Adam-12 Trivia
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38 free Adam-12 trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Adam-12 put viewers in the front seat of an LAPD black-and-white for seven seasons and 174 episodes, riding along with Pete Malloy and Jim Reed from 1968 to 1975. Jack Webb's insistence on real procedure made it the show that taught America what a Code 7 was, and its clipped radio calls are still instantly recognisable. This quiz covers the whole run: the cast and recurring officers, the meaning of the call sign 1-Adam-12, the Plymouths and the AMC Matador, how the driving scenes were filmed, badge numbers, crossovers with Dragnet and Emergency!, notable guest stars, why the series ended, and the 1990 revival. Easy questions handle the leads and the network; the hard ones dig into shop numbers, first episodes and Kent McCord's real name. Every answer has been checked against documented production history and the source is shown after each question.
30 of 38 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the call sign 1-Adam-12, what does the "12" identify?
The car's assigned patrol area
The car's assigned patrol area. The LAPD says no real unit ever carried that designation until 2003, when it put a 1-Adam-12 car on the street in the show's honour.
Q 02What is Jim Reed's status when Adam-12 begins?
A rookie on probation
A rookie on probation, out on his very first patrol. He ignores Malloy's orders on a shooting call, arrests the gunmen single-handed, and earns himself a partner for seven seasons.
Q 03Jack Webb's production company, which made Adam-12, was called what?
Mark VII Limited
Mark VII Limited, whose hammer-and-stamp logo closed every episode. Webb's shows stood so close to the LAPD that when he died in 1982 the department buried him with full police honours.
Q 04On which network did Adam-12 originally air?
NBC
NBC, for all seven seasons. The 1990 revival, by contrast, had no network at all: it was sold station by station in syndication.
Q 05For its first three seasons, every Adam-12 episode title began with which word?
Log
Log, followed by a number. The numbers were never in order, though: the pilot was number 1, and the very next episode to air was number 141.
Q 06In LAPD radio code, what does the 'Adam' in '1-Adam-12' signify?
A two-officer patrol unit
A two-officer patrol unit; 'Adam' is simply how LAPD radio says the letter A. An officer riding alone is an L, or 'Lincoln', which is why Sergeant MacDonald answers to 1-L-20.
Q 07Which real LAPD station did Malloy and Reed work from in Adam-12?
Rampart
Rampart, even though the call sign 1-Adam-12 marks a Central Division car: real Rampart units carry the prefix 2, not 1.
Q 08What make of car did Adam-12 drive in the pilot and first three seasons?
Plymouth Belvedere
Plymouth Belvedere. The pilot's car was a genuine LAPD cruiser on loan; after that the studio bought civilian models from dealers and dressed them to match department specifications.
Q 09From the fifth season onward, Adam-12's black-and-white was which model?
1972 AMC Matador
1972 AMC Matador, the model the real LAPD had just switched to. Jack Webb wanted the patrol car treated as a character in its own right, and this one kept the part until the final episode.
Q 10In Adam-12's first episode, what is Malloy planning to do before the night changes his mind?
To resign from the LAPD
To resign from the LAPD. Malloy is shaken by his partner's death in the line of duty, but a new partner's nerve on a shooting call that night persuades him to stay.
Q 11Which future Oscar winner appeared as a little girl in a 1970 Adam-12 episode about a missing child?
Jodie Foster
Jodie Foster. At seven she played the missing girl's playmate, one of a run of television parts that made her a screen veteran years before Taxi Driver.
Q 12Who played Sergeant 'Mac' MacDonald, the watch commander on Adam-12?
William Boyett
William Boyett. Jack Webb had used him as a policeman on Dragnet and cast him as the low-key but authoritative 'Mac', a part he kept for all seven seasons.
Q 13On Adam-12, Officer Ed Wells was played by the son of which famous crooner?
Bing Crosby
Bing Crosby. His son Gary played the wisecracking Wells, and Frank Sinatra's son worked the same beat: Frank Sinatra Jr. guest-starred three times, first as a hostage-taker and later as a fellow officer.
Q 21Before Adam-12, Martin Milner starred as Tod Stiles in which 1960s series?
Route 66
Route 66, filmed on the road all over North America as Tod and his buddy drifted from town to town in a Corvette. Milner then spent seven more seasons at the wheel of a patrol car.
Q 22Adam-12's Martin Milner made his screen debut in Life with Father at 14, then spent a year recovering from which disease?
