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Coronation Street (1960)
5.6/10on IMDb
First aired
Eric Spear's theme is a lone cornet over a brass band, slow and a little wistful, and it sounds like a street of row houses at dusk. The soap first aired on December 9, 1960, which makes it the oldest show on this list.
Its trick is restraint. There is no big hook, just a melody that settles into a sigh, and for generations of viewers it has simply been the sound of the evening starting. It is also a gift for any brass band, because the tune was written for exactly that sound.
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The Avengers (1961)
8.3/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the 1960s spy series, not the Marvel films. The early episodes used a jazzy theme by John Dankworth, but the one everyone remembers is Laurie Johnson's, introduced in 1965 when Diana Rigg joined as Emma Peel.
Johnson built it from an earlier track of his called The Shake, and you can hear the dance floor in it: a brassy, strutting fanfare with a swinging rhythm that is pure mid-sixties London. It is as stylish and faintly ridiculous as Steed's bowler hat, which is exactly why it works.
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Z-Cars (1962)
7.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The theme outlived the police drama by a mile. Fritz Spiegl and the composer Bridget Fry arranged it from Johnny Todd, a traditional Liverpool folk song, and its rolling fife-and-drum feel suited a series set in a fictional town based on Kirkby.
Today far more people hear it at soccer games than on television: Everton and Watford use the arrangement as an anthem, and it plays as the teams walk out. That is the clearest proof on this list of a tune escaping its show, and it is a natural pick for any band asked for something with a bit of marching swagger.
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Steptoe and Son (1962)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Ron Grainer's Old Ned is a jaunty, slightly creaky tune that trots along like the rag-and-bone cart it was written for. It sounds cheerful until you notice the melancholy under the bounce, which is the whole sitcom in two minutes: father and son stuck together, laughing so they do not cry.
Grainer won an Ivor Novello Award for it, and it is a good one to hear next to his Doctor Who theme, written the following year. Few composers have given British television two such different tunes that nobody can forget.
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Doctor Who (1963)
8.4/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the original 1963 series and the theme that has followed the Doctor ever since. Ron Grainer wrote it, but Delia Derbyshire of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop realized it, and her version was one of the first television themes created and produced entirely with electronics.
That pulsing bassline and the eerie, swooping melody still sound like nothing else on television. Every era has rearranged it, yet the tune is instantly recognizable in each version, and it remains the best place to start for anyone curious about how electronic music reached British living rooms.
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Crossroads (1964)
4.4/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the original ITV motel soap that ran from 1964 to 1988, not the 2001 revival. Tony Hatch wrote its theme, a breezy, rising tune that sounds like a car pulling into the parking lot with the radio on.
The soap became a byword for low production values, but nobody mocked the music. Wings recorded a special arrangement that was occasionally used from the late 1970s, a rare case of a pop band of that size adopting a daytime soap theme. Hatch had more to give television, as the Emmerdale entry shows.
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Thunderbirds (1965)
7.9/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the 1965 Supermarionation original, not the 2015 remake Thunderbirds Are Go. Gerry Anderson asked Barry Gray for a military feel, and Gray answered with The Thunderbirds March, a brass-heavy piece that follows Jeff Tracy's famous countdown.
It is a proper march, with bold brass and a tune that climbs like a rocket leaving its silo, and it is one of the most satisfying TV themes for a band to play. Gray was musical director on all of the Andersons' productions from Four Feather Falls onward, and this is the theme that best shows why they kept him.
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Dad's Army (1968)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler? sounds so much like a 1940s music-hall number that many people assume it is one. In fact Jimmy Perry wrote the words and composed the music with Derek Taverner for the 1968 sitcom, as a gentle pastiche of wartime songs.
The masterstroke was the singer. Perry persuaded his childhood idol, the wartime entertainer Bud Flanagan, to record it for 100 guineas, and that genuine period voice makes the joke land. It is the rare theme people sing all the words to, and audiences are happy to join in.
