Barney Miller Trivia
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48 free Barney Miller trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Barney Miller ran on ABC from 1975 to 1982 and almost never left the squad room of Greenwich Village's fictional 12th Precinct. This quiz covers the whole run: Captain Miller and his detectives, the pilot that aired under a different title, the theme's famous bass line, the Fish spin-off, the episodes that broke the one-set rule, the awards, and the real police officers who still call it the most realistic cop show ever made. Easy questions ask which network aired it, who played Barney and what Yemana was famous for making badly. Harder ones get into Abe Vigoda's audition, Jack Soo's final episodes, Barbara Barrie's disappearing wife, the aborted Wojo spin-off, and why the show stopped taping in front of a live audience. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on the series, its spin-off and its cast, and each question shows its source once you have answered.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In the Barney Miller episode "Hash", which home-baked treat does Wojo bring in to share with the squad?
Brownies
Brownies baked by Wojo's new girlfriend turn out to be laced with hashish, and the detectives who eat them end up stoned on duty.
Q 02Barney Miller's detectives worked out of which fictional NYPD precinct?
The 12th
The 12th Precinct met its end in the 1982 finale: its station house is declared a landmark and sold off, and the detectives are reassigned to other precincts.
Q 03In Barney Miller's three-part finale, an antique gun found in the station house is traced to which former president?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt had been New York's police commissioner, so the find makes the building a landmark, and the city sells it, scattering the squad.
Q 04Which Manhattan neighborhood was home to Barney Miller's station house?
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village was only the setting: the series was taped across the country in a Hollywood television studio.
Q 05Which actor played the big-hearted Detective "Wojo" Wojciehowicz in all eight seasons of Barney Miller?
Max Gail
Max Gail's Wojo cared too much to sit still: on learning New York had no citywide evacuation plan for an emergency, he panicked on the whole city's behalf.
Q 06Which Barney Miller squad member was known for making terrible coffee?
Nick Yemana
Nick Yemana's lousy coffee became such a running joke that his mug and desk nameplate went on display at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.
Q 07What was the title of Detective Ron Harris's successful police novel on Barney Miller?
Blood on the Badge
Blood on the Badge brought Harris money and trouble: a lawyer sued him for libel over how the novel portrayed him, and Harris lost.
Q 08Which Barney Miller detective was the squad's deadpan intellectual, ready with a learned answer on almost any subject?
Arthur Dietrich
Arthur Dietrich's actor, Steve Landesberg, had turned up on the show a few months before his debut as the detective, playing a con man posing as a priest.
Q 09Which actor played the dapper, novel-writing Detective Harris on Barney Miller?
Ron Glass
Ron Glass, a devout Buddhist off screen, later swapped the detective's tailored suits for a Christian preacher's collar as Shepherd Book on Firefly.
Q 10On Barney Miller, Officer Carl Levitt kept reminding the captain that he was available for what?
Detective work
Detective work was Levitt's obsession: he used his mail rounds to angle for plainclothes assignments, and his persistence finally won him part-time work with the squad.
Q 11The 1978 Barney Miller episode "Inauguration" unfolds on the day which real New York mayor takes office?
Ed Koch
Ed Koch's big day brings Harris a tempting offer: a permanent place on the new mayor's security detail.
Q 12Before joining Barney Miller as Officer Levitt, Ron Carey guested as jewel thief Angelo Molinari, known by what nickname?
The Mole
The Mole led Harris and Wojo on a chase through the sewers; the 5-foot-4 Carey then came back on the right side of the law, playing Levitt for six seasons.
Q 13In Barney Miller's two-part "Contempt", Captain Miller is jailed for refusing to do what?
Name an informant
Q 21Which actress left her recurring role as Barney Miller's Detective Janice Wentworth to star in her own CBS sitcom?
Linda Lavin
Linda Lavin left when her pilot for Alice sold; Wentworth, who had gone undercover as Wojo's wife, was seen again only in a flashback in the finale.
Q 22Which Barney Miller cast member had played the doomed mobster Tessio in The Godfather?
