Murdoch Mysteries Trivia
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50 free Murdoch Mysteries trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Murdoch Mysteries trivia quiz covers the CBC detective drama from its 2004 origins as three Bravo TV movies to its renewal for a nineteenth season. It asks about Detective William Murdoch and his Station House No. 4 colleagues — Inspector Brackenreid, Dr. Julia Ogden, Constable Crabtree and the coroners and detectives who joined later — along with the Maureen Jennings novels behind it all, the real historical figures who keep turning up in Toronto, and the show's famous stunt casting, from a sitting prime minister to William Shatner as Mark Twain. Production questions cover Shaftesbury Films, the filming locations in Cambridge and Bristol, the move from Citytv to CBC, the web series and the musical episode. Early rounds suit casual viewers; later rounds reward fans who have watched all 300 episodes. Every answer was checked against encyclopaedia entries before publishing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who plays Detective William Murdoch in Murdoch Mysteries?
Yannick Bisson
Yannick Bisson has played him since 2008 and works behind the camera too: he made his directing debut with the season four episode Buffalo Shuffle.
Q 02When Murdoch Mysteries begins, what is Dr. Julia Ogden's job?
City coroner
City coroner Julia Ogden examines the bodies in Murdoch's early cases, then keeps reinventing herself: she later retrains as a psychiatrist and a surgeon.
Q 03Which author's Detective Murdoch novels inspired the TV series Murdoch Mysteries?
Maureen Jennings
Maureen Jennings modelled her hero on a real lawman: John Wilson Murray, who in 1875 became the province's first full-time government detective.
Q 04Murdoch Mysteries moved to CBC in 2013, but which Canadian network first aired it?
Citytv
Citytv launched the show in 2008 and dropped it after five seasons; CBC picked it up for the sixth, and there it found a much larger audience.
Q 05Under what title did Murdoch Mysteries air for years on the US network Ovation?
The Artful Detective
The Artful Detective was Ovation's own title for it; in 2019 the arts channel dropped the name and began showing season 12 under the original one.
Q 06What does Murdoch call fingerprints in the series?
Finger marks
Fingerprinting, blood testing and trace evidence were all unusual methods for the 1890s.
Q 07Which body of water does Murdoch search with a primitive sonar in one episode?
Lake Ontario
Lake Ontario holds the answer in a case about gold stolen during the American Civil War, so Murdoch builds the Graphizer, a box whose pencil arm draws sound waves from under the water.
Q 08Who plays Inspector Brackenreid in Murdoch Mysteries?
Thomas Craig
Thomas Craig came to acting late: he worked as a plumber from 16 to 22 before going to drama school, and was a Coronation Street regular before he became the inspector.
Q 09From which English county does the whisky-loving Inspector Brackenreid hail?
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is home for the actor too: Sheffield-born, he took his stage name from a Sheffield Wednesday footballer, and the inspector wears the club's tattoo on his arm.
Q 10Who plays Dr. Julia Ogden in Murdoch Mysteries?
Hélène Joy
Hélène Joy won the part on the strength of a smaller one: she had a supporting role in a 2004 Murdoch TV movie, and the novels' author pushed for her to play Ogden.
Q 11What career does Constable George Crabtree dream of in Murdoch Mysteries?
Mystery novelist
Mystery novelist is the dream, and he gets there: his first book, The Curse of the Pharaohs, comes out in season five, and by season 15 he is often away on book tours.
Q 12Which young doctor joins Murdoch Mysteries in season five as Dr. Ogden's protégée?
Dr. Emily Grace
Dr. Emily Grace soon catches Constable Crabtree's eye, then falls for suffragette Lillian Moss; after Lillian is murdered in season nine, she leaves to carry on the cause overseas.
Q 13Whom does Dr. Ogden marry in the season four finale, years before she weds Murdoch?
Dr. Darcy Garland
Q 21In Murdoch Mysteries, Crabtree's sweetheart Florence Nightingale Graham starts selling face cream under which famous name?
Elizabeth Arden
Elizabeth Arden really was born Florence Nightingale Graham, on a farm in Woodbridge, Ontario; in the show it is Crabtree who talks the nursing student into selling her cream.
Q 22Which faith sets Detective Murdoch apart from most of his colleagues in Murdoch Mysteries?
