Best TV Show Theme Songs

The Mysterious Cities of Gold

Inspector Gadget
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKeE3saeguY

The Odd Couple
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2be6jGwLoJ0&feature=related

The Andy Griffith Show
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BmurO7ZW_Q

I Dream of Jeannie
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNg-xClEnqM&feature=related

Gilligan's Island
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2dw8DnScBo

The Adams Family
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xL_9zdu4iVw&feature=related

Bonanza
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjdRgBAY278

Miami Vice
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eYM9wHLHeM

Laverne & Shirley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZmimJGmrUQ

Dragnet
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr_oyN-fd60

Twin Peaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7oDuGN6K3VQ

elmer bernstein's johnny staccato theme is phat:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=sDieJH2q7tE

Pee Wee's Playhouse
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i36J8qI-sJ0

Dukes of Hazzard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRX4mlFi06A

CHiPs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAidnO64NE4

Sesame Street
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmcdBnj4ZOg

Green Acres
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrbPAt1_vc4

Soap:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=aEv9ri7V_w0

Welcome Back Kotter
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QVS3WNt7yRU&feature=related

Dick Van Dyke
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QqIyjLxwk-s

The Monkees
http://youtube.com/watch?v=d0FUvLfxyp0

Transformers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLS2N9mHWaw

Big Blue Marble:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1kkx2m-JSg

Great Space Coaster:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dddm5bQeKvg

Night Gallery:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9pToHSFdwk

Twilight Zone (the 1980s version by The Grateful Dead):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KF-yh4mU6ps

Three's Company was a classic

Doctor fuckin' Who, for fuck's sake:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NPJ6GMXM3E

BENNY HILL

Bloodhound Gang
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4273oOYy7s

Speed Racer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSKBBxxUXqg&feature=related

Spiderman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKWdPN2Dr74&feature=related

IronMan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wn4iYoMcAA

The Flintstones
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL_zF_EPK74

The Jetsons
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFbuulDiM_U

The Persuaders
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykLCAfVa410

Edd Kalehoff's Price is Right queue's motherfuckewrs

er, queueueueus

^groovy. never heard that.
xpost

Match Game
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YFvanEIDAUU

TPIS does beat all tho

TPIR. argh beers

match game for the BLANK, no doubt

SUPER GIRL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LoSkV6OOcg

Taxi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9QscGB9LV4

Barney Miller:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94GM5zQGax0

Cheers:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD8ljNobUys

戦隊
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqy5pjH24F0&feature=related

Play Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntn9jUergjg

^so awesome on many levels

pray girl

Edd Kalehoff's Price is Right queue's motherfuckewrs

Oh, yes!

"Sanford And Son" theme vs. "Fat Albert & The Cosby Kids" theme

whatever happened to predictability........the milkman the paperboy, evening TV

Golden Girls?

hm.. no jeffersons.. is it too obvious?

Actually come to think of it, Amen was better..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTMF8gxnL50

Holy hell, y'all! The best one ever is Good Times:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s3sRJCRW-k

Whoever noted that the Duck Tales theme song was a rewrite of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" is my favorite poster ever.

Also, anyone else know that the theme for the US "the Office" is based off of the coda for ELO's Mr. Blue Sky? They used the original song in the pilot.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbnLYROCj8

Van der Valk Simon Park Orchestra

Department S Cyril Stapleton

Der Kommissar Herbert Jarczyk

Captain Scarlet and the MysteronsBarry Gray

Stingray Barry Gray

Raumpatrouille Orion Peter Thomas

The Odd Couple Neil Hefti

Also, anyone else know that the theme for the US "the Office" is based off of the coda for ELO's Mr. Blue Sky? They used the original song in the pilot.

― Cunga, Wednesday, December 23, 2009 1:46 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

They used "Mr. Blue Sky" in a rough cut of the pilot, but not the actual pilot itself. This rough cut also contains alternate scenes that were never included on the DVD, and different actors for some of the characters. I would seriously pay like $3,000 to see it.

The Buford Files:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1uo8wC9Ctk

"Here comes help! Here comes action! Here comes Buuuuffffooooorrrrddddddddd..."

