1960s Television Trivia
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58 free 1960s Television trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Looking for our main 60s TV page? 60s TV Trivia is the bigger, primary set with 58 questions on 1960s television, and it is the one we keep growing. This page is a companion round with a British-and-American mix; play both if you want the full decade. Television grew up in the 1960s. The decade opened with Kennedy and Nixon debating on live TV and closed with the Moon landing beamed around the world, and in between it gave us the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, colour broadcasting, Star Trek, Doctor Who and the golden age of the American sitcom. This quiz covers the lot, on both sides of the Atlantic. The American questions run from The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, Gilligan's Island and The Beverly Hillbillies through Batman, The Fugitive, Bonanza, Get Smart, Mission: Impossible, Laugh-In and the 1969 arrivals of Sesame Street, Scooby-Doo and The Brady Bunch. The British side takes in Coronation Street, The Avengers, Doctor Who's late start on 23 November 1963, The Prisoner, Thunderbirds, Steptoe and Son, Dad's Army, Top of the Pops, The Forsyte Saga and Monty Python. There are questions on the technology and the news too: Telstar, the Daisy ad, and which network went all-colour first. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the individual programmes and the year-by-year television timeline, so the dates, networks and cast names are reliable.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The first Kennedy-Nixon debate of September 1960 was held in the studios of WBBM-TV in which city?
Chicago
Chicago. Nixon, weakened by a knee infection that had put him in hospital, sweated under the studio lights, and presidential nominees did not debate again until 1976.
Q 02Which writer created Coronation Street, basing its fictional Weatherfield on Salford?
Tony Warren
Tony Warren. Granada's founder Sidney Bernstein disliked the idea, but producer Harry Elton talked the company's sceptical bosses into a 13-episode run.
Q 03The Flintstones, launched on ABC in 1960, was the first animated series to do what?
Air in prime time
Air in prime time. Built like The Honeymooners to draw adults as well as children, it might have been set in ancient Rome, an idea its makers weighed before choosing the Stone Age.
Q 04The Andy Griffith Show was set in Mayberry, a fictional small town in which state?
North Carolina
North Carolina. Andy Griffith's home town of Mount Airy, which many take for the real Mayberry, now holds an annual Mayberry Days festival in the show's honour.
Q 05The Andy Griffith Show originated from an episode of which comedian's sitcom?
Danny Thomas
Danny Thomas. In a 1960 episode of his sitcom, his character was arrested by a small-town sheriff played by Andy Griffith, and that try-out became a series the same autumn.
Q 06Rob Petrie of The Dick Van Dyke Show was head writer for a fictional TV variety star with what name?
Alan Brady
Alan Brady. Series creator Carl Reiner played the vain star himself, and for the first seasons kept his face off camera.
Q 07Rod Serling created which anthology series in 1959?
The Twilight Zone
The Twilight Zone. Sponsors and network censors had rewritten his dramas about lynching, and he reckoned science fiction would let controversial ideas slip past them.
Q 08On The Avengers, which actress played Emma Peel opposite Patrick Macnee's John Steed?
Diana Rigg
Diana Rigg. On learning she earned less than the cameraman, she threatened to leave unless her pay rose, and the producers gave in.
Q 09The Beverly Hillbillies' Clampett family struck oil and moved to California from which mountains?
The Ozarks
The Ozarks. Creator Paul Henning, a Missourian, drew on his own camping trips there, and the cast later filmed episodes at Silver Dollar City, a real Ozark theme park.
Q 10Which 1962 satellite relayed the first transatlantic television pictures?
Telstar
Telstar. It fell silent within months, probably crippled by radiation from American nuclear weapons tests high above the Earth.
Q 11The Jetsons holds what distinction in ABC's history?
First programme broadcast in colour
First programme broadcast in colour. Hardly anyone saw it that way in 1962, when few homes had colour sets and few ABC stations could transmit it, and the show lasted a single season.
Q 12Steptoe and Son's rag-and-bone men lived at 26a Oil Drum Lane in which part of London?
Shepherd's Bush
Shepherd's Bush. The series grew out of 'The Offer', a one-off play that Ray Galton and Alan Simpson wrote for Comedy Playhouse after their partnership with Tony Hancock ended.
Q 13Who presented the BBC's ground-breaking 1962-63 satire show That Was the Week That Was?
David Frost
Q 21The Addams Family sitcom of 1964 was based on cartoons from which magazine?
