut to black in a diner while which Journey song played?

Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" nearly stayed off air: Steve Perry refused to clear it until David Chase promised it would not soundtrack a death scene. The silence that follows made many viewers think their cable had cut out.

Showtime's vigilante killer Dexter Morgan works for Miami Metro police in which forensic speciality?

Blood spatter analysis is Dexter's day job even though he finished near the top of his medical-school class, a career swerve that makes Sergeant Doakes suspicious of him.

Money Heist's robbers, known by city names like Tokyo and Berlin, wear masks of which artist's face?

Salvador Dalí's moustached face was picked as an instantly recognisable symbol of Spain; a Don Quixote mask was the rejected alternative, and the Dalí foundation complained it was never asked permission.

Which FBI agent, played by Kyle MacLachlan, comes to Twin Peaks to investigate Laura Palmer's murder?

Dale Cooper's first clue is a tiny typed letter "R" under Laura Palmer's fingernail, which matches a killing in south-west Washington the year before and turns one murder into a serial case.

Which former Stringer Bell of The Wire played the tormented London detective John Luther in Luther?

Idris Elba's Luther was written by Neil Cross, and its first series pairs him with Ruth Wilson's murderer Alice Morgan, with whom the detective forms a dangerously complicated bond.

Which actor, recommended by Agatha Christie's family, played Hercule Poirot on ITV from 1989 to 2013?

David Suchet signed off with "Curtain: Poirot's Last Case", by which point every major Christie work featuring the detective had been filmed, 70 episodes in all.

Which daughter of 1950s star Jayne Mansfield has played Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU since 1999?

Mariska Hargitay's Olivia Benson is the longest-running character in any American primetime drama, and the role has brought Hargitay both an Emmy and a Golden Globe.

Who played the nihilistic Louisiana detective Rust Cohle opposite Woody Harrelson in True Detective?

Matthew McConaughey was contracted before HBO had even commissioned the season, lured by an anthology format that asked film stars for a single season's commitment.

Narcos' first two seasons follow DEA agents Murphy and Peña as they hunt which Medellín cartel boss?

Pablo Escobar is played by the Brazilian Wagner Moura, whose Portuguese-tinged accent was mocked in Colombia as all wrong for a Paisa from Medellín.

Peaky Blinders follows Tommy Shelby's gang in the months after the First World War in which English city?

Birmingham really had a Peaky Blinders gang from the 1880s to the 1920s, and the name became local slang for any street gang in the city long after the original had faded.

Jessica Fletcher of Murder, She Wrote lives in Cabot Cove, a fictional coastal town in which US state?

Maine's Cabot Cove is placed just north of the real town of Newcastle in a first-season episode, and Jessica is a widowed English teacher turned bestselling mystery author.

Ozark's money-laundering adviser Marty Byrde moves his family from a Chicago suburb to which state?

Missouri's Lake of the Ozarks is where the Byrdes land, in the resort town of Osage Beach, after Marty talks a Mexican cartel into a bigger laundering operation as amends for a scheme gone wrong.

Fargo's first TV season unfolds in Bemidji, a town in which state, not the North Dakota city of the title?

Minnesota's Bemidji is where Billy Bob Thornton's hitman Lorne Malvo crashes his car and meets Martin Freeman's henpecked insurance salesman Lester Nygaard.

Which actor won three Emmys as Adrian Monk, San Francisco's obsessive-compulsive "defective detective"?

Tony Shalhoub's three Emmys for Monk all came in the comedy category, where USA Network entered its mystery comedy-drama, and he was nominated eight years running.

Brenda Blethyn's dishevelled DCI Vera Stanhope polices which north-east English county in Vera?

Northumberland & City Police is an invented force, and the series filmed around Newcastle upon Tyne and the county's coast, from Amble to Holy Island, for 14 years.

Which Jed Mercurio series follows AC-12, an anti-corruption unit led by Adrian Dunbar's Ted Hastings?

