2000s TV Trivia
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This 2000s TV trivia quiz has 138 free questions with answers and covers the decade that turned television into appointment viewing: the HBO dramas (The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Six Feet Under), the network hits everyone talked about the next morning (Lost, 24, Grey's Anatomy, House, Desperate Housewives, Heroes, Prison Break), the comedies that still fill group chats (The Office, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm), the teen dramas of The WB and The CW, and the reality boom of Survivor, American Idol, The Amazing Race and The Osbournes. Questions range from easy ones anyone who owned a TV in the 2000s can answer (which street do the Desperate Housewives live on?) to Emmy records, cancelled-too-soon shows like Firefly and Pushing Daisies, and details only real fans will remember, like the call sign of a certain Battlestar commander. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia or a primary source, and each question links to the page that confirms it, so you can settle arguments as well as start them.
30 of 138 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which band's song plays over the abrupt cut-to-black final scene of The Sopranos in 2007?
Journey
Journey. Singer Steve Perry withheld permission for 'Don't Stop Believin'' until three days before the finale, fearing it would play over Tony's death, and agreed once David Chase reassured him.
Q 02Tony Soprano runs a Mafia crew based in which US state?
New Jersey
New Jersey. Creator David Chase grew up there, and he partly modelled Tony's outfit on the state's real DeCavalcante crime family.
Q 03Which actor played mob boss Tony Soprano in The Sopranos?
James Gandolfini
James Gandolfini. He wasn't the only one to read for Tony: rock guitarist Steven Van Zandt, who had never acted, auditioned too, and David Chase then wrote the part of Silvio for him.
Q 04David Simon's HBO drama The Wire is set in which American city?
Baltimore
Baltimore. Real local figures took small parts: Ed Norris, once the city's police commissioner, played a homicide detective who shares his name.
Q 05Season two of The Wire shifted its focus to which part of the city?
The port and its dockworkers
The port and its dockworkers. The season was built around the decline of the American working class: union stevedores short of work are drawn into smuggling through the shipping containers.
Q 06Before creating The Wire, David Simon worked as what?
Police reporter
Police reporter. Simon covered crime for his city's daily paper for over a decade and spent 1988 shadowing its homicide unit, which produced the book behind NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street.
Q 07The survivors in Lost were passengers on Flight 815 of which fictional airline?
Oceanic
Oceanic. The invented carrier is older than Lost: one of its jets is hijacked in the 1996 thriller Executive Decision, and that film's footage was reused by later productions.
Q 08The doomed flight in Lost was travelling between which two cities?
Sydney and Los Angeles
Sydney and Los Angeles. The wreck was real: a retired Lockheed airliner was bought, cut up and shipped to Hawaii, helping make the pilot episode the costliest ABC had made.
Q 09Lost won the Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series for which of its seasons?
Its first
Its first. ABC chief Lloyd Braun, who dreamed up the show, was fired before it aired, partly for approving so costly and risky a pilot; a year later it won television's top drama prize.
Q 10Who adapted Ricky Gervais's BBC sitcom The Office for NBC in 2005?
Greg Daniels
Greg Daniels. His pilot reworked the British first episode's script, and after a mixed first season his writers made boss Michael Scott more optimistic and likable.
Q 11The Dunder Mifflin branch in The Office is located in which Pennsylvania city?
Scranton
Scranton. After he was cast as Jim, John Krasinski travelled there to interview workers at real paper companies, and footage he shot on the trip is in the opening credits.
Q 12Jack Bauer works for which fictional Los Angeles agency in 24?
Counter Terrorist Unit
Counter Terrorist Unit. Co-creator Joel Surnow built the series on one idea: each episode is a single hour played in real time, so a 24-episode season covers exactly one day.
Q 13Which actor played federal agent Jack Bauer in the real-time thriller 24?
Kiefer Sutherland
Q 21Gilmore Girls premiered in October 2000 on which network?
The WB
It finished its run in 2007 on The CW, the network formed when The WB and UPN merged.
Q 22The O.C. is set in which wealthy Orange County community?
