TV shows that completely changed their theme tune

I'd say the 1988 Why Don't You theme is an 80s update of the previous theme though.

RE Why Don't You:

There's a missing intro there.... same theme though - but it's the one I remember - the disembodied head, although I remember him being a bit more 3Dish.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kWWxb1n9E

Not sure if it really counts as a "theme tune change" as such but CBBC's Trapped had a new remix I suppose is the right term on its theme tune when the artist changed for the "voice" but its still basically the same theme.

However Children's Ward definitely changed its theme at least twice, here's what it sounded like in Series 3 (skip to about 40 seconds in and sounds very Byker Grove-ish!)


By series 9 and "The Ward" - 45 seconds in:


And of course the later theme from the last two or three series based on the previous one when for whatever reason it went back to Children's Ward:


Unfortunately ITV have blocked most of the Children's Ward clips on YouTube but I'm pretty sure there was at least another theme for CW?

Have we mentioned the Children's BBC laserdisc ident getting a new jingle ("tell that aardvark...") but keeping the same visuals

This sequence always reminded me of the One O'Clock news titles at the time




Totally agree, and love the classic 90s videowall animation. I miss videowalls.

This may be more of a relaunch theme than anything else but children's favourite Pingu ended after 156 episodes and six series over 14 years, replacing its theme tune for something Pingu-ish else after about 10 years. The show was later revived with something, well, crap really.

This video has all three themes in order.


I suspect the "new" theme (2nd in the above video) was ultimately retro-added onto the earlier episodes.