Is the TV theme doomed?

I've only recently watched Around the World in 80 Days as I was far too young at the time. I was really taken with the titles and theme music and was humming it for weeks afterwards. Similarly, Palin's Pole to Pole theme. I've also been watching some of David Attenborough's early documentaries recently and this has been my favourite theme by far - so much so that I tracked down the soundtrack CD album on ebay: https://www.ravensbourne.ac.uk/bbc-motion-graphics-archive/trials-life-1990 Composed by George Fenton, naturally.


I totally agree. I'm quite partial to Michael Portillo's various Great Railway Journeys series but practically half of each episode is taken up with Michael telling you where he's been and where he's going! They could condense the actual footage down to about three episodes and drop all the repetition!

I'm in the exact same boat as you. I was moved to watch the full Palin travel series after watching the retrospective Travels of a Lifetime programmes last year, and instantly fell in love with the theme and titles for 80 Days.

My mother used to watch 80 Days religiously on its first run back in the 80s; and the theme really stuck with me; so much so that I used to hum it years, sometimes decades later without remembering what it belonged to.

All the modern incarnations of Star Trek have had title sequences over 90 seconds long. DS9's was two minutes.

Sense8 and Dexter were both almost 2 minutes.

And then there's this classic:

I'd say that intro sequences, with the advent of streaming (and even the "Golden Age of Television") for drama and comedy shows are still a thing. Even big budget dramas on BBC1 can have elaborate sequences and arty graphics. But probably more than 60s for those.

Documentary intros, as already noted, can be a bit repetitive after you've watched multiple episodes.

...and then there's anime, where basically all the title sequences are 90 seconds.

Except for the popular show One Piece, which is longer than standard anime openings

Anime intros are basically pop songs made for bands to sell records

"It's time to du-du-du-du, du-du-du-du-du-du-duel!"

Couldn't resist.

I'm currently watching episodes of Neighbours from 1990 and the title sequence is replaced with a title card on episode 1221, this stays until mid 1992.

'Top of the Pops' didn't have an opening title sequence for a long time in the 70s and the early part of the 80s.

The only time you'd see the official programme logo would be usually at the end, before the credits ran; Christmas shows being the exception... and I guess that curvy-style-set period in early 1980 with same logo incorporated into parts.

For a few years, TOTP did also without a theme tune: the rundown at the start was set to a hit from the current chart, with a different song as the playout. You only heard 'Whole Lotta Love' used at Christmas or select occasions.

"Fa-fa-fa-fa-fashion..."

For a while in early 81 there wasn't really any intro to TOTP at all- the first few episodes of 1981 literally just threw you straight in to the opening link, before they added a brief, silent spinning TOTP logo a few shows in, but still not really an intro.

After the 1980 strike (when they moved the chart countdown separate segments during the show, rather than running it down at the start) until the end of 1980 they did open with a "coming up" sequence with clips from acts that were to perform (which also restored Whole Lotta Love for the first time since 1977, bar Christmas editions)

I don't think the 1973 TOTP titles lasted long at all, so the show went without any sort of proper title sequence for probably around 7 years, and didn't even have a theme tune during the 1977-80 era, bar the Christmas specials.