TV shows that completely changed their theme tune

Some airings of the first Mr Bean episode have the later better known titles tacked onto them - remember it was originally the pilot episode of the series. Mr Bean in Room 426 is a slight oddity as theme wise it pretty much followed the format of the pilot - add to that Richard Curtis stopped writing for the show. As great a comedy actor as Rowan Atkinson is, it didn't quite have the gel of the previous episodes after that.

Also I would strongly recommend not watching Mr Bean on ITV2 as its butchered in the worst possible way going - last time I checked it was badly zoomed, cropped and, well just looked totally crap.

To be fair i think it's how ITV have got the copies from Tiger Aspect/Endemol, but agree they are awful, also any trace of Thames or Central have also been removed. The DVD releases from the mid noughties are the best quality copies of Mr Bean available.

But still as funny as it was first time around.

The American sitcom Roseanne had a instrumental theme tune for the first 8 series. By the last and final series (series 9) she added lyrics to the theme song sung by John Popper of Blues Traveler fame.

Series 8 theme


Series 9 theme

Peep Show

Series 1:



Series 2-9:

I posted this in the "shows people forget" thread but anyway:

CITV's Mike & Angelo suffered a similar fate to Only Fools & Horses with its theme tune, also to the point where previous episodes were re-edited to remove all trace of the original theme.

This was the original theme:


This was the later theme from Series 3 which was added (along with a laugh track) onto repeats of Series 1 and 2.


And finally the best known banjo theme that came in Series 5 and "American Mike", this lasted until the end of the run - seven years later

Grange Hill (being born in 1987 I only really remember the 90s theme).





Also not a completely different theme, but this change caused quite a bit of upset with the general public...



And of course that popular Sunday morning children's Gameshow Subzero had a different theme by the time a certain TV Forum member appeared on the show in series 3.

Saturday morning show 'Parallel 9' completely changed it's theme after they revamped it and scrapped most of the elements of the original show. Shame as I loved the original theme!

Series 1:


Series 2 onwards:

There has been several theme tunes to newsround over the years.

Another big change was London's Burning when they revamped the show completely in the late 1990s. Gone was the classic tinkly piano and saxophone and in came a rocky guitar...

Majority of series:


New theme:

I actually quite liked the rather short-lived 1993 "jazzy" saxophone EE theme, even it was entirely unsuitable for EE, and would've best fitted a certain Sunday evening drama series about posh people and boating!

That last series was crap hold your horses there is a Series 10 coming next year,.