Line of Duty was turned down by BBC One in 2011 and sent to BBC Two, where it became the channel's highest-rated series in a decade before being promoted to BBC One for series four.

What is Inspector Morse's first name, kept secret until the episode "Death Is Now My Neighbour"?

Endeavour came from Captain Cook's ship, chosen by a Cook-admiring father and a Quaker mother fond of virtue names; Morse's on-screen clue is "My whole life's effort has revolved around Eve, nine letters".

NCIS was launched as a two-episode backdoor pilot inside which Donald P. Bellisario legal drama?

JAG's season-eight episodes "Ice Queen" and "Meltdown" introduced Gibbs, DiNozzo and Abby in April 2003, five months before NCIS premiered on CBS.

Criminal Minds' Behavioral Analysis Unit, under Aaron Hotchner, calls the killer it hunts by what shorthand?

Unsub is short for unknown subject, and the Behavioral Analysis Unit builds a profile of the unsub's behaviour long before it has a name or a face.

Bones' heroine Temperance Brennan is based on the life and novels of which real forensic anthropologist?

Kathy Reichs produced the show, and in the Bones universe Brennan writes bestselling novels whose heroine is in turn named Kathy Reichs.

Tom Selleck's Magnum lives free in the guesthouse of a Hawaiian estate owned by which unseen novelist?

Robin Masters is never shown on screen, and Magnum himself comes to suspect that the estate's starchy caretaker Higgins is secretly the author, a theory the show never fully disproved.

Telly Savalas's bald, lollipop-sucking lieutenant asked "Who loves ya, baby?" in which 1970s series?

Kojak's lollipop arrived in 1973 as a substitute for cigarettes after TV tobacco ads were banned, and he said the full "Who loves ya, baby?" only three times in 118 episodes.

"Let's be careful out there" closed roll call in which 1980s police drama from writer Steven Bochco?

Hill Street Blues' Sergeant Phil Esterhaus delivered the line until actor Michael Conrad died during season four, when Sergeant Lucy Bates kept it going as a tribute.

Which line, popularised by Stan Freberg's 1953 parody record, is wrongly credited to Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday?

"Just the facts, ma'am" was said on Dragnet only once, in the season-two episode "Big Lease". Stan Freberg's chart-topping 1953 parody "St. George and the Dragonet" put it in Friday's mouth and the public never let go.

Sofia Helin's The Bridge opens with a body, cut in half, laid on the border between which two countries?

Denmark and Sweden both claim the case because the corpse lies at the midpoint of the Øresund Bridge, forcing Malmö's Saga Norén and Copenhagen's Martin Rohde to work together.

John Thaw's The Sweeney takes its title from Cockney rhyming slang for which Scotland Yard unit?

The Flying Squad became "Sweeney Todd" in Cockney rhyming slang ("Todd" rhyming with "squad"), the underworld's name for the unit that the series borrowed.

Who wrote Happy Valley, with Sarah Lancashire's Sergeant Cawood policing the Calder Valley?

Sally Wainwright took the title from what local police call the Calder Valley because of its drug problem, and the series won the 2015 BAFTA for best drama.

David Tennant and Olivia Colman's Broadchurch begins with a boy's body on a beach in which county?

Dorset's Jurassic Coast was chosen by creator Chris Chibnall partly because he lived there and wanted an end to years of travelling the country for shows like Torchwood.

Which actress played DCI Jane Tennison, fighting sexism inside the Met, in Lynda La Plante's Prime Suspect?

Helen Mirren won three BAFTAs in a row (1992 to 1994) as Tennison, one of the first female detective chief inspectors in London's Metropolitan Police.

Which future Hagrid played Fitz, the chain-smoking criminal psychologist of Jimmy McGovern's Cracker?

Robbie Coltrane won three consecutive BAFTAs (1994 to 1996) as Fitz, a gambling-addicted Manchester psychologist whom McGovern named after the poet Edward FitzGerald.