The New Yorker
The New Yorker. Charles Addams's cartoon family went nameless for decades; Gomez and Pugsley only got their names when the television series needed them.
Q 22Which actor replaced the ailing original Darrin in Bewitched for its final three seasons?
Dick Sargent
Dick Sargent. Dick York was in crippling pain from a back injury suffered filming a 1959 western, and writers had already been sending Darrin away on business to cover his absences.
Q 23Which suave agent of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. was co-conceived by the creator of James Bond?
Napoleon Solo
David Frost. When the BBC scheduled repeats of The Third Man straight after the show to stop it overrunning, he read out their plots on air until the repeats were dropped.
Q 14Doctor Who's 1963 debut aired eighty seconds late because of news about what?
The assassination of John F. Kennedy
The assassination of John F. Kennedy. Fearing the news and a run of power cuts had cost it viewers, the BBC showed the first episode again a week later, just before the second.
Q 15In The Fugitive, Dr Richard Kimble hunts the real killer of his wife, a man distinguished by what?
One arm
One arm. When Kimble finally cornered the one-armed man in the 1967 finale, nearly half of all American homes with a television were watching.
Q 16The Beatles' live American television debut, watched by about 73 million in February 1964, came on which show?
The Ed Sullivan Show
The Ed Sullivan Show. Seeing some 1,500 screaming fans greet the band at London's airport in October 1963 convinced Sullivan to pursue a booking.
Q 17The first Top of the Pops, in 1964, came from a converted chapel in which northern English city?
Manchester
Manchester. Stars had to travel up from London to mime in a former Methodist chapel in Rusholme until the BBC moved the show south.
Q 18Ready Steady Go! opened every Friday evening with which slogan?
The weekend starts here!
The weekend starts here! Manfred Mann wrote the show a new theme as a countdown to launch it, and '5-4-3-2-1' became the band's first hit.
Q 19Gilligan's Island's castaways left Honolulu on the SS Minnow for how long a tour?
Three hours
Three hours. The wrecked boat was reputedly named to mock Newton Minow, the broadcasting regulator who in 1961 had called American television a 'vast wasteland'.
Q 20The Munsters lived at what address?
1313 Mockingbird Lane
1313 Mockingbird Lane. The mansion survives on the Universal lot, where it was remodelled to play a neighbour's house on Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives.
Napoleon Solo. Ian Fleming supplied the name, then withdrew when the Bond film producers objected, and the pilot's title, Ian Fleming's Solo, had to go.
Q 24The 1964 'Daisy' political advertisement, aired only once, was made for which presidential candidate's campaign?
Lyndon B. Johnson
Lyndon B. Johnson. The spot never named Barry Goldwater: a girl counting daisy petals gave way to a countdown and a nuclear blast, and news programmes replayed it after it was pulled.
Q 25Which ABC prime-time soap, shown up to three nights a week from 1965, made stars of Mia Farrow and Ryan O'Neal?
Peyton Place
Peyton Place. Farrow quit in 1966 at the urging of Frank Sinatra, whom she married that July, and her character was written out by having her walk out of town and disappear.
Q 26Merv Griffin's Jeopardy! debuted in 1964 with which original host?
Art Fleming
Art Fleming. Merv Griffin said the format came from his wife: with networks wary after the quiz-show scandals, why not hand contestants the answers and have them supply the questions?
Q 27I Dream of Jeannie's Tony Nelson, played by Larry Hagman, worked for which organisation?
NASA
NASA. Tony lived in Cocoa Beach, beside the Florida launch pads, yet the show was filmed in California and its cast visited the real town only twice, both times in 1969.
Q 28Get Smart was created by Buck Henry and which comedy legend?
Mel Brooks
Mel Brooks. With spy shows everywhere after James Bond, producer Daniel Melnick of Talent Associates paired him with Henry to send the whole genre up.
Q 29Which Gerry Anderson puppet series named its five hero brothers after America's Mercury astronauts?
Thunderbirds
Thunderbirds. Gerry Anderson got the idea from a 1963 West German mine disaster, in which the drill needed to reach the trapped men took hours to arrive by train.
Q 30Hogan's Heroes was set in which fictional German prisoner-of-war camp?
Stalag 13
Stalag 13. Werner Klemperer, who came from a Jewish family, agreed to play its commandant, Colonel Klink, only on condition that Klink was a fool who never came out on top.