"Street Legal" Season 1 theme (our very own David Wilcox : )) ..
   
 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5osR9tuN5k 

"The Wire" Season 1 theme .. 
   
 
   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pz9D1SybuVE   

newsguy1 wrote:

This is a constant quibble from me.
There is a difference between a theme song and theme music.
Music with no lyrics is theme music.
It's a theme song if it has words, like the theme song from Friends as opposed to the theme from SWAT.

If I whistle a TV theme that has lyrics, am I whistling a theme song or theme music?

Sixty years after Laurence Johnson composed it, the theme from 'The Avengers' still passes muster.  Not far behind is Shirley Bassey's singing of John Barry's 'Goldfinger'.  Yes, I know, technically a movie.

Also impressive are the works that Murray Gold and Segun Akinola have composed for the 2005 reboot of 'Doctor Who'.

Some trivia about The Avengers.
The famous theme music did not come in until about the third year after Honor Blackman's character left and Diana Rigg took over as Emma Peel.
Also the name of her charcter was also a joke name.
The producers were looking for a name for Diana Rigg and one of them says, well her name should have "M" appeal, meaning man appeal.
Indeed Diana had loads of man appeal in those tight leather car suits.
Blackman ( who ironically went on to play Pussy Galore in Goldfinger) would not agree to be sexualized in her TV role.
Also she had to lobby to be able to use judo as she was a real black belt.
Another piece of trivia.
In the early episodes John Steed played by Patrick MacNee, was a sort of bad guy, but later evolved into the suave bowler hat wearing hero.
The umbrella was his idea..

 

Angela, the theme from the sitcom Taxi by Bob James.

https://youtu.be/kqw3UNXUdbU?si=oxPEcQX5orvQf5rG

Last edited by Leslieville Bill (July 12, 2025 6:17 pm)

Also liked the theme from Hawaii Five-O.  Batman was catchy and I really liked the way the opening of the show was cartoonish with cheap comic book animation and a theme song that only had one word in the lyric.

CTV's original Littlest Hobo from around 1962 had a great theme song, as did the later 80's version.  Adam's Family, The Monkees theme, Mary Tyler Moore and Hogan's Heroes, Kid's In The Hall, Friends, Green Acres all memorable.  And Rick Mercer's Made In Canada that had the Hips Blow At High Dough as the theme song was a favourite of mine.  

Dale Patterson wrote:

The theme from WKRP in Cincinnati is a favourite of mine (both the opening theme and the end theme).

The opening theme was released as a single, performed by Steve Carisle and produced by Buckner & Garcia, later of "Pac-Man Fever" fame. Ironically, the song about a Top 40 station didn't actually make the Top 40; it only peaked as high as #65 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1981.



PJ

 

Last edited by Paul Jeffries (July 12, 2025 11:40 pm)

The very first version of the Mary Tyler Moore Show theme was always my favourite. Also agree about "Welcome Back Kotter," perhaps the only show in TV history that was renamed because the theme song was so strong. The story goes that the producers had planned to simply call the show "Kotter."

But when they heard John Sebastian's theme, they renamed it "Welcome Back Kotter." It was a good move. The tune was a huge hit and so was the show.

I was also fond of another TV song that became a Top 40 hit. In fact, I think the song became more famous than the short-lived show.  The "Theme From The Greatest American Hero" by Joey Scarbury is a great tune. "Believe it or not."

Shorty Wave wrote:

I also like the Monty Python opening music, probably because it’s from Monty Python!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Liberty_Bell_(march)

John Philip Sousa's ghost would like a word...
😁

The Sopranos, Succession, The Rockford Files and Law and Order. 

Last edited by mic'em (July 13, 2025 9:02 am)

Airwolf, Battlestar Galactica, and WKRP in Cinncinati. 

 

In a similar vein:

25 TV shows with themes written by popular musicians

when I was a little kid the theme song from The Littlest Hobo would make me sad.

as a teen and into adulthood the theme from M.A.S.H. would always make me feel oddly wistful

the opening music for the original Star Trek would give me a thrill and still does even after thousands of views

and the " Overture, kill the lights!" and the rest of The Bugs Bunny Show theme just made me happy.
https://youtu.be/aFTTB6gOAJA?feature=shared
🥕🐰

Last edited by betaylored (July 14, 2025 10:01 pm)

When I was a kid, I liked the show Cannonball and the theme music for the show.

I have a few favorites, in no particular order.
The intros for South Park always invoke a strong sense of nostalgia. I was only born in 1995. Here are some of them through the years:









The Cops theme song is a another favorite of mine:





I also remember a distinctive English Quebec-made animated teen drama called Delta State that aired on Teletoon in the mid-2000s. Unfortunately, I never really got into it though.



I also really like the intros for The X Files:



The theme song for ER also takes the cake as one of my favorites:



And to top it all off, the Trailer Park Boys theme song, which is literally a sepia-tone montage of some deceptively tranquil and wholesome scenes in Sunnyvale Trailer Park set to a cover of Frank Sinatra's "I Left My Heart in San Francisco".