Action News Theme ("Move Closer to Your World")

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrrVhHBI-K0

Hockey Night in Canada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByKu8BwT5K4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo3lTbYFK6A

The original Randall and Hopkirk theme takes some beating

Callan, another one Portishead must have noticed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDdSWjpPJDg

Whatever happened to the likely lads?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJ4C0pTGDw

> Randall and Hopkirk

awesome, there should be an ITV music thread

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SfG_f-quqk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fqg-U1iTuF4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KOqT3A5tpPc

Dig the theme to The L Word. It must be heard to be believed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6pZ-JRsYh0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXRyQkkJdNI

Seitz goes Newhart

http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/seitz-asks-whats-your-favorite-tv-theme-song.html

Love these:

Blockbusters
Animal Hospital
Quantum Leap
Hill Street Blues
Taxi
Cheers

thanks to netflix I've rediscovered this fucking brilliant theme song. Love it, love it, don't care what anyone says. Love the little instrumental solo between verses too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzccLTr7gJA

(in case you're wondering why it doesn't sound like the theme song you remember, this show had two theme songs, and this one was the second (and better) one.)

Derek Scott Orchestra - girl in the white dress - 'General Hospital (UK) 1973, 'drama theme tune'

The Tracey Ullman Show, written by George Clinton (!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDbATFVoof4

ctrl-f "The Rockford Files"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg1Cx26-928

the correct answer and also a top 10 pop hit.

Sorry!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brtcb-DmuuA

The Crystal Maze (90s)
Grandstand (tho it is Keith Mansfield library music)
Sorry! (like Woo doing Cardiacs' Insect Hoofs on Lassie, which did not yet exist)
Big Brother (UK)
Joe 90
The Gaffer (the world's only Britfunk theme tune?)
The Bill ('Overkill' by Morgan Pask, 1984 versions and 1988 versions)

haha touche

Have to add Art of Noise's Krypton Factor theme to that list

Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World, and the variations in the two follow-up series.

the original theme song to Newton's Apple was a modified version of Ruckzuck by Kraftwerk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWIrDST8TcY

I can’t find any mention of MASH.

Theme from S.W.A.T (1975)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHDg96-ZN_U

Lodge 49:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfZUBo9OuTk

more tv show themes should have been like 3-2-1 Contact

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kypt0mAL2TA

World In Action (opening & closing themes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95qLDc7zwYY

In Search Of...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_SAKcOuTpU

Im really into the Taxi theme tune lately

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DL8SGEyhZE

Has this been mentioned yet?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-bd5j18N0s

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends!
I am surprised at how rarely this gets mentioned as a great TV theme - maybe the connection with the programme is too strong. I am biased because it's probably the first music I remember adoring, but I honestly think it is a bit of a masterpiece - Roland ragtime on a railway rhythm! It's so warm but so unusal - I think the piano part is sped up (those trills are not possible to replicate in real time) and though many fans I've tried, I've never heard a recreation of the theme that gets close to the quality of the original recording. I'm not five anymore but it's always gonna be musical ambrosia.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U70prkddO7w

My favorites are Hawaii Five-O (original recipe) and Sanford and Son, both mentioned in the OP, and I don’t know if it was here or somewhere else but I was turned on to the UK series themes for The Champions and The Persuaders which are also great.

I don't think I've ever noticed how ska the Thomas theme is. Or maybe how Madness-ish it is. Or how "Mr. Soft"-ish it is.

learned a rather dainty fingerstyle guitar arrangement of the Taxi theme last year, kinda hard.

tv themes were maybe the first songs that i heard and needed to make them recallable, i used my dad's little dictaphone to tape the intros to Charles in Charge, Who's The Boss and others so i could listen to them more than once a day.

this one is my favorite, i think:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQllBwL8gZc

I think the Succession theme may have entered the club. I recently watched a documentary on US capitalism and the soundtrack was clearly influenced by Succession !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G29EyeGzm9w

villa alegre owns
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZDhkcJQoFU

zoom not so bad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tq01f7pbzCc

x files

taxi theme song is such a gorgeous mood setter for not just the show but an evening
it really does it for me lately

I always loved the Taxi outro, especially the very last shot

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VY9HSjFdh0

Look how young the cast looks!

15 years and nobody's mentioned The Mary Tyler Moore Show yet?

there are some great western tv themes but damn y'all these anime themes are next level. just some random ones:

venus line (theme to Birdie Wing):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA7dgQl1nso

the theme to gakko no kaidan (notorious for its us comedy dub "ghost stories"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGI0g8xX-VY

and if we're gonna get really obvious "a cruel angel's thesis", the theme to evangelion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIZL5qeEKj0

you mean "goodnight mr walters! (groan)"? xxp

i had bob james's 'touchdown' on an old ipod. i also meant for it to be a mood setter but it didn't work out that way because walking around manhattan with the cues from taxi as an overlay is actually pretty funny.