Catholicism
Catholicism makes him an outsider in Protestant Toronto: he crosses himself over each body he finds, and for years the faith keeps him from being made an inspector.
Q 23Who played Detective Murdoch in the three TV movies made before Murdoch Mysteries became a weekly series?
Peter Outerbridge
Dr. Darcy Garland was a colleague from her spell at a Buffalo children's hospital; she goes through with the wedding when Murdoch, busy freeing a prisoner, never comes to stop it.
Q 14Which detective transfers from Station House One in season ten and stays on at Station House 4?
Watts
Watts first turns up to reopen a murder case Murdoch closed twelve years earlier, then loses his place at his own station over personality conflicts he freely admits are his fault.
Q 15What is the title of the season 17 musical episode of Murdoch Mysteries?
Why Is Everybody Singing?
Why Is Everybody Singing? is Murdoch's own question: shot in the head and lying in a coma, his injured brain turns what people say at his bedside into song, and the cast did all their own singing.
Q 16Which real inventor helps Murdoch solve an electrocution in the very first episode of Murdoch Mysteries?
Nikola Tesla
Nikola Tesla steps in after a beauty queen dies at a public demonstration against alternating current; his experiment proves the switch she pulled had been tampered with.
Q 17Which actor plays Albert Choi, who becomes Murdoch's boss in season 18?
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee
Paul Sun-Hyung Lee, Appa on Kim's Convenience, plays the outsider brought in to run Station House 4 after Murdoch turns the inspector's job down.
Q 18To which post is Inspector Brackenreid promoted in the season 17 finale of Murdoch Mysteries?
Chief Constable of Toronto
Chief Constable of Toronto is an office he once fell foul of: in season nine a corrupt holder of the job had him arrested and demoted to a clerk in the city records.
Q 19Where does Dr. Ogden move with her daughter after season 17 of Murdoch Mysteries?
England
England takes her and young Susannah away while Murdoch stays in Toronto; when he visits in season 18, the two are promptly drawn into a murder investigation at a hotel.
Q 20Which architect appears in season 12 of Murdoch Mysteries to design the Murdochs' home?
Frank Lloyd Wright
Frank Lloyd Wright's avant-garde house has a rough start: the housewarming ends when a man is found cooked to death in Murdoch's closet-sized microwave prototype.
Peter Outerbridge had landed the lead in the sci-fi series ReGenesis by the time a weekly show was ordered, so the part had to be recast.
Q 24Which visiting author takes a sceptical Murdoch to a séance in season one of Murdoch Mysteries?
Arthur Conan Doyle
Arthur Conan Doyle is in Toronto to speak on spiritualism; the medium leads them to a murder victim's grave, yet Murdoch still exposes her as a fraud who researches her sitters.
Q 25Which British actress played Dr. Julia Ogden in the 2004 Murdoch TV movies?
Keeley Hawes
Keeley Hawes, then known for the BBC spy drama Spooks, was Ogden in the films only: when the weekly series followed, every regular part was recast.
Q 26Which Canadian awards gave Murdoch Mysteries 14 nominations in 2008 but only two wins?
Geminis
The Geminis went to its score and a guest actor that year; in 2012 they were folded together with film's Genie Awards into the Canadian Screen Awards.
Q 27In which English port city does an amnesiac Murdoch wake up in the season three opener?
Bristol
Bristol hosted the show's first filming outside Canada; Murdoch is hunted there as a killer and hidden by publican Anna Fulford, with whom he later learns he has a son.
Q 28Which Canadian prime minister played a clueless cop in a 2011 episode of Murdoch Mysteries?
Stephen Harper
Stephen Harper, a self-described fan who visited the set with his daughter, played a desk sergeant who fails to recognise the prime minister of the day, Wilfrid Laurier.
Q 29Constable Crabtree's many 'aunts', who raised him in Newfoundland, are each named after what?
Flowers
Flowers: Aunt Chrysanthemum and Aunt Oleander are two of them, and season seven reveals that the women who raised the foundling were prostitutes housed by a kindly reverend.
Q 30In Murdoch Mysteries, which future British prime minister wakes up hungover beside a murdered friend?
Winston Churchill
Winston Churchill is in Toronto to give a lecture and cannot recall the drunken night before, so Murdoch retraces his steps to clear him of running his friend through with a sword.