Abe Vigoda
Abe Vigoda won the part of Fish at an audition where the producer looked him over and told him he looked like he had hemorrhoids; "What are you, a doctor or a producer?" he shot back.
Q 23Which magazine mistakenly described the actor who played Barney Miller's Fish as dead in 1982?
People
Name an informant: Barney will not give one up in a drug case, is jailed for contempt of court, and Harris happily takes charge of the squad room while he is away.
Q 14Which producer co-created Barney Miller with Theodore J. Flicker and ran the show for all eight seasons?
Danny Arnold
Danny Arnold had worked nightclubs as a comic himself, befriended Jack Soo on that circuit, and years later cast his old friend as the squad's Yemana.
Q 15The Barney Miller theme opens with a distinctive line on which instrument?
Electric bass
Electric bass was what session player Chuck Berghofer had with him at the pilot's recording; asked by a producer to open a show about a New York cop, he improvised the line.
Q 16In Barney Miller's two-part "Quarantine", the squad room is sealed overnight because a collapsed suspect may have which disease?
Smallpox
Smallpox is the fear, though it may only be chickenpox, and the overnight wait leaves cops, suspects and visitors getting on one another's nerves.
Q 17In Barney Miller's "Dietrich's Arrest", the detective defies regulations and is locked up for joining which kind of protest?
An anti-nuclear rally
An anti-nuclear rally lands Dietrich in his own precinct's cell, where his colleague Harris is handed the job of booking him.
Q 18Which future Diff'rent Strokes star played one of the foster kids on the Barney Miller spin-off Fish?
Todd Bridges
Todd Bridges had already faced Barney's squad: in the first season he played an 8-year-old stick-up kid on whom the captain's wife makes a citizen's arrest.
Q 19Which actress played Fish's wife Bernice on both Barney Miller and its spin-off Fish?
Florence Stanley
Florence Stanley made the part her own, but in the season 2 episode that tried out the spin-off idea, Bernice was played, just once, by Doris Belack.
Q 20Which Barney Miller star reprised his role as the captain in a brief cameo on the spin-off Fish?
Hal Linden
Hal Linden's Captain Miller dropped in on a spin-off whose star was doing double duty: for several months Fish's actor worked on both series, until the detective retired from the squad in 1977.
People called him "the late Abe Vigoda" in a piece on the show's wrap party; he was alive, on stage in Calgary at the time, and lived until 2016.
Q 24On which sitcom did Gregory Sierra play Puerto Rican neighbor Julio Fuentes before becoming Barney Miller's Detective Chano Amengual?
Sanford and Son
Sanford and Son made Sierra's easygoing Julio the target of Fred's insults; he was later written out of Barney Miller to star in a short-lived emergency-room sitcom.
Q 25Barney Miller's Jack Soo spent part of World War II where?
Internment camp
Internment camp: Topaz, in Utah, held Soo and his family, and there he made a name entertaining his fellow internees at camp shows and dances.
Q 26How did the Barney Miller cast salute Jack Soo to close their 1979 retrospective episode?
They raised their coffee cups
They raised their coffee cups to end an unscripted episode in which the cast, out of character, traded stories about Soo, who had died of cancer that January.
Q 27In the Barney Miller episode "The Sighting", what does Wojo tell Barney he saw?
A UFO
A UFO near Staten Island is Wojo's excuse when Barney asks why he has turned up late for work.
Q 28Which soap opera won Max Gail Daytime Emmys in 2019 and 2021, decades after Barney Miller?
General Hospital
General Hospital brought Gail in to play Mike Corbin, a mob boss's father who is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, and the role won him both awards.
Q 29Which old-timer, forever recalling his 1940s partners Kleiner, Foster and Brown, kept visiting the Barney Miller squad?
Inspector Luger
Inspector Luger lived so far in the past that, late in the series, he sent away for a mail-order bride, then tried to duck out once she arrived.
Q 30Barney Miller regular James Gregory played a McCarthy-like senator in which 1962 political thriller?
The Manchurian Candidate
The Manchurian Candidate cast Gregory as Senator John Iselin, a blustering front man whose wife does the scheming; on TV he had already played a real New York detective in The Lawless Years.