Yes, that part. For some reason, it always made me laugh when I was a kid.

xp to Kate: Thanks for those anime themes. Those are great. I don't watch a lot of anime, but binge-watched bootlegs of Rurouni Kenshin on CD-ROM a few decades ago. Grew very partial to its theme song, Sobakasu.

Full version:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DBkXcDU270

Freckles, the English dub
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSen97C496M

Sorry (Remix): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmL-OT4Q3sc

Young Ones (outro): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY4n_sfkcUo

In terms of putting me right back on the sofa, thirty years ago

Boon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6mjSAgxusM

The Taggart intro and (especially) outro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4k6RF7nBxX8

The Denton/Cook Tomorrow's World theme is a huge slapper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sSxz9ojrI8

My favorite w/lyrics is “Diff'rent Strokes” (an Alan Thicke banger). There are too many instrumentals to rate… many of the best ones by Mike Post.

I loved the Boon theme as a kid. I have no memory of what the show was actually about

Michael Elphick did stuff, on a bike, sometimes he was a fireman?

Yeah, it's a tricky one

Magnum PI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBIgXhiOpeQ
Also in about 10 years if I grow a moustache I'll look like Higgins.

As recommended by Alan Partridge himself. "The Adventures of Black Beauty" ("Galloping Horse" by Denis King).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hasBJ1Gkjy8

Another classic. "The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe" (by Robert Mellin and Gian-Piero Reverberi).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNsV1BUb9mc

I did bring up the subject of Boon with my older brother a while back, thinking he might have a clearer memory of it, and he was like "um, he was a bodyguard...or no, hold on, he was a fireman I think...?" Hi ho Silver!

I do remember my 10yo self thinking it was a lot like Lovejoy. Shows about these guys who did stuff.

As for anime themes, I've always loved the Outlaw Star opening. The show itself was only so-so (Cowboy Bebop on sugar pills, basically):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoDUxs3rlRU

Forgot about how much Knight Rider theme was a Carpenter/Moroder-esque banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C00gX_5iAG8

I hate 99.99% of anime but who among us could hate on both the opening (and closing!) theme(s) of Science Ninja Team Gatchaman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gciVpfFh9Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9ZiYaYaFcU
bbc ice skating = james last - mornings at seven
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=526OsPdSlxk
ski sunday - the cavendish orchestra . pop goes bach

i wanna _garage_ band that does just gr8 tv themes now. at first i was "i wanna band that...," but i searched, found and now i see it MUST be a garage band, because otherwise it turns out kinda gross

the anime opening rabbithole goes _deep_, there are like a _billion_ anime shows every season now and a lot of them have absolute banger theme songs. one of the niches i get into is when people put up pirate comps of all the anime OPs from a year or a season. here's four i just picked now from 2020... that's four out of 175 total.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjdvgI_jVP8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOoYcBoj0W0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q7wY3K0cm0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kpK_SwJ12w

the first is from an anime called "darwin's game". no idea what it's about. the second is from an anime called "food wars". i don't know if i've talked about it here. it's an "ecchi" anime, which is like hentai but not as explicit apparently, and also a cooking anime, which ... on paper, that sounds to me like a good way to ruin a cooking anime. but it's surprisingly likeable. basically it's about a cook who makes dishes so good that people experience sexual pleasure from eating them. i enjoy a good meal more than i enjoy sex - asexual people don't all experience it the same way, but that's my experience. i kind of like the central hook of the show. if other people want to see it as dirty, that's fine... all i see is people who are really enjoying their meals. it's the opening sequence to the fifth season of the show. oh, the other thing to know about anime theme songs is that they tend to have a new theme song every season... sometimes two new ones a season, like with the next selection. the weirdest one i've seen is that one of the opening sequences to the classic '80s anime "maison ikkoku" uses gilbert o'sullivan's "alone again, naturally" as the theme. well, ok, then.

the third is from an anime called "fruits basket", the remake. like a lot of anime "fruits basket" is based on a manga, and the first time they made an anime adaptation the manga wasn't done yet. so they kind of made up an ending. this remake adapts the full manga, including the ending. it's really highly acclaimed and people like it a lot. it's also my ex-wife's favorite manga and anime ever, so i'm never going to watch it. the fourth is from an anime called "sleepy princess in the demon castle", which i've watched some of. it's a funny deconstruction of rpg tropes where the kidnapped princess basically terrorizes the entirety of the demon castle in her quest to get a good night's sleep. it's not, like, the best anime ever, but it's fun.