Polio
Polio. He caught it within two weeks of finishing the picture; bedridden for the best part of a year, he recovered to spend most of his career behind the wheel of a Corvette and a patrol car.
Q 23While Malloy and Reed patrol in a sedan, Sergeant MacDonald always drives which version of the same car?
A station wagon
Q 14What did Jack Webb have removed from the patrol car on the first morning of shooting Adam-12's pilot?
The windshield
The windshield. Webb disliked the sky's reflections hiding his actors, but with the glass out their hair blew about, so it went back in under a purpose-built shade.
Q 15Adam-12 shares a fictional universe with Dragnet and which other Jack Webb series?
Emergency!
Malloy and Reed appeared in the Emergency! pilot movie, and the Emergency! cast turned up in the Adam-12 episode 'Lost and Found'.
Q 16In which 1989 TV movie did Milner and McCord reunite, playing former LAPD partners far from Los Angeles?
Nashville Beat
Nashville Beat. McCord, who also had a story credit, plays a Los Angeles cop visiting his old partner, now a police captain in Tennessee, and the two take on a gang together.
Q 17Which future NCIS star guest-starred as rookie Officer Gus Corbin in a late Adam-12 episode?
Mark Harmon
Mark Harmon, whose older sister was playing Reed's wife that season. His eager rookie loses his own gun in a foot chase and still brings the suspect in unarmed.
Q 18In a 1975 Adam-12 episode, Jo Ann Pflug's Officer Dana Hall is a woman assigned to what, unusually for the time?
Patrol duty
Patrol duty. Wells and the others jeer that the street is no place for a woman, but Reed treats his new partner as an equal and she holds her own on every call.
Q 19Which sketch-comedy show featured Milner and McCord in cameos as their Adam-12 characters?
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In
Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In. Milner and McCord dropped in several times as Malloy and Reed, mostly staying in character and trading quips from the front seat of their car.
Q 20After Adam-12, Martin Milner played the father in which short-lived 1975 adventure series?
The Swiss Family Robinson
The Swiss Family Robinson. Milner went straight from the patrol car to Irwin Allen's castaway series as Adam-12 ended, but where the police show ran seven seasons, the Robinsons lasted one.
A station wagon. As the field supervisor he carries the heavy equipment, including a riot gun that fires tear gas, which is why he turns up whenever a call becomes a stand-off.
Q 24Kent McCord became a close friend of which teen idol early in his career?
Rick Nelson
Rick Nelson. They met at a touch-football game in which Nelson captained one team and Elvis Presley the other, and the friendship led to McCord's first acting job, on the Nelsons' own sitcom.
Q 25After Adam-12, Kent McCord played Captain Troy in which sci-fi series?
Galactica 1980
Galactica 1980. His Captain Troy turns out to be Boxey, the small boy of the original Battlestar Galactica, now grown up and sent down to present-day Earth.
Q 26The lead of the 1990 Adam-12 revival, Officer Matt Doyle, was played by a son of which Hollywood legend?
John Wayne
John Wayne. Ethan Wayne, named after his father's character in The Searchers, had played the Duke's grandson in Big Jake as a boy before he inherited the famous patrol car.
Q 27Which TV host guest-starred on Adam-12 as a drag-strip owner who helps the officers get racers off the streets?
Dick Clark
Dick Clark. In 'Who Won?' Malloy and Reed fight illegal street racing by steering rival clubs onto his legal strip, where Reed ends up lining up against fellow officer Ed Wells.
Q 28Which Jack Webb project, due to feature Kent McCord, was abandoned when Webb died in 1982?
A third Dragnet series
A third Dragnet series. Webb spoke to McCord about the revival only days before his fatal heart attack that December, and the project died with him; accounts differ on the part McCord was to play.
Q 29Where were most scenes in Adam-12's earlier seasons filmed?
The Universal Studios lot
The Universal Studios lot. Its Colonial Street, known decades later as Wisteria Lane in Desperate Housewives, doubled for Los Angeles neighbourhoods until the show moved out onto real streets.
Q 30Adam-12's composer Frank Comstock also scored which cartoon?
Rocky and Bullwinkle
Rocky and Bullwinkle, in their first series, Rocky and His Friends. His police score was a world away from moose and squirrel: the music for Malloy's tribute to a fallen friend earned an Emmy nomination.