Matlock Trivia
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This Matlock trivia quiz has 48 free questions with answers and covers the original 1986 to 1995 series and the 2024 CBS reboot. On the Andy Griffith side: Ben's grey suits and grey Crown Victorias, the hot dogs and the $100,000 retainer, daughter Charlene, partners Michelle Thomas and Cliff Lewis, investigators Tyler Hudson and Conrad McMasters, DA Julie March, Don Knotts next door, the move from NBC to ABC and from California to Wilmington, and the Jake and the Fatman spin-off. There is a round on Griffith himself, from Mount Airy to Broadway to A Face in the Crowd, and a round on Kathy Bates's Madeline "Matty" Matlock and the firm of Jacobson Moore. Questions start easy (what does Ben eat?) and climb to the details for people who watched every rerun. Difficulty is marked on every question. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on both series and on Andy Griffith, and each question shows its citation.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is Ben Matlock's profession?
Defense attorney
Defense attorney Ben Matlock wins by finding the real killer: most episodes end with him cross-examining a witness until the culprit is exposed on the stand.
Q 02In which city does Ben Matlock practise law?
Atlanta
Atlanta. Matlock lives outside the city in a modest farmhouse and likes to walk the crime scene himself, which is usually where he spots the clue everyone else overlooked.
Q 03Matlock debuted on which network in March 1986?
NBC
NBC ordered the show after its programming chief Brandon Tartikoff saw Griffith play a lawyer in the 1984 miniseries Fatal Vision; a pilot film aired that March and the weekly series followed in the autumn.
Q 04Before creating Matlock, Dean Hargrove won an Emmy for his work on which 1970s detective series?
Columbo
Columbo. Hargrove believed hit shows are defined by one name, 'Lucy, Archie Bunker, Columbo, J.R.', and said he tailored series to their stars, which is how Matlock came to be built around Andy Griffith.
Q 05What colour suit does Ben Matlock almost always wear?
Light grey
Light grey, every time: Griffith said he knew from the start that Matlock 'would wear the same suit all the time', and he found the character so 'cheap and vain' at first that he pushed for rewrites.
Q 06What is Ben Matlock's favourite food?
Hot dogs
Hot dogs. Matlock charges premium fees yet eats like a man on a budget: for all his apparent wealth, the show writes him as something of a cheapskate.
Q 07What retainer does the famously frugal Matlock usually charge his clients?
$100,000
$100,000 is the standard retainer, but Matlock keeps bending it: one early client pays with her engagement ring, and he takes several cases for nothing.
Q 08Which car does Ben Matlock drive throughout the series?
A grey Ford Crown Victoria
A grey Ford Crown Victoria, swapped for a newer one as the years passed but never for anything flashier: a plain family sedan for one of the priciest lawyers in town.
Q 09From which law school did Ben Matlock graduate?
Harvard
Harvard Law School trained the man behind the folksy manner, a contrast the show leans on: opponents see a slow-talking country lawyer and meet a formidable cross-examiner.
Q 10In which animated sitcom do rival candidates for mayor court elderly voters by promising a 'Matlock Expressway'?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons. In 'Sideshow Bob Roberts' the winner then routes the new road straight through the Simpsons' own house and gives the family 72 hours to get out.
Q 11In which drama does a hustling lawyer copy Ben Matlock's look and folksy manner to win over elderly clients?
Better Call Saul
Better Call Saul: in the first-season episode 'Alpine Shepherd Boy', Jimmy McGill studies Matlock on TV, then works a retirement home handing out gelatin cups printed with his name and a slogan about wills.
Q 12Where does Matlock meet his second law partner, Michelle Thomas, at the start of season two?
London
London. Ben is in England for a murder trial when he meets Michelle, an American lawyer working there, and she follows him home as his new partner; Nancy Stafford had first auditioned to play his daughter.
Q 13Investigator Conrad McMasters, played by Clarence Gilyard Jr., had which two former careers?
Q 21Which CBS series was spun off from a two-part season-one Matlock episode called "The Don"?
Jake and the Fatman
Jake and the Fatman grew out of William Conrad's guest turn as a prosecutor in 'The Don'; renamed McCabe, the character got his own series a year later, and that show in turn launched Diagnosis: Murder.
Q 22Soon after Matlock ended, Andy Griffith played the villain General Rancor opposite Leslie Nielsen in which film?
Spy Hard
Spy Hard. Griffith said he did not want the part, so he demanded more than double the fee on offer for a week's work; the producers called back the same day and agreed.
