Going Due South Trivia Quiz

Answer: He becomes a liaison officer at the Canadian Consulate

Benton Fraser is from the Canadian Northwest Territories and much of the early humour in the show comes from his unfamiliarity with life in the big city. Fraser is depicted as a 'superman' with apparently superhuman detection skills (for example locating a saboteur by smelling the breath of a rat to determine the brand of barbecued ribs it had been eating) allied to complete honesty and a genuine desire to help everyone he meets.

Throughout the show Fraser constantly finds himself explaining how he came to be in Chicago. He usually ends up stating "I first came to Chicago on the trail of the killers of my father, and for reasons that don't need explaining at this juncture I have remained, attached as liaison with the Canadian Consulate".

Answer: Inuktitut

Diefenbaker is a key member of the 'Due South' cast and was played by three different dogs over the course of the show. He is named after the Canadian Prime Minister, John Diefenbaker, who was in office from 1957 to 1963. Several 'Due South' characters are named after politicians, including the journalist Mackenzie King (named after William Lyon Mackenzie King who had three separate terms as Prime Minister between 1921 and 1948) and the pathologist Esther Pearson (named after Lester B. Pearson, the 14th Canadian Prime Minister).

The 2011 Census showed that Cree, Inuktitut and Ojibway were the three most commonly reported aboriginal languages in Canada. Approximately two-thirds of all people who reported having an aboriginal language as their mother tongue spoke one of these three languages.

Answer: Buick Riviera

Ray Vecchio was the detective assigned to help Fraser investigate the death of his father. Ray, played by David Marciano, and Fraser become firm friends despite their hugely different characters. Their joint investigations (often sparked by Fraser's habit of helping everyone he comes across) lead to them becoming unofficial partners.

Ray's green 1971 Buick Riviera is his pride and joy. The original car was destroyed when Ray shot at the fuel tank, blowing the car up in order to protect himself and Fraser during a shoot-out. The second car was destroyed by a bomb, killing another detective, and the third was also lost when it was set on fire and driven into Lake Michigan.

Answer: Paul Gross

In this episode Paul Gross played both Fraser and Francesca's mysterious German fiancé. Despite getting engaged, it is revealed that Francesca has not moved on from her crush on Fraser as she has agreed to marry a stranger, with whom she can't communicate, solely because he is Fraser's doppelganger.

Dean McDermott portrays the somewhat hapless Constable Renfield Turnbull; Joseph Ziegler plays Superintendent Moffat, Fraser's first boss at the consulate; and Ken Pogue plays Gerard, the Mountie who murdered Fraser's father.

Answer: Stanley Kowalski

Stanley Raymond Kowalski, who unsurprisingly preferred to be known as Ray, was played by the Canadian actor Callum Keith Rennie. His character was introduced to 'Due South' as a replacement partner for Fraser, as the actor who played Ray Vecchio was unable to return for the third series of the show. He is a Polish-American detective who bears very little physical resemblance to the Italian-American he is meant to be impersonating. He is named after the character played by Marlon Brando in 'A Streetcar Named Desire'.

Marlon Brando won a best actor Oscar for his role as Terry Malloy in 'On the Waterfront'; he was also nominated for the same award for his roles as Emiliano Zapata (in 'Viva Zapata!'), Lloyd Gruver (in 'Sayonara') and Stanley Kowalski.

Answer: Thomas Dewey

Jack Huey, Thomas Dewey and Louis Gardino are some of Ray Vecchio's colleagues at the Chicago Police Department. Their names are a clear parody of Walt Disney's Huey, Dewey and Louis Duck, the slightly unruly nephews of Donald Duck. Additionally, Thomas Dewey is also the name of a former US presidential candidate, fitting in with the 'Due South' writers' habit of naming characters after well known politicians.

Thomas E. Dewey was Governor of New York from 1943 to 1954 and the Republican candidate for the US presidency in both 1944 and 1948. His defeat in 1948 is particularly memorable due to the Chicago Daily Tribune's publication of a headline declaring that Dewey had won, despite the fact that Harry S. Truman had actually secured re-election. Charles Poletti was Dewey's predecessor as Governor of New York; Wendell Wilkie was the Republican presidential candidate in 1940; and Clarence Nash was the voice actor for Donald Duck.

Answer: Margaret Thatcher

Fraser's new boss at the consulate, Inspector Margaret 'Meg' Thatcher, is named after the first female British Prime Minister. Despite being quoted as saying "I don't think there will be a woman prime minister in my lifetime" whilst serving as education secretary in 1973, Thatcher became prime minister just six years later in 1979 and held the office until 1990. She died on 8 April 2013 at the age of 87 and was given a ceremonial funeral with military honours.

Meg Thatcher and Fraser's working relationship does not get off to a good start as one of Thatcher's first actions in her new job is to put Fraser on probation. However, it soon becomes clear that she has joined the lengthy list of female characters with a crush on the constable. In the end though Thatcher has more success with Fraser than most of the other women, as she ends up kissing him on the roof of a runaway train heading for nuclear disaster.

Answer: Leslie Nielsen

Leslie Nielsen, who died in 2010 at the age of 84, was a well known Canadian film and television actor whose notable roles included Dr Rumack in 'Airplane!' and Lieutenant Frank Drebin in the 'Naked Gun' film series. Nielsen's Danish born father was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Buck Frobisher makes the first of his appearances in 'Due South' in the first series episode 'Manhunt', where he is on the run after receiving threats from a criminal he arrested years previously. He also appears in the second series episode 'All the Queen's Horses' where he is travelling with the RCMP Musical Ride, and he also has a key role in 'Call of the Wild', the two-part final episode of the show. A notable running gag across these appearances is Frobisher's penchant for eating strange food and his subsequent issues with flatulence.

Answer: Maggie Mackenzie

Fraser uses the evidence of Maggie Mackenzie's ability to see his father's ghost, along with the fact that her supposed father died over a year before she was born, to deduce that she is his younger half-sister. Maggie's life has distinct parallels with Fraser's as she is also a member of the RCMP and came to Chicago on the trail of a relative's killers, although in her case the relative was her husband. Other characters able to see Robert Fraser's ghost include his old partner Buck Frobisher, Gerard, the man who killed him, and Holloway Muldoon, the killer of Fraser's mother, Caroline.

Neither Francesca Vecchio nor Constable Renfield Turnbull saw a ghost during the course of the show, but Ray Vecchio had to deal with his own father's ghost in the episode 'North'.

Answer: Search for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin

At the end of the episode, Fraser, Stanley 'Ray' Kowalski and Diefenbaker set off "to find the hand of Franklin reaching for the Beaufort Sea" as described in the song 'Northwest Passage' by Stan Rogers. This fulfilled Ray's vow to go on an adventure to find Franklin's hand after Fraser sang him the song while they were trapped in an ice crevasse.

The episode also explained the fates of the other major 'Due South' characters. Ray Vecchio moved to Florida to run a bowling alley with Stella Kowalski; Inspector Thatcher joined the Canadian Security Intelligence Service; Constable Turnbull ran for public office and was run over by his own campaign bus; Detectives Huey and Dewey set up their own comedy club; and Francesca Vecchio had a record six children by immaculate conception.