Calling a Spade a Spade Trivia Quiz

Answer: Private Investigator

Don't get confused here. Adrian Monk "used to be" a homicide detective for the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). Then his wife was murdered. This pushed him into having a mental breakdown, worsening his obsessive-compulsive disorder and getting him discharged from the force. He now has his own investigator license, which he uses to try and solve his wife's murder and he consults the SFPD on their unusual cases.

The character is loosely based on a combination of Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot and he may have either eidetic or photographic memory... he once claimed that he remembers his own birth (season 6/episode 3: "Mr. Monk and the Naked Man" 27 July, 2007). Tony Shalhoub played the "defective detective" with over 300 phobias in every episode of the show ("Monk"), which ran for eight seasons between 2002 and 2009.

Answer: Private Investigator

Benedict Cumberbatch plays Sherlock Holmes in the series title "Sherlock" that ran as four three-part series between 2010 and 2017. Based on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation, Holmes is a consulting detective, working on mysteries that are set in modern day London. At the start, he is not in the "good books" with the police. In fact, they are suspicious of him and his methods but, eventually, warm to him.

Holmes is assisted by his flatmate, Dr. John Watson, played by Martin Freeman. Watson was a member of the Royal Army Medical Corps and had been discharged from duty after a tour of duty in Afghanistan.

Answer: Private Investigator

The highly popular "The Rockford Files" was a detective series created by Roy Huggins and Stephen J. Cannell, which ran between 1974 and 1980. James Garner played Jim Rockford, a struggling PI who operates out of a mobile home in Malibu, California. There's a bit of a rogue element about Rockford as he is presented as an ex-convict, though it was for a crime that he didn't commit, and he was eventually pardoned. Despite the pardon there is still some devil about Jim as it is intimated that he was once a con man and, with that in mind, it is little wonder that he and the police do not along.

Roy Huggins, who created the television series "Maverick" (1957-64) character for Garner had the idea of creating a similar style lawman out of Rockford but set in modern times.

Answer: Private Investigator

"Veronica Mars" is a teen mystery drama series that launched in 2004, ran for four seasons and produced a movie that was released in 2014. Starring Kristen Bell as the eponymous title character, Mars is a student working her way through high school and then college. Between her studies and exams, she moonlights as a private investigator, assisted by her father, a private investigator and former Balboa County Sheriff.

Answer: Private Investigator

"Jessica Jones" comes from the Marvel stable of superheroes though, in Jessica's case, she is listed as an ex-super-hero. The reason being that, whilst she was under the spell of a supervillain named Kilgrave, she was compelled to kill an innocent. She, then, walked away from that life and set up her own detective agency called Alias Investigations. The past, however, is not far behind and she soon discovers, to her horror, that the antagonist in the first series is none other than Kilgrave himself.

Krysten Ritter portrays Jessica in three series that first launched in 2015.

Answer: Law Enforcement Officer

Peter Falk is Lieutenant Frank Columbo, a homicide detective who works for the Los Angeles Police Department. The series, "Columbo" ran, initially, for seven series between 1971 and 1978. There were two pilots that aired previously, in 1968 and 1971, and the series was followed by two separate seasons in 1989 and, in 1990, a tenth season commenced, however, this was made up of a series of episodes and specials that were run at irregular screenings through to 2003.

Lt. Columbo was created by Richard Levinson and William Link who drew upon two characters as their inspiration for the detective - Porfiry Petrovich from Fyodor Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (1866) and G.K. Chesterton's character of Father Brown, First published in 1910. Falk, however, was not the first actor to portray the detective, that honour went to Bert Freed in a 1960 episode of "The Chevy Mystery Show" called "Enough Rope". Whilst he wore a similar trench coat to the one worn by Falk and smoked a cigar, he didn't portray the same mannerism that Falk introduced to distract and disorientate the suspects.

Answer: Law Enforcement Officer

Played by Matthew Gray Gubler, Dr. Spencer Reid is an FBI Special Agent on the CBS crime drama "Criminal Minds" which commenced in 2005. He is a part of the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit (BAU) and he specializes in statistics and geographical profiling. The youngest member of the team, he is an out-and-out genius. Blessed with an IQ of 187, he has three BAs and three PhDs (in Mathematics, Chemistry, and Engineering). He can also read 20,000 words a minute and has an eidetic memory.

Whilst all of this knowledge is a blessing for the team and is a major weapon in their efforts to catch the criminals, it does intimidate most of the team members. His youth is also a concern and there is the possibility that he may not be taken seriously at crime scenes and, as a consequence, while other agents are introduced as "supervisory agents", Spencer is always introduced as "Dr. Reid".

Answer: Law Enforcement Officer

A former sniper in the US Army Rangers during the First Gulf War, Seeley Booth is a Supervisory Special Agent for the FBI and a co-protagonist with Dr. Temperance Brennan in the comedy/crime drama "Bones" (2005-2017). Dr. Brennan, whom Booth calls "Bones", works as a forensic anthropologist with the Jeffersonian Institute Medico-Legal Lab. The show is built around the alliance between Booth and Brennan and their exchange of information in a bid to solve crimes.

