British TV & Film Trivia
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48 free British TV & Film trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
British screens have a way of turning the small and the odd into the unforgettable: a channel launch wrecked by a power cut, a cheese rescued by a plasticine inventor, a film its own director pulled from cinemas, and a quiz show born from a wartime interrogation. This quiz gathers fifty of those stories, and every question carries a clue for the player who does not know the answer cold. The fifty questions range across the Ealing comedies and David Lean, the sitcoms whose catchphrases everyone still quotes, Saturday-night quiz shows and satire, the kitchen-sink dramas of the 1960s and 1980s, and the films that took Britain to the Oscars and the top of the box office. Expect Bond and Doctor Who, Python and Potter, plus a few deep cuts for the person who always takes the TV round. It works for a pub quiz night, a family Christmas or a long train journey, and each answer comes with a short explanation so the arguments can be settled on the spot. Play it on your phone with instant scoring, or print the sheet for the table.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which film about a Hounslow Sikh girl was the first Western film aired on North Korean TV?
Bend It Like Beckham
Bend It Like Beckham aired on North Korean state TV on Boxing Day 2010, billed by Britain's ambassador as the first Western-made film ever shown there. Keira Knightley's breakout role was Jess's teammate Jules.
Q 02Which North Yorkshire cheese's flagging sales were revived by the devotion of Aardman's inventor Wallace?
Wensleydale
Wensleydale sales were so low in the 1990s that production in the dale was at risk, and a staff idea to use Wallace and Gromit as mascots helped save the creamery.
Q 03Edgar Wright's Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End form a trilogy named after which ice cream?
Cornetto
The Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy takes its name from a passing Cornetto reference in each film, beginning with Ed's hangover cone in Shaun of the Dead. Wright has said he used Cornettos as a hangover cure himself.
Q 04Which sitcom about Shepherd's Bush rag-and-bone men was remade in America starring Redd Foxx?
Steptoe and Son
Steptoe and Son grew out of a 1962 Comedy Playhouse episode by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson, and was also remade in Sweden, the Netherlands, Portugal and South Africa. Albert and Harold traded from 26a Oil Drum Lane.
Q 05Who is the only person with Oscars for both acting, in Howards End, and screenwriting, for Sense and Sensibility?
Emma Thompson
Emma Thompson spent five years writing the Sense and Sensibility screenplay, and her Best Actress win for Howards End had come three years earlier.
Q 06Which 1971 film did Stanley Kubrick withdraw from British release, keeping it legally unavailable there until after his death?
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange was withdrawn in 1973 at Kubrick's request after it was blamed for copycat violence, and only returned to UK cinemas, video and DVD after he died. Novelist Anthony Burgess had mixed feelings about the adaptation.
Q 07Which Beatle narrated the first two series of Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends when it launched on ITV in 1984?
Ringo Starr
Ringo Starr was picked by producer Britt Allcroft for his voice, not his Beatles fame, and he later played Mr. Conductor in the US spin-off Shining Time Station.
Q 08Which 1997 comedy about six jobless Sheffield men turned strippers was Britain's top-grossing film until Titanic?
The Full Monty
The Full Monty was shot mostly around Sheffield in April 1996 and held the UK box-office record until Titanic outsold it. Four of its six redundant men are former steelworkers, led by Gaz, who needs money to keep seeing his son.
Q 09Which 1996 Danny Boyle film of an Irvine Welsh novel follows Edinburgh heroin addict Mark Renton?
Trainspotting
Trainspotting gave Kelly Macdonald her film debut and Ewan McGregor his breakout as Renton, and was followed by the sequel T2 Trainspotting in 2017. Renton shares his Leith life with Sick Boy, Spud and the psychopathic Begbie.
Q 10Which 1981 Best Picture winner follows runners Eric Liddell and Harold Abrahams to the 1924 Paris Olympics?
Chariots of Fire
Chariots of Fire won four Oscars, including Best Original Score for Vangelis's electronic theme, and takes its title from a line in William Blake's poem sung as the hymn 'Jerusalem'. Liddell ran for God, Abrahams to overcome prejudice.
Q 11Which 2000 film follows a Durham miner's son who swaps boxing for ballet during the 1984 strike?
Billy Elliot
Billy Elliot stars 13-year-old Jamie Bell as the 11-year-old Billy, with Julie Walters as the ballet teacher and Gary Lewis as the father who objects to male dancers. A stage musical followed, reaching Broadway in 2008.
Q 12Which 1969 caper ends with Michael Caine's gang and their gold teetering in a coach over an Alpine cliff?
The Italian Job
The Italian Job's never-resolved cliffhanger leaves the crew balancing the coach as the gold slides towards the drop, after a heist through Turin in red, white and blue Mini Coopers. Caine's 'blow the bloody doors off' became a cult line.
Q 13Which 1968 musical about a flying car was adapted from a children's novel by James Bond creator Ian Fleming?
Q 21Which 1973 folk horror sends Sergeant Howie to Summerisle, where Christopher Lee's laird leads the pagan islanders?
The Wicker Man
The Wicker Man's Edward Woodward plays a devout Christian policeman hunting a missing girl, Rowan Morrison, among islanders who have abandoned Christianity for Celtic paganism.
Q 22Which 1987 comedy sends two unemployed actors to a rich uncle's Lake District cottage for a miserable holiday?
Withnail and I
Withnail and I is loosely based on writer-director Bruce Robinson's own late-1960s life, with Richard Griffiths as the wealthy, eccentric Uncle Monty. Richard E. Grant has said he was 'violently sick' after every drink he took for the role.
