All-time favorite TV theme songs

Parents Forum Parent Cafe
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Based on a bit of tangent on a thread in the Politics Forum, I thought it would be interesting to see what your favorite TV theme song was.

SOME, but not all, of my favorites include:

  • “Welcome Back” from “Welcome Back, Kotter.” This specifically inspired this thread from the Politics Forum and was a number-one song by John Sebastian, formerly of The Lovin’ Spoonful:
  • The Rockford Files theme song:
  • This brilliant one by Quincy Jones from “Sanford and Son”:
  • “Alll in the Family”:
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Without a doubt, the best

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Great choice:

Now I am inspired:

  • “Cheers” (we actually visited this bar during a college tour this summer)
  • “Barney Miller”
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The Greatest American Hero, Threes Company and the cheesiest The Love Boat. Of course there’s Happy Days and Hawaii Five 0

And per the previous message with Bea Arthur, and then there’s Maude’ and you can keep going with All in the Family and The Jefferson’s.

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I am kinda’ getting a sense that the great theme songs are also associated with great TV shows.

  • “Night Court”
  • “The Twilight Zone”
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Well, if we’re including instrumentals, in addition to the previously mentioned Hawaii 5-0, I need to include

And what the hell, adding in Hawaii 5-0, both versions

And for the sake of @sushiritto and @mynameiswhatever , I don’t think I’ve ever seen an episode of the Jack Lord version, even in reruns as a kid. :grin:

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Ski, are you sure you’re not older than you purport to be? :rofl: All great choices!

At the risk of getting slightly off-topic, basically every one of these shows is a classic, both for the theme song as well as shows themselves.

As for “The Jeffersons,” I have to give special credit to Sherman Hemsley…what a brilliant comedic actor he was!

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I agree with the Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-0 and The Jeffersons. Those are just classics.

Oh, we should put the Andy Griffith show on here too if we’re reaching back to the dark ages:

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Yes! Absolutely brilliant. For some reason, I was just reading about this theme song a few days ago. It’s called “The Fishin’ Hole”, I think, and was filmed in a park in the Los Angeles area, not in North Carolina.

Wonderful show, wonderful actors, and wonderful theme song. First rate!

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Even though it’s kind of melancholy, I always loved the theme from Taxi:

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The first one that comes to kind, though not exactly a favorite because it’s a somber one is MASH.

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TBH, I never have watched “Hawaii Five-O”, as, “back in the day,” our local CBS affiliate s_____, and we could never get a good aerial signal. It was ABC, NBC, PBS, and one or two independent channels that were all we got on our Sony b/w tv in our rec room.

But yes, the song is genius!

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Also loved Moonlighting:

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Mission Impossible
Friends

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Courtship of Eddie’s Father…

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Wowser…great one!

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An iconic theme from across the pond

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Sesame Street

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