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Monty Python's Flying Circus (1969)
8.8/10on IMDb
First aired
The sketch show's theme is not British at all: it is The Liberty Bell, an 1893 march by the American bandmaster John Philip Sousa, in a recording by the Band of the Grenadier Guards. It was picked partly because it had fallen into the public domain, so the team could use it without paying royalties.
What made it immortal was the ending. Just as the march gets going, Terry Gilliam's giant animated foot stamps down with a rude splat, and a stately military tune became the sound of British absurdity. Brass bands play it straight, and audiences still wait for the foot.
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Van der Valk (1972)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the 1972 Thames Television detective series starring Barry Foster, not the 2020 revival. Its theme, Eye Level, was a library track by the Dutch composer Jan Stoeckart under the name Jack Trombey, recorded by the Simon Park Orchestra.
Then it did something no detective theme should: it went to number one. Reissued in 1973, it spent four weeks at the top of the UK singles chart. The appeal is an easygoing, wide-open melody that feels more like a canal-side stroll than a murder inquiry, and it may be better remembered now than the show itself.
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The Adventures of Black Beauty (1972)
6.6/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the 1972 London Weekend Television family series, not the 1990 follow-up. Denis King wrote Galloping Home, performed by the London String Chorale, and few themes match their subject so literally: the rhythm canters, the strings sweep and you can almost feel the wind.
It won an Ivor Novello Award and reached number 31 in the UK charts as a single in 1974. Decades later, it is still the tune people hum when they picture a horse running across open fields, which says everything about how well it was written.
More about The Adventures of Black Beauty12
Emmerdale (1972)
4.9/10on IMDb
First aired
Tony Hatch's second soap on this list, written for Emmerdale Farm, as the Yorkshire Dales soap was called when it began on October 16, 1972. Where his Crossroads theme is all highway bustle, this one is pastoral: a broad, open melody that feels like the view from the top of a dale.
The soap dropped Farm from its title in 1989 and has changed beyond recognition, with a 1993 plane crash that partly demolished the village in place of sheep, yet the tune has kept its country calm. It is a good reminder that a theme can set a mood the stories no longer need to.
More about Emmerdale13
Last of the Summer Wine (1973)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Ronnie Hazlehurst wrote the theme, and Harry Pitch played its distinctive harmonica. That reedy harmonica is the sound of three old men wandering the Yorkshire hills with nowhere particular to be, and it is so soothing that it practically lowers your pulse.
The show ran from 1973 for so long that it became known as the longest-running TV sitcom in the world, so the tune soaked into several generations of evenings in front of the television. Hazlehurst was the BBC's great theme writer of the era, and he turns up again in the story of Only Fools and Horses.
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The Sweeney (1975)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Harry South, a key figure in British jazz in the 1950s and 1960s, wrote both the title theme and the end-credit reprise for the 1975 Flying Squad drama. You can hear the jazz: punchy brass stabs and a driving rhythm that owes a little to John Coltrane's Equinox, all urgency and squealing tires.
The jazz writer Dave Gelly called it the most emblematic TV theme of its day, and it still sums up the 1970s police drama in a few bars. It is the theme to reach for when you need a jolt of energy.
More about The Sweeney15
Fawlty Towers (1975)
8.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Dennis Wilson's theme for the hotel sitcom is a prim little piece for string quartet, recorded by the Aeolian Quartet, and it sounds exactly like the genteel Torquay establishment Basil Fawlty imagines he runs.
The director John Howard Davies reportedly asked the quartet to play it badly, though in the end they did not. That polite, slightly fussy elegance is the perfect setup for the chaos that follows, and it is a lovely change of texture for anyone working through these themes.
More about Fawlty Towers16
The Professionals (1977)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Laurie Johnson, whose Avengers theme appears earlier on this list, was a business partner in the company behind this CI5 action series and wrote its theme too. Where The Avengers swings, this one charges: thumping drums, a funky bassline and brass that sounds like a Ford Capri skidding around a corner.
