TVSquad

We've talked a lot here about theme songs and how they just don't make them like they used to. The openings to shows used to be a lot longer, a real part of the show. Today we're lucky if we get a few bars of music and maybe a credit or two. Heck, one show, Lost, only plays one note and shows the logo.

The Popcorn Trick has a list of the Top 25 Opening Credits of '80s Action Shows, and you can't argue with most of the picks. Magnum P.I. is on the list, as is Riptide, Miami Vice, and The A Team. I would quibble a little bit with the choice of The Rockford Files. One of my favorites, but it was really more of a '70s show than '80s (it ended in 1980). I was 13 years old when Vegas premiered (in 1978 - it ran until 1981) and I wanted to be Dan Tanna and live in Vegas and have hot girlfriends and drive around with a lion in my sports car.

Cagney and Lacey shouldn't be on the list though. It should be replaced with one of several other shows from the '80s. After the jump, the five shows they missed.

Eric Deggans, the TV and Media critic for the St. Petersburg Times has an interesting article up discussing the death of the TV theme song and also providing a list of his top-ten theme songs of all time.

Deggans points out the obvious -- that TV producers, ever wary of viewers flipping channels, have tried to keep the start of the show as peppy as possible -- but he also ventures a theory that is in desperate need of further explanation....

I have to say, I expected something a little more challenging from the folks at mental_floss. This TV theme song quiz was pretty easy (I scored 100%).

Okay, I'll admit that I got a couple of them correct through a process of elimination. If you had walked up to me and started playing the theme to What's Happening?, I wouldn't have been able to tell you what it was. I was too young to remember What's Happening?, but not too young to remember the syndicated spinoff What's Happening Now?, although I don't know how the theme to that series went, either, which is probably for the best. God knows I've spent many a night slamming my head in the oven door to erase any memories of The New WKRP in Cincinnati, also.

Anyway, go take the quiz and then come back here and let me know how you did.

[via TV Filter]

Recently I mentioned that an episode of Prison Break used the song "Teardrop" by Massive Attack during a montage. It just so happens that "Teardrop" is also the theme to another FOX program, House. Taking this concept to the next level, TVgasm asks what it would be like if segments of other programs began to use songs from other TV shows. They have a hilarious clip featuring a few scenes, including one from 24, and footage of a convoy being attacked in the Sudan which doesn't seem quite as scary with the Alvin and the Chipmunks theme playing over it. Anyway, you should check it out. Meanwhile, I'll be kicking myself for not thinking of this idea first.