Ten Great Forgotten TV Show Openings

It’s funny how some TV themes/openings become so well known that they become iconic. Others, not so much. And it’s not because the show was awful or they were bad theme songs. In fact quite the contrary. It’s could be a case of  the show itself never reaching that status level where the opening was something that everyone knew. For instance, who remember this :

The theme to “It’s a Living’ is fantastic…but who remember it? Or the show for that matter? It lasted a year on network TV before finding life in syndication.




Another reason for this could be because the opening was trimmed down. For instance :

Notice how that was a little longer than you may remember it? That’s because the long version isn’t used a lot, it’s easier to trim it for ad time. I LOVED this Leon Redbone theme for this show. But even trimmed I bet most remember it. The same can be said for the trimmed version of the Friends theme, even without the opening of the song I'm sure most people still remember that one. Some shows, not quite as lucky. When the theme gets trimmed often it gets forgotten




Here are a few more great openings to good shows which aren’t as memorable as they should be.




Head of the Class
 I loved the theme to this show, and man was I amazed to find out that there is a full length one! Yeah the theme we see most common edits out the kids so we just have Charlie struggling to get to work. I love the longer opening;s music too, it's one of my favorite themes ever. That no one sees.

Wings
It would be easy to forget, or just not be aware, that Wings had a full length opening during it’s first two years. That’s because the opening was chucked for the remainder of the run. We’d get the logo and a few bars of the theme after that. The full theme is nice and the visuals beautiful.

Dear John
This was one of those show’s that suffered from not being able to find a stable time slot. Actually Wings did too, but they managed a few years on NBC Thursday night which helped. This show was all over the place! To make matter worst, and I could be remembering wrong, but this long theme was eventually trimmed eventually to just a title screen. The theme is beautiful and is one of the best examples of setting up the premise of a show with the intro.

Amen
This was Sherman Helmsley’s other hit show, which really did not stand the test of time. After the show was finally cancelled, it just kind of went away. So the opening is pretty simple, Helmsley played deacon who had an attitude. The theme is simply him arriving at the church and walking in. So, how do we establish the character with that setup? Check it out : And the theme is fantastic too.

 Herman's Head
Hey this was a great show! Well, ok, it was a good show....well..maybe we can just settle on decent? I don't think to many people really remember it but the theme is fantastic. What's the concept of the show you ask? Why explain when the theme spells it out for you perfectly :

By the way going back to my discussion on theme's that improved their openings, the first version of this theme was awful. It told you everything rather than showing...which isn't nearly as effective And they clearly figured that out with the above improved version.








Dave’s World
This was Harry Anderson’s only attempt at a sitcom after Night Court. It was, ok for the most part. While I don’t get why they used Billy Joel’s “You Might Be Right” for the theme it kind of worked. The show was based on writer David Barry and the opening animation reflects the drawings you’d see in his books. This show was a hit but then CBS Star Trek’d it by moving it to Friday nights.

 (and yes this theme is so unknown that this version is the best I could find, even if it's incomplete)






NewsRadio
Most of us remember the opening to this show as a quick music sting with the title on the screen. Others may remember the longer version where the theme played while the actors names flash by. But who remember the version where the characters appeared with their names? It wasn’t around for long, and I believe it had like three different versions where the scenarios the characters were in changed. In one things were good and another there were misfortunes. Anyway, here it is:

 Finally, just to show it can go wrong the other way. Sometimes trimming is better. Here is the rare longer version of The Golden Girls theme and man, does it get redundant.

Sometimes short and sweet is better.





Comment and let me know if you have a TV theme you love that seem to be mostly forgotten. Oh and by the way…GO PATS on Sunday