nick f's top ten tv theme tunes

Well, here is my top ten. For your multimedia, hyperlinked viewing and listening pleasure, all the programme titles are linked - via the magic of YouTube - to videos of the opening credits of the programmes in question...

1. Doctor Who
Like Graeme says: off the scale. It was updated every couple of Doctors, I think, but the early 80s version was the greatest, in my opinion, because it's the one with the big explosion at the end that you can join in with by making a big exploding sound and jumping off the sofa (which you have, of course, been dancing on). I find that to be the best way of getting into the mood for watching an episode of Doctor Who.

Actually, by a curious coincidence, only a couple of weeks ago I was watching an interview on YouTube from the mid-80's, in which a man from the BBC Radiophonics Workshop demonstrates the making of the Doctor Who theme tune. I think anyone with a fondness for synthesisers will find it 8 minutes and 22 seconds well spent. It may be viewed here.

2. Twin Peaks
Interestingly, the greatest TV series ever also had the second greatest theme tune ever.

3. Battle of the Planets
It is surely impossible not to jump around the room while listening to this tune.

4. The A-Team
A tune I regularly whistle, even to this day, as I walk down the street or purchase a sandwich, and which never fails to make me feel heroic.

5. Poirot
Excellently moody, with strangely acceptable saxophone. There was a moment in Poirot where the eponymous Belgian detective hero, on being served two boiled eggs for breakfast in a hotel restaurant, said: "I cannot possibly eat these eggs: they are of completely different sizes." That complaint has remained something that I regularly mull over to this very day.

6. Dallas
I have a memory from when I was about eight of being quite taken aback at being suddenly yelled at to SHUT UP! by a girl sitting across from me because I was singing the Dallas theme tune over and over and over while drawing. Ner-ner ner-ner ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ner! I have a vague memory that Dallas used to be on after Dr. Who or the A-Team or something, so I'd always stay up just to watch the opening credits and dance to the music. I never actually watched it, though - not even one episode.

7. Mission: Impossible
Like Dallas, another programme I never actually watched. I'm hesitant to put it on this list because, unlike Dallas, I don't think I ever even caught the title sequence. However, I suppose I must have heard it somewhere or I wouldn't know it, and it is a brilliant, brilliant theme tune. It's also notable for being in an adventurous time signature (five beats to the bar, should you be interested...)

8. Grange Hill
Wa-wa wa waaaaah!

9. Fraggle Rock
Cast your cares away, worries for another day!

10. Knight Rider
For that sinister waka-chaka sound that goes through the whole thing.