Q 23Which 1964 epic about the 1879 defence of Rorke's Drift gave Michael Caine his first major film role?
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang began as the bedtime stories Ian Fleming told his small son, written up as a novel after his 1961 heart attack. Bond producer Albert Broccoli filmed it with a screenplay co-written by Roald Dahl.
Q 14Which double act's 1976 hardware-shop sketch turns on a customer apparently asking for 'fork handles'?
The Two Ronnies
The Two Ronnies' 'Four Candles' was inspired by a real mix-up in a Hayes hardware shop, whose owners sent it in as possible material. Ronnie Corbett played the increasingly frustrated shopkeeper, Ronnie Barker the customer.
Q 15Which sitcom's grumpy early retiree Victor Meldrew, played by Richard Wilson, exclaimed 'I don't believe it!'?
One Foot in the Grave
One Foot in the Grave's Richard Wilson disliked saying 'I don't believe it!' and only performs the line for charity events, for a small fee. Creator David Renwick had considered Les Dawson for Meldrew after Wilson first turned it down.
Q 16Which Broadchurch star became the first woman to play the Doctor in Doctor Who, succeeding Peter Capaldi in 2017?
Jodie Whittaker
Jodie Whittaker's Thirteenth Doctor was announced on 16 July 2017 and she formally took over in the Christmas special 'Twice Upon a Time'. She had already worked with incoming showrunner Chris Chibnall on Broadchurch.
Q 17In which 1949 Ealing comedy does Alec Guinness play all eight members of the doomed D'Ascoyne family?
Kind Hearts and Coronets
Kind Hearts and Coronets has Dennis Price's Louis Mazzini murdering his way up the line of succession to a dukedom, with Guinness playing every D'Ascoyne in his path. Time magazine listed it among the 100 best films since 1923.
Q 18In which 1955 Ealing comedy does a robbery gang posing as a string quintet lodge with elderly Mrs Wilberforce?
The Ladykillers
The Ladykillers' Professor Marcus, played by Alec Guinness with Alastair Sim in mind, plans a security-van raid from the old lady's subsiding house over a King's Cross railway tunnel. Peter Sellers and Herbert Lom are in his gang.
Q 19Which 1949 thriller, the BFI's greatest British film, has Orson Welles's Harry Lime flee through Vienna's sewers?
The Third Man
The Third Man topped the British Film Institute's 1999 poll of the greatest British films, shot among the ruins of Allied-occupied Vienna. Joseph Cotten's pulp novelist arrives to find his friend Lime apparently dead.
Q 20Which 1945 David Lean romance set in a station refreshment room runs on Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto?
Brief Encounter
Brief Encounter was shot largely at Carnforth station in Lancashire, then a junction on the London, Midland and Scottish Railway, and grew from Noël Coward's one-act play Still Life. Time Out's 2017 poll ranked it 12th-best British film.
Zulu
Zulu stars Stanley Baker and introduced Caine in a role that brought him international fame; it premiered on the battle's 85th anniversary, 22 January 1964. A 2017 Time Out poll ranked it the 93rd-best British film.
Q 24Which 1957 David Lean POW epic has its British captives whistle the 'Colonel Bogey March' into camp?
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Bridge on the River Kwai was the highest-grossing film of 1957, adapted from Pierre Boulle's novel, and the whistled march became its signature. One real Kwai POW said nobody whistled it in Thailand: 'We hadn't much breath left.'
Q 25Which comic starred in 26 of the 31 Carry On films and was a Just a Minute panellist for 20 years?
Kenneth Williams
Kenneth Williams kept diaries throughout his life that won acclaim after his death in 1988, and joined Just a Minute from its second series in 1968. He sometimes described himself as Welsh, citing his parents' surnames and origins.
Q 26Which 1983 Bill Forsyth film sends a Houston oilman to buy a Highland village, with Burt Lancaster as his boss?
Local Hero
Local Hero's Felix Happer, an amateur astronomer, picks Mac MacIntyre for his Scottish-sounding surname and tells him to watch the skies over Ferness for anything unusual. Lancaster's $2 million fee was almost a third of the budget.
Q 27Which Cardiff-set Doctor Who spin-off starred John Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness?
Torchwood
Torchwood was first used as a decoy title on Doctor Who's 2005 series tapes so they would not be intercepted, and that anagram of Doctor Who became the name of the adult-oriented spin-off. Captain Jack Harkness leads its Cardiff team.
Q 28Which sitcom character was inspired by Torquay hotelier Donald Sinclair, who was rude to the Monty Python team?
Basil Fawlty
Basil Fawlty grew from Donald Sinclair, who criticised Terry Gilliam's 'too American' table manners and put Eric Idle's bag outside, fearing a bomb.
Q 29Which 1979 BBC serial has Alec Guinness's George Smiley hunt a Soviet mole at the top of 'the Circus'?
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy won Guinness a BAFTA and was followed by Smiley's People in 1982; Smiley has been forced into retirement after Operation Testify, a failed mission in Czechoslovakia. It adapts John le Carré's 1974 novel.
Q 30Which Only Fools and Horses road sweeper claims his 20-year-old broom has had 17 new heads and 14 new handles?
Trigger
Trigger's broom has become another name for the Ship of Theseus paradox, and Del Boy says the nickname comes from his resemblance to a horse. He is a Nag's Head regular who appeared in the very first episode and throughout the show's run.