TV Intros That Are The Most

I actually considered putting up the Darkwing Duck theme, but (in addition to the Disney ground already having been covered in part by Baron Vaughn) it was too—well, not subtle, but too quiet and certainly not most enough—relative to what’s been posted already. Plus I now here it’s a blatant Prince ripoff, which makes it not the thing to post today.



What’s better is that in 1994 this wouldn’t have stood out—I remember all of TV looking like this!

Jean-Luc Lemur Indeed it did, but of all the shows I remember watching, Sister Sister is one of the few whose theme music pops unbidden into my mind from time to time. There's something infectious about it.


I watched quite a few episodes of this as a kid, and looking at the intro I'm getting the suspicion it may have gone over my head a little (a definitely recall a story where Veronica has to deny herself sex to get favourable terms in a divorce but there's this hot young masseuse who's been wanking off to her since he was a teenager. TV does terrible things to young minds.)

I'm surprised no one has posted the mostest intro of all time:



And the close second, featuring awesome Flatt & Scruggs banjo goodness:



And of course:

And how about outros? Seems like about 1970 some shows were fully committed to the outro, re-running the music and film of the intro. Hawaii Five-O used exciting fresh footage distinct from the intro, and appropriate to the journey out. I guess everyone remembers the superb intro. Here is the outro:


Then more or less at random, another example from the era is Streets of San Francisco, which must be Quinn-Martin's most amped-up intro/outro. What other shows had fully committed outros?

The link should start at 1:03. You can rewind to see the matching intro. Sorry about the unnatural aspect ratio, it's the best version I found on the Youtoob.

I'll raise you the original Magnum intro which combines going on absolutely forever and somehow fetishizing the car even more with having a theme tune that is pretty much the opposite of the eventual iconic post/carpenter jam.

Nope, though Ark II was produced by Paramount and reuses a lot of Star Trek sounds (the torpedo launch sound is actually the accelerator for the Ark.) I play episodes of it on our Xat sometimes. You're probably thinking of Gene Roddenberry's 1970s pilot Genesis II (though that didn't have John Saxon either.)

@patrickbatman
I raise you TEENAGERS WITH ATTITUDES:

A couple of times I've singled out shows I remember watching I've seen absolutely zero nostalgia for - Veronica's Closet, The Nanny, Skeleton Warriors - but Power Rangers... they're not that!

On that note, the first show I ever used VHS to tape every single episode; you guessed it:


Okay enough stuff that's fairly well known, how about one of those French cartoons I saw as a kid the internet doesn't go gaga over for unclear reasons:

You missed the obvious choice!

I've never seen Space: 1999 despite being a huge anderson fan as a kid, but every time someone posts that theme tune I'm almost sold.

Not enough non-Anglophone TV shows in this thread. Not nearly enough.

Oh here’s the Jon Saxon-Gene Roddenberry thing I mentioned earlier, Douay-Rheims-Challoner :

Bonus connection—in The Protectors intro Robert Vaughn does the same egg-cracking trick as Shatner does in Generations.

Roy Batty's Pet Dove Amusingly I can't see that because Channel 4, the channel that created the show, blocked it here. But I'm quite familiar with Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, it's a great choice. I'd call the intro a bit of a parody of Lars von Trier's Riget if that wasn't every bit as bonkers.


I'm going to blame @gordonfrohman for me linking this one. So many great 80s anime openings I could flood this thread with, honestly, but let's just dip in with two space-wrecking girls in hot pants:


As that was a rare two-in-a-row intros from things I've actually seen, marvel at the wonky 90s CGI of SINBAD: