Best Ever TV Theme Songs!

Are TV show theme tunes some of the most popular pieces of music ever? I reckon so. Just think of how many you can hum, recall and recognise away from the shows themselves. A great theme tune can outlast the show it originally came from, remaining in the popular mind for sometimes decades. 

Yes, the whole notion of TV theme tunes is a mysterious and powerful one. Today, I aim to gather together a good selection of the best, but in reality, there are so many shows out there that a definitive list is an impossible task. I will, however, scan through the decades of popular TV to find what I feel are the most memorable and iconic themes, and present them here for your delectation. Some will be ‘custom made’ songs for the show, and others will be already existing songs that have been utilised by the showrunners. All of them - I hope - will be memorable. I’ll talk about 20 of them, and add some honourable mentions at the end.

Grab your TV’s remote control and let’s do this!

Before it became 8 thousand movies all with Tom Cruise running away from explosions, Mission: Impossible was a suave 1960s spy show in the mould of James Bond. The theme, by Lalo Shiffrin, is very much a thing of its time: we rarely hear bongos being played alongside orchestral scores these days! It's also a great example of 5/4 timing being used in a manner that doesn’t sound unnatural. Cool trivia: Shiffrin arrived at this 5/4 time by basing the rhythm on the morse code for ‘MI’: dash-dash-dot-dot. How awesome?

Before Arthur ‘The Fonz’ Fonzerelli literally jumped the shark (ruining the show and unwittingly coining a popular phrase), Happy Days was a TV sensation. Starting in 1974 and running for a decade, it took an already nostalgic look back at the mid-50s, which is crazy to imagine. Over 50 years now separate us from the beginning of Happy Days, and they were only looking back 20 years!

Ugh! (shudder)

Anyway, the theme tune was a pretty deliberate attempt to ape the sort of Bill Haley rock n roll sound, and I’d say it was a huge success. Whatever the word is for that happy/sad nostalgia for a semi-mythical past, Happy Days and its theme tune have it aplenty.

Talk about summing up the zeitgeist? Buffy the Vampire Slayer spoke to the 90s alternative generation like no other show, using the monsters of Sunnydale as metaphors for the horrors of growing up. The theme tune, by otherwise unknown rockers Nerf Herder (it's a Star Wars reference), brought a fun, hard-rocking vibe to the vampire-stabbing.

Beginning with a cheesy horror organ and ending with a solid rock-out, Buffy’s theme captures much of the show’s appeal.

Netflix’s most popular show owes much to the sci-fi and horror of the late 70s to mid 80s. This is no secret, with the titles even lifting the typeface from Stephen King’s 80s horror novels. The tune itself accentuates this deliberate referencing, with a non-more-analog synth arpeggio bringing us directly into the age of the video rental store and the weekend D&D marathon. Very well-judged and enormously effective.

HBO’s Baltimore-set police drama has been considered one of the most influential of recent years. The format of staying within the city but refocussing the story angle each season - the docks, the street corners, the schools etc - brought a freshness to the show’s feel. This was echoed in the theme tune too. The song is always Tom Waits’ Down in the Hole, but each season has it performed by different artists in different styles. Subtle, on-brand and creative.

If The Wire was gritty and (supposedly) realistic, then Miami Vice provided an almost diametrically opposite slice of cop action. Neon, Ferraris, white suits, pastel shades, no socks, houseboats with pet crocodiles…it was all impossibly glamorous. 

Don Johnson played Crockett, a cop on a cop’s wage who drove a supercar and wore a designer wardrobe to work. He was the coolest guy in the 80s and his show had an equally slick soundtrack. Interestingly, when talking about Miami Vice’s music, most people seem to remember two tracks equally: the tub-thumping intro credits music, and the downtempo, oceanic, mysterious Crockett’s Theme, both of which were created by synth whizz Jan Hammer.

David Lynch and Mark Frost’s ultra-dreamy mystery show was a cultural sensation that lasted and lasted. Making modern myth from Native American folklore, 50s romance and Pacific Northwest rurality, Twin Peaks was a deep rabbit hole of esoteric artfulness.

Part of its inimitable charm came from Angelo Badalamenti’s beautifully evocative theme, filled with (sampled) baritone guitar and layers of elegiac synth washes. 

Interesting fact: although Lynch collaborated on this tune with Badalamenti, it wasn’t originally created for Twin Peaks! Indeed, the pair wrote music for singer Julee Cruise’s debut record, and the Twin Peaks theme is actually an instrumental version of her song Falling.

All you need is the first three or four notes of that chimney intro guitar riff and you are right there in either Joey or Monica’s apartment, aren’t you?

In recent years, Friends has taken a bit of a beating for certain thematic jokes that haven’t aged well, which is important. Still, it debuted 32 years ago and for a generation, Rachel, Chandler and the rest were there for them when the rain started to fall, as sung by The Rembrandts in their theme song.

Apparently this was meant to sound like R.E.M.’s It’s the End of the World As We Know It. Can you hear a similarity?

Exactly how was Zack Morris saved by the bell? The whole theme tune talks about him being late for school and missing the bus! Surely the bell only finalised his failure?

Anyway, this 90s kid comedy was as seared into the youth consciousness as Neighbours or Home & Away. And no, the actor playing Zack didn’t die in a car crash. Poor guy.

Talking about 90s kid-friendly comedy with singable theme tunes, it don’t come more iconic than Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince’s theme to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. 

A pre-disgrace Will Smith was both the Fresh Prince AND a character called Will, and somehow it wasn’t confusing.

Uncle Phil was tolerant, Carlton was uptight, Hilary was ditzy and Geoffrey the butler held it all together in a family scenario that looks impossibly wealthy by today’s standards. DJ/producer Jazzy Jeff also made the odd cameo - again, as a fictional version of himself - and always got thrown out the house.

