Goodnight Sweetheart
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50 free Goodnight Sweetheart trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Goodnight Sweetheart asked a question few sitcoms would dare: what if a bored husband in 1990s London found a shortcut to the 1940s, and to another woman? Across six series and a comeback special, Gary Sparrow juggled two lives, two homes and two sets of lies, with history itself waiting to trip him up. This quiz covers the whole story: how the double life begins, the friends who help and the friends who are fooled, the real wartime figures who wander into the plot, the recastings that changed the faces of both leading ladies, and the way it all ends. There are questions on the writers, the theme tune and the sitcom's afterlife too. It is pitched for anyone who watched on a weeknight in the nineties or has caught the repeats since. Casual viewers will find plenty they can answer, and the tough later questions are there for fans who remember every trip down the alley.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Only Fools and Horses star plays time traveller Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Nicholas Lyndhurst
Nicholas Lyndhurst was already famous as Rodney Trotter when he took the part. The writers felt only he could play Gary, because viewers would forgive him anything.
Q 02Gary Sparrow wows wartime drinkers in Goodnight Sweetheart by claiming he wrote songs by which band?
The Beatles
The Beatles supply much of Gary's 'own' material, which he plays on the pub piano years before any of it was written. Elton John hits get the same treatment.
Q 03Which politician does Gary Sparrow save from an assassin in Goodnight Sweetheart's original finale?
Clement Attlee
Clement Attlee, soon to be prime minister, is the guest speaker Gary rescues from a poisoner. Gary decides that saving him was the whole purpose of his travels, because the time portal then closes and strands him.
Q 04On his first trip back in Goodnight Sweetheart, what does Gary Sparrow take the wartime pub for?
A themed bar
A themed bar, done up in 1940s style, seems the obvious explanation to a man from 1993. Only when bombs start falling does he accept that he really has walked into 1940.
Q 05How does Gary Sparrow argue that he is not really a bigamist in Goodnight Sweetheart?
His wives live decades apart
His wives live decades apart, so Gary insists he is never married to two women at the same time. His best friend Ron is not persuaded by the technicality.
Q 06What name does Gary Sparrow give the wartime memorabilia shop he opens in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Blitz 'n' Pieces
Blitz 'n' Pieces sells 'antiques' that Gary simply carries home from wartime London. He opens it after losing his job, on the very spot where the time portal stands.
Q 07Which wartime entertainer and his wife try to buy a song from Gary Sparrow in Goodnight Sweetheart?
George Formby
George Formby and his organising wife are keen to add one of Gary's 'new' numbers to the act. Gary talks him out of it, because the tune really belongs to a band of the 1960s.
Q 08Goodnight Sweetheart's original run strands Gary Sparrow in the past amid which wartime event?
VE Day
VE Day finds Gary celebrating victory in Europe with Phoebe when the time portal shuts behind him. The writers stopped there because they felt the story needed the danger of war.
Q 09Goodnight Sweetheart's 2016 special reopens the time portal when Gary Sparrow holds which newborn?
Himself as a baby
Himself as a baby is what the midwife hands Gary, after he visits the hospital in 1962 to watch his own birth. The paradox flings him forward to 2016.
Q 10What is the name of the wartime pub where Gary Sparrow meets barmaid Phoebe in Goodnight Sweetheart?
The Royal Oak
The Royal Oak is run by Phoebe's father Eric when Gary first walks in. After Eric's death Phoebe takes over the running of it herself.
Q 11In Goodnight Sweetheart, what is Gary Sparrow's job when he first stumbles through the time portal?
TV repairman
TV repairman Gary is out on a routine call when he walks down a London alley and into 1940. He later swaps the job for a shop of his own.
Q 12What cover story does Gary Sparrow use to explain his absences to Phoebe in Goodnight Sweetheart?
He is a secret agent
He is a secret agent, Gary claims, and knowing how the war will unfold makes the lie convincing. MI5 eventually takes him at his word and sends him on a real mission.
Q 13Which trade lets Ron Wheatcroft supply Gary with wartime money and papers in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Printer
Q 21Which Dad's Army actor guest-starred in Goodnight Sweetheart as the grown-up son of Gary and Phoebe?
Ian Lavender
Ian Lavender, forever Private Pike, plays the couple's son as a man in his fifties who wanders into Gary's shop. Gary then alters the past to give him a better life.
