There is nothing, literally nothing, like a good TV theme. There was a time when TV shows prided themselves on the production of a catchy "lyric" or "jingle" to announce with pride that this was another installment of your favorite weekly programme. Of course, that was before corporate greed set in you're now lucky if you get the credits of the production team involved before the first ad break has arrived. This was a golden age, when families gathered around the television on a weekly basis, long before iPlayers and plus boxes made it virtually impossible to miss your favorite television. You had one chance, maybe two if you were very lucky, to catch the stories and the events of the week before they were simply over and done with until the same time, same channel, next week. In this list we pay tribute to a series of TV themes which, quite literally, rocked our world and are now just distant memories. They stood for the announcement that it was time to see another episode of your favorite show and, years later, still play in our head upon command. They're the kind of tune you can bring up on YouTube, play at full volume and just feel all magical about, remembering a simple time when everyone sat around and watched that favorite programme on an evening and nobody just put their headphones in and used a laptop instead. Let's see what's on...
Honourable Mention - Going For Gold (1987)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0pvFulUd98 Yet to be recognized by the IOC as an official participatory event, many of us old enough to remember classic daytime television will no doubt be delighted by the addition of this, a true programme of Olympic magnitude to the list. With a theme composed by Hans Zimmer (bet you didn't know that) 'Going for Gold' was originally aired by the BBC between 1987 and 1996. It's premise of 7 English speaking contestants, each representing their respective regions, allowed for a battle of both nationalistic pride and fierce loyalty. Since you could only have someone totally neutral present such a programme, the host was none other than Irishman Henry Kelly, who (for my money) was the finest Irishman to present on BBC programming since Terry Wogan. But that's just my nationalistic pride showing. The theme itself is a very simple and completely dated retro 'pop' song which doesn't do much except describe the situation. But it's catchy, it's 80's and it's got a quality about it that makes you want to define nostalgia. I defy you to take a listen and not find it the catchiest thing you've listed too all day - before you've heard what else we have coming up, of course!