Entertainment For Lively Minds
Woeful TV themes
Posted by matthew on 6 August 2009 - 4:09pm.
Last week we looked at great comedy theme tunes and just below here we're investigating TV shows with great music integral to their very being. But what about this...
It's terrible: was there ever a worse theme tune to a great show? Words fail me here, but Mrs Elliott has described it as the pre-programmed reggae demo tune on a 1987 Casio keyboard, if programmed by someone who had never actually heard any reggae.
Your thoughts and suggestions please.
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I don't agree.
It's the sort of thing a few reasonably talented session musicians could knock together in their tea break, but it makes me smile and bounce around.
I *do* agree!
I like QI a lot and have most of them stored on my PVR, but it's the only programme where I deliberately edit the title sequence out as I hate it so much, the music and that extreme close-up picture of the baby (I like babies usually, I promise!)
The other horrible theme that comes to mind would be the one to Ronnie Corbett's "Sorry!", thankfully seldomly repeated, with that horrible "boing" effect in it, presumeably to tie in with the nonsensical pinball theme of the title sequence...
Blame the late, great Ronnie Hazlehurst for that 'boing',
He arranged the 'Sorry!' theme.
YouTube has thus far let me down, but I'd love to see that Spitting Image sketch about Ronnie Hazlehurst's 'Requiem Mass' once more, just to find out if it's as funny as I remember it.
Howard Goodall did it
I suspect he's a friend of Stephen Fry and therefore an obvious choice, and has been an occasional guest I think. It's a bit cheap and tacky but then QI must have the best cost/entertainment ratio in the whole of broadcast media.
Sorry
is great. There is, in fact a version of the Psychoville theme done in the style of Sorry on youtube. Wish they'd used it.
Watched the prog many times, but
never seen the beginning before.
I have heard that at the end though and find it quite pleasing in a naff way.
I used to watch this in the 80s...
...and was always slightly freaked out by the theme tune:
Rugby Special - Holy Mackerel!
Now, we need a theme tune that conjures up the noble sport of rugby; the pain, the glory, the beauty and the brutality, the pride and the passion... I know! Brian Bennett's "Holy Mackerel!"...
Charles Endell Esquire
http://hub.tv-ark.org.uk/flvsystem_lite/player.php?id=679ab651f155ddb18b...
A few years after Budgie finished in the early 1970s, Scottish Television brought back Budgie's gangland boss Charlie Endell for his own spin-off series.
I thought it was rather good, although Charles Endell Esquire didn't do much in the ratings.
I suspect (I hope) the theme is probably deliberately bad, but dear God...
(No subject)
Tarby had another dire
quiz called Full Swing that had this proto Teletubbies theme
also hated this - Mike Batt and Captain Sensible hearing a Chas n Dave record from 3 miles away,
its ok, contain no actual Chalkie non-laughtermaker
Blankety Blank..
Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank.
Blankety Blank!
Supermatch Game, Supermatch Game, Supermatch Game.
Supermatch Game!
Absolutely dreadful.
And you'll all be singing it in your heads for the next five hours!
Another Ronnie Hazelhurst Classic
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe paid a rather nice tribute to him, finishing with the boss from "The I.T. Crowd" performing the theme from "Sorry" with his band. I remember the Spitting Image version being funny too. Very avant-garde.
"Blankety Blank" was a silly game show that knew it was a silly game show. This was years before academics discovered postmodernism. The BBC repeated an episode hosted by the fabulous Les Dawson, last year. He introduced the Final thus, "This'll be good: an idiot versus a drunk." His presenting style was man trapped in a nightmare holding on to flashes of hope. The contestants were thrilled to go on telly and have a laugh with Les. Dawson loved the fact that they often left their prizes behind in Reception. So the theme tune is knowingly silly and sets you up for joyful half an hour of the lowest form of television happily sending itself up.
I mean, can a joke be any dumber than blanking out a word that could, if you were in a silly mood, be slightly naughty? And then pretending that the slightly naughty option had never occurred to you? The music set the tone: please turn off your brain as you will not be needing it.
Dawson was God.
Here is the man on his Blankety Blank début...
more Tory Scouser-related
more Tory Scouser-related misery:
plus, soul-destroying atrocious replacements for previous classic theme tunes (must be plenty of other examples):
anything by Pete Baikie
didn't he do Bottom?
But
he did do the Absolutely theme and songs therein. For that reason, he is beyond reproach for me.
TV gold: Masterteam
Who "composed" that? Angela Rippon?
Friday Night with Jonathon Ross...
... has a theme that sounds like it was knocked off in a couple of minutes, but never actually finished. Cheesy organ and bass, in a lazy 12-bar arrangement, and just when you're expecting an actual melody to kick in, it just repeats what its already done. Terrible
Bargepole is driven
to the very edges of sanity by the truly dreadful theme to the appalling 'New Tricks', performed by that spawn of the devil, the excerable Dennis Waterman.
Well New Tricks
Is about the only programme currently in the schedules that I make a point of watching. And the theme tune is OK - but not as good as "Minder" of course.
Excerable?
"Aaaaa'm goin' straight I am
straight as an 'arra" Norman Stanley Fletcher's difficult 2nd album
well I liked it
I used to love this but
I used to love this but it was better when Danny Baker presented it.
I challenge
you all to match the lyrical genius of this...
The ultimate bad theme
guffed from the backside of the TV devil is 'Mad About Alice' the never remembered Jamie Theakston\Amanda Holden sitcom. They sang the theme tune - it was shite.
Thankfully it does not appear to be on the interweb
I can't help but notice that
I can't help but notice that we have veered off into crap themes to crap shows, nevertheless. . . . .
Indeed we have
It was my intention to highlight the gulf between the greatness of QI and its terrible tune.
maybe thats what makes it
quite interesting *boom tish*
I stand by my post about
I stand by my post about Pets Win Prizes. . . !
Produced & directed by Bryan Izzard?
Eddie's mother by any chance?
Didn't all 70s sitcom themes
sounds like this? It's The Good Life - but in my head it could easily be Man About the House or Terry and June
Man About The House
I've always found this quite distinctive myself, but then I love all that Sound Galllery-type stuff.
Aah
Sally Thomsett...sorry, wrong thread
Bargepole shares
the sheevmasters 'affection' for Miss Thomsett, but would like to suggest the theme music to the dire 'Jam and Jerusalem', the wonderful 'Village Green Preservation Society', although sadly not the original version of said song.
I've got it. It's "Beautiful Day" by U2.
I'm not convinced that pop songs work as tv theme tunes. They have very different agendas. Theme tunes set the tone of the programme and are capable of being heard thousands of times. Obviously, pop songs can be employed in the same way as they are in movies. I find them too obtrusive.
ITV are about to show a football match and U2 come on. It says to me: We won't Waste Your Time with Production Music because This Is Football where you pay Top Dollar for The Very Best. I suppose it does set the tone.