Q 23Which production outfit, named for a former network president, produced Matlock with Viacom?
Deputy sheriff and rodeo rider
Deputy sheriff and rodeo rider Conrad McMasters took over Matlock's undercover legwork in season four, once joining a circus as a roustabout; Gilyard had just played the terrorists' computer expert, Theo, in Die Hard.
Q 14Which series did Clarence Gilyard leave Matlock to join in 1993?
Walker, Texas Ranger
Walker, Texas Ranger made Gilyard Ranger Jimmy Trivette, partner to Chuck Norris, for the whole of that show's run; he still came back to Matlock for one farewell guest appearance in season eight.
Q 15Which Andy Griffith Show co-star turned up on Matlock as neighbour Les "Ace" Calhoun?
Don Knotts
Don Knotts got the part because Griffith went to the producers and told them he wanted him; Ace Calhoun first appears as a client, accused of murdering the salesman who sold him a dud used car.
Q 16Brynn Thayer joined the regular cast in season seven as Leanne MacIntyre, who is what to Ben?
His older daughter
His older daughter, never mentioned before, first turns up in the season-six finale; earlier that same season Brynn Thayer had played a wealthy widow whom Ben defended and fell for.
Q 17Who played Jerri Stone, the private investigator of Matlock's final season?
Carol Huston
Carol Huston's Jerri Stone was Matlock's last investigator, following Tyler Hudson and Conrad McMasters; like them she went undercover, once posing with Ben as a video-dating customer to find a murderer.
Q 18Which president gave Andy Griffith the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
George W. Bush
George W. Bush joked in November 2005 that his day had already included the Dalai Lama 'and the Sheriff of Mayberry'; Muhammad Ali collected the same medal at that ceremony.
Q 19Where was Matlock filmed for its first six seasons?
California
California hosted the shoot for six seasons, which meant a cross-country commute for Griffith from his home on the North Carolina coast until filming was moved closer to him.
Q 20When Matlock moved to ABC, production shifted to studios in which North Carolina city?
Wilmington
Wilmington took over for the last three seasons to spare Griffith a long commute, and its downtown federal building became the courthouse viewers saw on screen.
The Fred Silverman Company
The Fred Silverman Company was set up after Silverman, who had held top jobs at all three big networks, left the last of them in 1981; five years on, his new firm handed that same network a hit in Matlock.
Q 24Matlock's format is closest to which earlier legal series, whose 1980s TV films came from the same creator?
Perry Mason
Perry Mason struck Dean Hargrove, who revived him in TV films from 1985, as 'rather narrow': no home life ever reached the screen. So Hargrove gave Matlock a daughter, a temper and jokes.
Q 25Which Matlock cast member later created the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine?
Kari Lizer
Kari Lizer, Matlock's Cassie Phillips, moved behind the camera as a producer on Will & Grace, then created The New Adventures of Old Christine, which won Julia Louis-Dreyfus a 2006 Emmy.
Q 26Which actor played Dr. Mark Sloan opposite Matlock in the Diagnosis: Murder crossover?
Dick Van Dyke
Dick Van Dyke had been on Matlock before: in the very first weekly episode he played a judge, an old friend of Ben's, whom Matlock ends up exposing as the killer. A decade later the two met as allies.
Q 27Which country star made his TV acting debut as Billy Wheeler, a hitchhiker Ben Matlock hires to paint his house?
Randy Travis
Randy Travis. Frugal as ever, Ben takes the hitchhiker on as cheap labour; Travis returned a season later as the same character, now a lottery winner whom Matlock must clear of murder.
Q 28Andy Griffith shared a 2008 CMA award for starring in which country singer's video 'Waitin' on a Woman'?
Brad Paisley
Brad Paisley asked Griffith to play the old man on the bench because, he felt, the actor's personality matched the character's; Griffith speaks the old man's lines in the video.
Q 29Andy Griffith was born in 1926 in which North Carolina town?
Mount Airy
Mount Airy, widely seen as the model for Mayberry, renamed its stretch of U.S. Highway 52 the Andy Griffith Parkway, and he came home in 2002 for the dedication.
Q 30Andy Griffith's 1953 comic monologue has a country parson trying to make sense of what?
A football game
A football game. Griffith's bewildered preacher sold so many copies of 'What It Was, Was Football' that a major label reissued it, and within a year he was performing on The Ed Sullivan Show.