Q 22What was the title of the one-off 2016 special that brought Goodnight Sweetheart back to the screen?
Many Happy Returns
Many Happy Returns opens on Gary's birthday in 1962 and soon hurls him forward to the present day. The sitcom's original creators wrote the script.
Q 23In what new form did Goodnight Sweetheart return in 2018, premiering at a theatre in Romford?
A stage musical
Printer Ron runs his own firm, so he can turn out white five-pound notes and identity papers to order. He is also the one person who knows where Gary really goes.
Q 14What job does dim but friendly Reg Deadman do in the wartime half of Goodnight Sweetheart?
Policeman
Policeman Reg is a regular at Phoebe's pub and believes every tall tale Gary tells him. His grandson, also in uniform, is the officer who points Gary towards the time portal in 1993.
Q 15The time portal that Gary Sparrow finds in Goodnight Sweetheart lies in which part of London?
The East End
The East End hides the portal, in an alley Gary enters during a routine call. When the alley is later built over, he buys the commercial unit that stands on the spot.
Q 16Which real playwright befriends Gary and Phoebe once they move upmarket in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Noël Coward
Noël Coward becomes a friend of the couple and even coaches Phoebe to polish her accent for their smart new address. He is a regular face in the final two series.
Q 17Which Irish actress, later Ballykissangel's landlady, first played Phoebe in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Dervla Kirwan
Dervla Kirwan played Phoebe for the first three series before the part was recast. She went from one screen pub to another, running Fitzgerald's bar as Assumpta.
Q 18Which writing duo, also behind Birds of a Feather, created Goodnight Sweetheart?
Marks and Gran
Marks and Gran wrote the whole first series themselves before a team of writers joined them. They resolved from the start never to explain why Gary can travel in time.
Q 19Which channel showed all six series of Goodnight Sweetheart and revived it for a 2016 special?
BBC One
BBC One first aired the sitcom in November 1993 and kept it until the original run ended in 1999. The 2016 return was part of a season celebrating classic sitcoms.
Q 20What name do Gary Sparrow and Phoebe give their wartime-born son in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Michael
Michael arrives at the end of the fourth series, a son who will grow up to be twenty years older than his own father. A later episode shows him in the 1990s as a man in his fifties.
A stage musical version opened at the Brookside Theatre in September 2018, mixing songs of the 1940s and the 1980s. The sitcom's writers had been talking about one for five years.
Q 24What kind of products make Yvonne Sparrow a millionaire by the later series of Goodnight Sweetheart?
Organic cosmetics
Organic cosmetics turn Yvonne from an ambitious employee into a celebrity businesswoman. She ends up selling her company for a multi-million-pound sum.
Q 25What is the name of the alley that hides Gary Sparrow's time portal in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Duckett's Passage
Duckett's Passage works for Gary alone at first: his best friend Ron cannot follow him through to 1940. The alley is later built over with a plaza, where Gary opens a shop to stay close to the portal.
Q 26In which smart London district do Gary and Phoebe take a luxury flat in Goodnight Sweetheart?
Mayfair
Mayfair gives the couple a grand new address, far from the pub where they met. In the 1990s the very same flat becomes a home for Ron, once Gary hands him the lease.
Q 27Which crooner's 1931 recording popularised the song that gave Goodnight Sweetheart its title?
Al Bowlly
Al Bowlly made the song a hit with Ray Noble's dance orchestra, and his records are heard through the early series. Gary and Phoebe even discuss his wartime death.
Q 28Gary Sparrow claims premonitions of which coming attack in Goodnight Sweetheart's Christmas special?
Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor is still to come when Gary travels to 1941 and tells a senior American he has foreseen it. Ron sets him off by suggesting someone may have swayed America's decisions before the attack.
Q 29A late Goodnight Sweetheart episode sees the time portal misfire, landing Gary Sparrow in which era?
Victorian
Victorian London greets Gary when he travels the wrong way from the 1940s, with Jack the Ripper on the loose. He learns the murderer has been hiding in what will become his shop's backyard.
Q 30What does Gary Sparrow do in Goodnight Sweetheart when Yvonne's new job means moving north?
He fakes his own suicide
He fakes his own suicide, with Ron's help, so he can vanish into 1941 rather than move to Macclesfield. Wartime life soon palls, and he slips home to find the note was never discovered.