Music by Mike Post Trivia Quiz

Answer: Pontiac Firebird

From the beginning of "The Rockford Files" in 1974, the character of Jim Rockford, played by James Garner, was associated with the Pontiac Firebird, a so-called "pony car" developed by Pontiac to compete with the Ford Mustang. In the series, the character's car is the Esprit model, although the cars used were actually the higher-end Formula model, which Garner specified should be re-badged to a model more likely for Rockford, who was usually in financial trouble, to afford, while still being of sufficient performance for the show's numerous vehicle chase sequences. Between 1974 and 1978, a new Firebird of that year's model was procured, remaining in the same "copper mist" colour. However, owing to James Garner not appreciating the restyled front end, the 1979 Firebird was not used.

Mike Post's theme tune, co-written with Pete Carpenter, was an instrumental titled simply as "The Rockford Files". Released as a single in August 1975, the song reached No. 10 in the Billboard Hot 100, and won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Arrangement that year.

Answer: Betty Thomas

After graduating from the University of Ohio, Betty Thomas, while working as both an artist and a high school teacher, became a waitress at The Second City, a comedy venue in Chicago, to earn extra money. While there, she was encouraged to join The Second City's improv troupe, and became the first woman to direct one of their productions. She moved to Los Angeles when The Second City opened a branch there, which also led to her getting a foothold in screen performing, as she gained parts in a number of films during the late 70s and into the 1980s. Her breakthrough came when she was cast as Officer Lucy Bates in the new TV series "Hill Street Blues". Her character was one of a number to remain through the entire series, while Thomas was nominated for the Outstanding Supporting Actress Emmy for each of the show's seven seasons, winning the award in 1985.

Mike Post's instrumental theme tune to "Hill Street Blues" was co-written with guitarist Larry Carlton, who also played on the track. Released in 1981 as a single, it spent a total of five months on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, eventually reaching a high of No. 10.

Answer: San Diego

"Hunter" was a crime drama series, created by Frank Lupo, which aired for seven seasons between 1984 and 1991. The title character, Detective Sergeant Rick Hunter, played by former NFL star Fred Dryer, was a rule-breaking Los Angeles homicide detective who, in the pilot episode, is partnered with the equally maverick Detective Sergeant Dee Dee McCall, played by Stepfanie Kramer. The pair remained the core of the series until the end of the sixth season, when Kramer, looking to branch into music, elected to leave. For the seventh and final season, Hunter was paired with other female detectives, but a fall in ratings led to the show being cancelled in 1991. However, in 2002, having reprised the role once in a 1994 TV movie, Dryer returned to the role again, this time alongside Kramer, which saw the character of Hunter move to San Diego. Following two TV movies, a new series aired in 2003, although this was cancelled after five episodes.

The theme tune for "Hunter" was one of a number of collaborations by Mike Post and Pete Carpenter during the 1980s, and was one of the few of their pieces to undergo multiple reworkings during the run of the series, with at least four different versions used during the seven seasons of its original run.

Answer: Alana de la Garza

Alana de la Garza had been working in television for a number of years, most notably playing the role of Rosa Santos in the daytime soap "All My Children" when, in 2006, she was cast as Assistant District Attorney Connie Rubirosa at the start of season 17 of "Law & Order". Initially paired alongside Sam Waterston as Executive ADA Jack McCoy, from season 18 onwards, following McCoy's elevation to Manhattan District Attorney, she was generally alongside the character of Executive ADA Michael Cutter, played by Linus Roache. The character of Rubirosa was the final "second chair" prosecutor to appear in the original run of "Law & Order", which ended following season 20 in 2010. However, the following year, the spin-off show, "Law & Order: LA", in the midst of a revamp to improve ratings, de la Garza was brought into the cast as Rubirosa, with the character having moved from New York City to Los Angeles and joining the LA County DA's office. The character appeared in eight episodes before "Law & Order: LA" was cancelled.

Mike Post wrote the original version of the "Law & Order" theme tune for the debut of the original series in 1990. Since then, the franchise has generated a further six TV shows (five fiction and one documentary) that have used variations of the same piece of music. One show, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent", used two versions - its own until the end of season 6, and then the version produced for the cancelled "Law & Order: Trial By Jury" from season 7.

Answer: Detroit Tigers

According to the biographical information that is revealed during the course of the eight season run of "Magnum, P.I.", Thomas Sullivan Magnum IV was born in Detroit at some point between 1944 and 1948 - although his birthdate is given on a number of occasions, this is different in a number of episodes - but raised in Tidewater, Virginia. However, although being a champion athlete in Virginia, Magnum retained loyalty to the city of his birth, being an avid fan of the Detroit Tigers, whose cap he often wears. Tom Selleck, who played Magnum throughout the series, is also from Detroit and has supported the Tigers from childhood. In the 1992 film "Mr Baseball", when Selleck's character is taken on as a coach with the Tigers, the cap he wears is in fact Magnum's Tigers cap from "Magnum, P.I.", which Selleck kept following the conclusion of the series.