What began as a consultative process between the pair evolved into a relationship and, ultimately, marriage.

Answer: Law Enforcement Officer

"Rizzoli & Isles" (2010-16), which spawned from a series of novels by Tess Gerritsen, centres on a Boston homicide detective (Jane Rizzoli) and the station's Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Maura Isles. Despite their contrasting styles and different personalities, they form a strong team when it comes to apprehending criminals.

Angie Harmon plays Rizzoli, a brilliant detective but one that can be tough to confront mainly because she is sarcastic and brash, but she is also quick to anger. These characteristics may well have been honed by the fact that she was raised by an extremely stubborn woman, her mother, and that she had to work twice as hard as the rest of her colleagues to be accepted and earn respect.

Answer: Law Enforcement Officer

Angie Dickinson was Sgt. "Pepper" Anderson on television's "Police Woman" between 1974 and 1978, a show that caused President Gerald Ford to reschedule press conferences so that he wouldn't miss the episode. Anderson was a tough undercover cop in the LAPD's Criminal Conspiracy Unit and, each week, we'd see her working in differing roles, such as a waitress, a nurse, or a prostitute, all in the name of bringing down gangsters, thieves, and drug dealers.

"Police Woman" was not the first television show to be centered around a female police officer but it certainly ranked as one of the best. It was interesting to note that the show is seen as one of the reasons for the increase in female police officers in the States. In 1971 1.4% of all police officers in the USA were female, but by 1980, that percentage had risen to 5%.

Answer: Darn Good Amateurs

Walter Sherman is the main character in "The Finder", a series that evolved out "Bones" (2005-17) and ran for the 13 episodes in 2012.

Walter is a veteran of the Gulf War, where he met Seeley Booth and the connection with "Bones". He was hard-bitten, overly serious, and a man with no sense of humour but, he was also the man to go to if you needed to find insurgents, deserters and improvised explosive devices. That is, until he was a victim of a bomb explosion that left him with brain damage. Rather than making him deficient, it improved him. His power to find people and/or things now encompassed areas outside of war zones, and... he suddenly discovered a sense of humour, mischief and a carefree attitude.

Trading under the name of "Discombobulated Objects Acquisition" he seeks out items and people for governments and private citizens, sometimes finding more than the hiring party was actually looking for. The latter tends to get him into more hot water than he cares for.

Answer: Darn Good Amateurs

Jessica Fletcher, played by the delightful Angela Lansbury, is the main character of the series "Murder, She Wrote" (1984-96). Jessica is a retired English teacher who lives in the small coastal town of Cabot Cove. She is an author of mystery novels and, in her day-to-day activities, winds up running into real-life mysteries. Being curious in nature, she cannot help herself and has to stick her nose in. The end result is that she usually winds up solving the mystery well before the police do.

The series was a ratings bonanza for CBS, running for 12 seasons and 264 episodes.

Answer: Darn Good Amateurs

Longstreet is actually a bit more than an amateur as he is an investigator by trade, but he's neither licensed as a private detective, nor does he work for the police force. James Franciscas is the title character in the series "Longstreet" which, sadly, lasted only one season in 1971/72. Mike is an insurance investigator whose wife is killed by a bomb and the explosion leaves Mike a blind man. There's a single-mindedness about Mike who, despite his new disability, is determined to hunt down his wife's killers and bring them to justice

That is covered in the pilot after which Mike returns to his job as an insurance investigator. He tends to find the culprits but generally leaves the scene before the bust is made by the police. Interestingly, the late Bruce Lee made an appearance on the show for four episodes as Li Tsung, coaching Longstreet in, not only martial arts, but also mindfulness.

Answer: Darn Good Amateurs

Nathan Fillion plays Richard Castle in the comedy/crime drama "Castle", a series that ran on the ABC for eight seasons between 2009 and 2016.

Castle is a world-famous author who is struggling with a bad case of writer's block, so he kills off his main character. Problem is that someone copycats the killing and Castle is brought in for questioning. It is here that he meets, and becomes intrigued with, the case officer Kate Beckett, played by Stana Katic. Castle wants to use Beckett as the model for his next character Nikki Heat and places pressure on the city's mayor to allow him to follow Beckett and observe her day-to-day routine.

Whereas Castle is brash, Beckett is reserved and the pair constantly clash. Over time she begins to appreciate Castle's help and his writer's imagination, which helps her solve countless cases. The pair begin to like each other, have a relationship, and eventually, fall in love.

Footnote: castle was the gifted amateur for the first six seasons of the show (S1-6), after which he obtained his private investigators license.

Answer: Darn Good Amateurs

The show is called "Poker Face", and it was launched in 2021.

Charlie Cale (Natasha Lyonne), the show's protagonist, is a cocktail waitress who works in a casino, but she's no ordinary waitress... she has a gift. The gift is that she has an inbuilt ability to identify when somebody is lying, and her boss offers her $1.5 million dollars to use her gift and help him in a scam. Things go awry. Her best friend is killed, her boss commits suicide and her boss's father, a powerful man in the casino industry, points the finger at Charlie. Charlie flees, travelling across the countryside and, each week encounters a new mystery that a part of her cannot resist... she has to find the answer to it.