Which Only Fools and Horses star played DI Jack Frost of Denton for 18 years in A Touch of Frost?

David Jason quit because Frost was by then the oldest detective on television, and the role had turned a comic actor into a dramatic one in the public's eyes.

Which actor won four Emmys as gruff Detective Andy Sipowicz across all 12 seasons of NYPD Blue?

Dennis Franz became the show's centre after original star David Caruso quit four episodes into season two, and his four Emmys for Sipowicz came in 1994, 1996, 1997 and 1999.

Michael Chiklis's corrupt LAPD boss Vic Mackey, modelled on the Rampart scandal, led which FX series?

The Shield brought Chiklis the 2002 Emmy for lead actor in a drama, a deliberate break from the soft reputation he had earned on The Commish.

Justified's deputy US marshal Raylan Givens was created by which novelist in the story "Fire in the Hole"?

Elmore Leonard ranked Justified among the best adaptations of his work, alongside Get Shorty and Jackie Brown, and folded the show's Rachel into his final novel, Raylan.

Which director shot the $18 million pilot of Boardwalk Empire, Steve Buscemi's Prohibition-era saga?

Martin Scorsese had not directed television since a 1986 Amazing Stories episode, and the Atlantic City boardwalk was rebuilt on an empty Brooklyn lot for $5 million.

Which former Bergerac star played Midsomer Murders' DCI Tom Barnaby from 1997 to 2011?

John Nettles handed over to Neil Dudgeon's John Barnaby, written in as Tom's younger cousin, and the county of Midsomer has kept up its absurd body count ever since.

Starsky & Hutch's red car with the white "vector" stripe, nicknamed the "striped tomato", was which model?

Ford Gran Torino was the pick from Ford's studio loan programme; creator William Blinn had wanted a Chevrolet Camaro convertible like the green-and-white one he once owned.

Kenneth Branagh and Krister Henriksson both played Kurt Wallander, based in which Swedish town?

Ystad, 56 km south-east of Malmö in Scania, hosted the BBC's Branagh adaptations too, shot on location there in the summer of 2008.

Z-Cars, the BBC's 1962 to 1978 patrol-car series, was set in Newtown, a stand-in for Kirkby near which city?

Liverpool's post-war housing estate at Kirkby inspired Newtown, and fewer than half of Z-Cars' 801 episodes survive in the archive.

Jack Warner's constable opened which BBC series, running 1955 to 1976, with a salute and "Evening, all"?

Dixon of Dock Green's greeting began as "Good evening all" and was trimmed to "Evening all" in the early 1970s, and Warner played PC George Dixon in every one of its 432 episodes.

Gomorrah, the Sky series about Naples' Camorra clans, was created by which author, adapting his own book?

Roberto Saviano's series was shot largely in Scampia, the Naples neighbourhood whose clan wars it dramatises, and it ran for 58 episodes over five seasons.

Only Murders in the Building's podcasting trio live in which Upper West Side apartment block?

The Arconia is fictional, and the trio played by Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez name their podcast after its run of suspicious deaths.

Who played "Book 'em, Danno" boss Steve McGarrett in the original Hawaii Five-O after Richard Boone turned it down?

Jack Lord read for McGarrett on a Wednesday, was cast, flew to Hawaii two days later and was filming by Monday; the show then ran 12 seasons, a record for an American police drama at the time.

In Better Call Saul's monochrome flash-forwards, fugitive Saul Goodman runs an Omaha Cinnabon as whom?

Gene Takavić is the identity sold to him by Ed Galbraith, the "disappearer", and the Omaha scenes open the first five season premieres before taking over the show's final episodes.

In The Rockford Files, James Garner's beach-trailer private eye quotes what daily fee "plus expenses"?

$200 a day plus expenses is a fee Rockford rarely manages to collect, and by the 1990s reunion movies it had risen to $450.