Although one of the most iconic theme tunes of the 1980s, Mike Post and Pete Carpenter's piece of music was not the original theme tune of "Magnum, P.I.", with instead a piece by Ian Freebairn-Smith used for the pilot and the first nine episodes. From episode 12 onwards however, Post and Carpenter's theme, which had been introduced over the end credits from episode 8, was used as the main title theme. As "Theme from Magnum, P.I.", the tune was released as a single in 1982 and reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Answer: US Army Special Forces

"The A-Team" was originally created by Frank Lupo and Stephen J. Cannell for NBC, and aired for the first time in January 1983. In the narrative of the show, the eponymous group are members of the US Army's 5th Special Forces Group who, having been ordered to rob the Bank of Hanoi in an effort to bring the Vietnam War to an end, find that their commanding officer has been killed and there is no proof that they were acting under orders, leading to their being court-martialed and sent to prison, after which they escape and go on the run. However, although the A-Team is usually considered to have four members, the character of H.M. "Howling Mad" Murdock was the team's pilot, rather than being involved in the bank raid itself, and therefore was not court-martialed. He instead is interned in a Veteran's Administration psychiatric hospital, from which he routinely escapes to help his former comrades.

The theme tune of "The A-Team" was another of the collaborations between Mike Post and Pete Carpenter. While not released as a single, it was included on two collections of Post's work released in 1982 and 1984. The French version of the theme included lyrics that mirrored the description of the A-Team's situation that was spoken over the start of the show's titles in English.

Answer: Princeton

Douglas "Doogie" Howser is the prodigy son of David and Katharine Howser, who live in Los Angeles. At the start of "Doogie Howser, M.D.", the eponymous character has just turned 16. However, the show's opening titles display his life up to that point - he gained a perfect SAT score at the age of 6, completed high school in nine weeks, and graduated from Princeton at the age of ten before going to medical school and earning his MD at the age of 14. At the start of the series, Doogie is a second-year surgical resident at Eastman Medical Center in Los Angeles; the show follows his efforts to live the life of a teenager, while at the same time moving forward in a career that his contemporaries would take another decade to achieve. While actor Neil Patrick Harris was the first choice of creator Steven Bochco, executives at ABC objected to his casting even after the pilot episode was shot, and only relented following positive test screenings.

The theme tune to "Doogie Howser, M.D." is one of Mike Post's more synth-led pieces of music, and contains a five-note leitmotif intended to simulate the noise made by a cardiac monitor.

Answer: Elvis Presley

"Quantum Leap" was created by Donald P. Bellisario as a way of creating an original anthology series at a time when networks were not interested in anthologies. Although the show featured a core pairing of main characters in Dr Sam Beckett, played by Scott Bakula, and Admiral Al Calavicci, portrayed by Dean Stockwell, the premise saw the pair having adventures in different locations and time periods in each episode. As part of this, Sam would "leap" into different individuals at a particular point, and live their lives, to a point where he can change their history, after which he leaps away. During the course of the series, he leapt into a number of different real people, including Lee Harvey Oswald, Dr Ruth Westheimer and, in the show's penultimate episode, Elvis Presley, in which he has to both aid a struggling musician and ensure that Elvis is discovered. During the run of the show, Sam also encounters other real people, often inadvertently providing them with something for which they later became famous - examples include providing a young Buddy Holly with the lyrics of the song "Peggy Sue", and teaching Chubby Checker the dance that came to be known as "The Twist".

Mike Post's original orchestration of the theme tune to "Quantum Leap" was used for most of the show's run, with a new arrangement produced for the fifth and final season. The new version was used through the final season with the exception of the very last episode, which returned to the original arrangement. A soundtrack album, including the theme tune, was released in 1993.

Answer: Chicago Bulls

"The White Shadow" began broadcasting on CBS in 1978, starring Ken Howard as former Chicago Bulls player Ken Reeves who, after being forced to retire following a career ending knee injury, is employed as the head basketball coach at Carver High School, an urban high school in South Central Los Angeles with a predominantly black and hispanic student body. The show was ground-breaking for its time as, although Ken Howard was white (the show's title came from Howard's nickname when he was the only white player in his own high school basketball team), the majority of the cast was either Hispanic or African-American. When originally pitched, CBS wanted the show, based on Howard's experiences playing high school basketball, to be a half-hour sitcom avoiding any controversial topics - it was Howard and co-creator Bruce Paltrow that insisted on it being an hour-long drama series addressing realistic issues.

The theme tune, written by Mike Post alongside his regular collaborator Pete Carpenter, was somewhat different to their other work together, in it being a much slower, more funk based instrumental. Although it was not released during the original three-season run of "The White Shadow", it was subsequently included on the first album of Post's work, "Television Theme Songs", in 1982.

Answer: Coyote

"Hardcastle and McCormick" was originally created by Stephen J. Cannell and Patrick Harsburgh, and debuted in September 1983. The premise involved newly retired LA County Superior Court judge Milton Hardcastle, played by Brian Keith, seeking to bring justice on the many of his former defendants that escaped on legal technicalities. He is aided by car thief Mark McCormick, played by Daniel Hugh Kelly, who acts as the judge's agent as part of his parole. In their work, the pair use a prototype sports car, the Coyote X, designed by McCormick's murdered friend, which McCormick is permitted to keep. The original Coyote X designed for the show was a kit car built using custom moulds from the McLaren M6GT racing car, with the chassis from a Volkswagen Beetle and the engine from a Porsche 914. However, a new car was built after the first season, owing to actor Brian Keith having difficulty getting in and out of the original. The second version was based on the DMC DeLorean with gull wing doors, and was used during the second and third seasons of the show.

Somewhat unusually for Mike Post's work, the original theme tune produced for "Hardcastle and McCormick" was not an instrumental. The song, "Drive", was co-written with Stephen Geyer with a vocal by David Morgan. This was replaced in season 2 by another composition by Post and Geyer, "Back to Back", sung by Joey Scarbury but, owing to public demand, the original song was reinstated from the thirteenth episode of season 2 onwards, being retained until the end of the series in 1986.