Greg Burgas is at it again, this time asking, What’s your favorite TV theme song?
This is TOUGH for me. I have seven CDs called Television’s Greatest Hits. Each disc has 65 TV themes, starting with kids’ shows and then sitcoms, dramas, and the like. Plus I have show-specific albums for The Drew Carey Show (which had THREE different themes), Friends, The Simpsons, and others. I LOVE TV themes, at least the ones from the 20th century; I’m not really up on 1hemes from this century.
I was very fond of the Peter Gunn theme, written by Henry Mancini. But I only learned about it after the fact. It was so iconic that in 2023, CBS Sunday Morning captured his old mates such as Quincy Jones and John Williams rerecording it. Mancini, BTW, also wrote the theme for Newhart, the Vermont-themed show.
My all-time favorite theme song composer is Mike Post, who created, among others, Law & Order, The Rockford Files, and my favorite, Hill Street Blues, which has a certain melancholy that suits the program.
There are a lot of themes that include lyrics. Greg picked Cheers as his favorite, and it’s a very worthy choice. But I must admit being a sucker for the ones from an earlier era, such as Gilligan’s Island and the Hooterville Trilogy. My favorite from this era was Mr. Ed; I still remember most of the words.
Then there were the cartoons, almost all of which had lyrics. My favorite was Top Cat. I could make the case for George of the Jungle, though, because Weird Al Yankovic did a straight, non-parody version.
Fishin’ Hole
Earle Hagen wrote two of my favorite themes growing up, the shows of Andy Griffith and Dick Van Dyke. But I appreciated the themes of two of my dad’s favorite shows as well, Mission: Impossible and Star Trek.
I liked the themes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show, All In The Family, MASH, and Sanford and Son, which I heard on the radio recently.
But if I had to pick just two songs, one with lyrics and one without:
The Jeffersons – Movin’ On Up, sung by Ja’Net DuBois, “to that deee-luxe apartment in the sky”
Perry Mason – and the outro is really orchestral. I swear the Nylons’ beginning of Town Without Pity borrowed from the Mason theme.