Ok everybody, are you ready? Iiiiiin West Philadelphia, born and raised…

Three notes played on an electric guitar is all that’s needed to alert you to the fact that you are in some creepy parallel universe. Bernard ‘Psycho/Vertigo etc’ Herrmann actually composed the initial Twilight Zone score but his was jettisoned in favour of Maurice Constant’s follow up piece. 

Like the Mission: Impossible theme, this 60s classic has remained very much in popular culture, and strangely, also makes quite audible use of bongos. Coincidence? (Cue Twilight Zone music) Maybe not!

That piano riff and those doo-doo-doos send you right back. Right back to a fictional late 90s when high school kids seemingly ate an entire Thesaurus a day and gave their parents dating advice; where endless summers promised idyllic love triangles and the anxiety of leaving their stunning homes to attempt adult life in the big city. 

It must’ve been rough being central character Dawson Leary, living an unrealistic but amazingly best-case-scenario version of teenage life. Paula Cole’s song I Don’t Want to Wait wasn’t written for the series but it perfectly encapsulated that yearning feeling of the promise of lives waiting to be lived out on a large canvas.

Most famous fingersnaps ever? Best use of the word ‘ooky’ ever? I’d award both to this brilliantly quaint theme for The Addams Family. You may have preferred watching The Munsters, but you knew the other guys had the best tune.

Underrated cult hit Northern Exposure isn’t massively well remembered these days, but in a post-Twin Peaks 1990s, it was one of TV’s hugest hits. Centering around an idealised small town in Alaska named Cicily, Northern Exposure was a show filled with charismatic eccentrics who all - in a rare move for a TV show - largely got on with each other.

The theme tune is one of the most instantly feel-good pieces of music out there: the bassline is so amiable, and the harmonica melody just wants to be your friend and buy you a beer. Insanely likeable.

How many of you thought that it was a theremin on this theme tune? I mean, after William Shatner’s “Space……….the……FINAL frontier” part? I did, but it's actually a female vocal, blended with a little flute and organ, presumably to add some sort of intergalactic feel.

Star Trek as a cultural force has largely been fortunate with its music, and it all started in the 60s with this original track going ‘where no man has gone before’.

The Sopranos is another example of the expert use of an existing song. This time, it’s Alabama 3 (not from Alabama and more than 3 folk) and their song Woke Up This Morning. Genre-wise, it’s hard to explain this one: it’s kind of a countrified bluesy indie song with electronica elements throughout. Thoroughly 90s, then, and a weirdly perfect fit for this late 90s mob drama, which some say is the greatest TV show of all time.

Hollywood composer and ex-Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman was riding high off the back of his pretty perfect Batman score when he took on the job of composing The Simpsons theme. Easily the oddest TV theme to remain popularly hummable, The Simpsons theme tune is weird on so many levels: it uses the Lydian mode and has loads of tritones in it (the devil’s Black Sabbath notes etc), and it also changes length depending on the animated action for each episode intro. Elastic and eccentric, it’s one of the most famous themes in the world. And with The Simpsons running for over 35 years now, I really hope that Elfman gets royalties and residuals!

People have called Dallas a ‘trash epic’, which is a term I both adore and don’t fully understand. Anyway, this titanic tale of Texan greed and hubris was as massive in the 80s as J.R. Ewing’s cowboy hat, and had a theme to match.

Does anybody else know why he’s singing about getting ‘toss salads and scrambled eggs’ all over his face?

This Cheers spin-off starred Kelsey Grammar as a smug psychiatrist who acted like a lothario but lived with his sarcastic old dad. It was an odd show, no matter how funny you found it, and its ‘elevator jazz’ theme music merely sealed the deal on the oddness. “What is a boy to do?” sang Dr Frasier Crane over the end credits. I dunno: seek some professional help?

The X-Files was a cultural phenomenon like no other, apart from all the other shows I’ve said that about in this blog. But it was a huge worldwide smash, bringing Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny to international fame and getting everyone hyped on UFOs once again.

The X-Files theme was a spooky instrumental written by Mark Snow and called, somewhat pretentiously, ‘Materia Primoris’. I say ‘written’, but Snow actually admitted that he’d accidentally elbowed his keyboard and struck a series of notes that essentially became the X-Files theme. Alien intervention? Sounds like it.

Do you remember this cartoon? With the bad guy called Cyril Sneer, who was some type of Scrooge McDuck analogue but instead of being a feathery duck he was a pink indecipherable monster who smoked cigars? I hope this is ringing a bell with you, because I’m not up to the task of further explanation here.

The Racoons was an 80s Canadian cartoon centered around a family of cool anthropomorphic Racoons (and one dog) who hung around in the forest. They dodged the aforementioned Cyril Sneer (I googled him: he was an aardvark, allegedly) and the show had an ecological vibe. It was solid entertainment, and boasted a killer theme tune that, for years, I genuinely thought was by Fleetwood Mac. Called Run With Us, it was sung by Lisa Lougheed, who also voiced the character Lisa Racoon. The song appeared in two different versions throughout the show’s 6 year run and is something of a forgotten banger.

Those are 20 of the best, but there are tons and tons more. Here’s a further sampling of TV theme tune greatness, but the real question here is: which amazing TV themes did I miss?

• Howard’s Way
• California Dreams
• BBC Snooker Theme
• The Monkees
• Golden Girls
• Masters of the Universe
• Transformers
• South Park
• Sunset Beach
• Inspector Morse
• Cheers
• Dynasty
• BBC Formula One (The Chain by Fleetwood Mac)
• Red Dwarf
• Pugwall’s Summer
• The Crystal Maze
• Gladiators