Newport Beach
Newport Beach. Little of it was shot there: penalties for filming outside Hollywood's studio zone meant the show was made mostly around Manhattan Beach, in Los Angeles County.
Q 23What is the name of the hybrid holiday Seth Cohen celebrates in The O.C.?
Chrismukkah
Chrismukkah. Seth says he created it at the age of six to merge the faiths of his Jewish father and Protestant mother, and the show carried the word into wider use.
Kiefer Sutherland. The series went into production before the September 11 attacks, which then pushed its premiere back a week to November 6, 2001.
Q 14What was the original name of the hospital in Grey's Anatomy?
Seattle Grace
Seattle Grace. After two renamings it became Grey Sloan Memorial, in memory of doctors Lexie Grey and Mark Sloan, who died after a plane crash at the end of season eight.
Q 15The title Grey's Anatomy is a pun on Meredith Grey's surname and what?
A classic medical textbook
A classic medical textbook. Henry Gray's Anatomy first appeared in 1858; its author died three years later at 34, having caught smallpox while treating his nephew, who survived.
Q 16Dr. Gregory House leads his diagnostic team at which fictional hospital?
Princeton–Plainsboro
Princeton–Plainsboro. Bryan Singer, the film director among the show's executive producers, chose the university town because it sits next to West Windsor, where he grew up.
Q 17The character of Gregory House was loosely modelled on which fictional detective?
Sherlock Holmes
Sherlock Holmes. The debt runs both ways: Conan Doyle modelled Holmes on a real doctor, the Edinburgh surgeon Joseph Bell, and House lives at 221B with a best friend named Wilson.
Q 18Who created the medical drama House?
David Shore
David Shore. A former lawyer from Canada, he pitched the show to Fox as a hospital whodunit in the style of CSI, in which, as he put it, the suspects were the germs.
Q 19Lorelai and Rory Gilmore live in which fictional Connecticut town?
Stars Hollow
Stars Hollow. Amy Sherman-Palladino invented it after a trip to the village of Washington, Connecticut, where she stayed at the Mayflower Inn; the town on screen was a set on a studio backlot in California.
Q 20In Gilmore Girls, Rory chooses which university, her grandfather's alma mater?
Yale
Yale. Rory had wanted Harvard her entire life, and only after weighing the two did she decide that the benefits of her grandfather's old college outweighed the dream.
Q 24Who narrates Arrested Development?
Ron Howard
Ron Howard. The show grew from his idea for a comedy shot like reality TV, with handheld cameras; he narrated it unseen and later appeared on screen as a fictionalised version of himself.
Q 25Which streaming service revived Arrested Development after Fox cancelled it in 2006?
Netflix
Netflix. Its 2013 revival released all 15 episodes at the same time, each one built around a single character because the busy cast could rarely be filmed together.
Q 26Who won the first season of Survivor in 2000?
Richard Hatch
Richard Hatch. The $1 million prize later put him in prison: he was found guilty in 2006 of failing to report his winnings to the tax authorities and served more than four years.
Q 27The American Survivor was derived from a reality show originally made in which country?
Sweden
Sweden. British producer Charlie Parsons couldn't sell his castaway format at home or in America, so it first reached the screen on Swedish television in 1997, as Expedition Robinson.
Q 28Who co-hosted the first season of American Idol alongside Ryan Seacrest?
Brian Dunkleman
Brian Dunkleman. A stand-up comic, he quit once the first season ended, leaving Ryan Seacrest as sole host, and later admitted that walking away had been a mistake.
Q 29Kelly Clarkson beat which runner-up in the first American Idol finale in September 2002?
Justin Guarini
Justin Guarini. The pair were then put in a 2003 beach musical, From Justin to Kelly, which failed at the box office; Clarkson has said she made it only because her contract obliged her to.
Q 30Simon Fuller's American singing contest on Fox was based on which British series?
Pop Idol
Pop Idol. It lasted only two series at home: judge Simon Cowell launched The X Factor in its place, and Simon Fuller took him to court over how alike the two shows were.