It arrived in December 1977, two years after The Sweeney, and the two themes make a perfect pair for anyone who loves the hard-edged, bell-bottomed sound of late-1970s ITV.
More about The Professionals17
Grange Hill (1978)
7.1/10on IMDb
First aired
For anyone who grew up with the BBC school drama, the first notes of Chicken Man by Alan Hawkshaw mean the start of something slightly rebellious. It opened the series from its first run in 1978 to 1987, a perky, clucking tune with a strutting beat that matched the show's cheeky, comic-book-style titles.
The tune leads a double life: the game show Give Us a Clue used it too, from 1979 to 1982, which is why many people cannot quite place where they know it from. On this list it counts for Grange Hill, the show that got there first.
More about Grange Hill18
Minder (1979)
7.8/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the original 1979 series with George Cole and Dennis Waterman, not the 2009 revival. Its theme, I Could Be So Good for You, was written by Gerard Kenny and Patricia Waterman and sung by Dennis Waterman himself, which gives it the rough, cheerful charm of his character Terry.
The reissued single reached number three in the UK in 1980, and the song won the 1981 Ivor Novello Award for Best Theme for a Radio or Television Production. It is a proper pub singalong, the sound of a dodgy deal going almost to plan.
More about Minder19
Only Fools and Horses (1981)
9.0/10on IMDb
First aired
John Sullivan wrote the sitcom, and he also wrote the theme song everyone knows, which replaced the first series' instrumental tune, produced by Ronnie Hazlehurst. Sullivan sang both the opening and closing songs himself, not Nicholas Lyndhurst, as many people assume.
The words do the work: a streetwise market trader's boast set to a bouncy shuffle, telling you who Del Boy is before a single line of dialogue. It is one of the few British themes a whole room will sing word for word, and it works as well at a party as it does on a Christmas special.
More about Only Fools and Horses20
Brideshead Revisited (1981)
8.6/10on IMDb
First aired
This is the 1981 ITV serial with Jeremy Irons, not the 2008 film. Geoffrey Burgon's music is the most stately theme here, an aching, slow-building melody that sounds like a long summer afternoon slipping away.
That nostalgia is the point of the story, and the music carries it so well that a soundtrack album came out on Chrysalis Records the same year. It is the one to choose when a crowd wants something grand and a little heartbreaking rather than something to clap along to.
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Blackadder (1983)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Howard Goodall's theme has the same melody in every series, but each time it is played in roughly the style of the period: trumpets and timpani for the medieval first series, recorder, string quartet and electric guitar for the Elizabethan second, a harpsichord minuet for the Regency third, and a military band for the World War I fourth.
That makes it the cleverest theme here and a gift for musicians, a single tune that works as a fanfare, a dance and a march. The march version, played by the Band of the 3rd Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment, is the one that lands hardest, given where that series ends.
More about Blackadder22
Auf Wiedersehen, Pet (1983)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
The comedy-drama about British builders working in Düsseldorf had two theme songs, both sung by Joe Fagin: Breakin' Away over the opening and That's Livin' Alright over the close. David Mackay co-wrote them, the first with Ian La Frenais and the second with Ken Ashby.
That's Livin' Alright is the one that took off, peaking at number three in the UK singles chart in January 1984. Its cheery, defiant chorus about getting by on hard work caught the mood of the early 1980s, and it remains a reliable singalong whenever the show comes up.
More about Auf Wiedersehen, Pet23
The Bill (1984)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
The theme to the Sun Hill police drama is called Overkill, composed by Charlie Morgan and Andy Pask, and it is the sound of officers' boots hitting a London sidewalk: a hard guitar riff over synthesizer, bass and drums.
The series ran on ITV from 1984 until 2010, so the tune covered a lot of evenings, and it is one of the few 1980s TV themes that still sounds tough rather than dated. Hum the first few notes in a room of Britons of a certain age and somebody will mime walking the beat.
More about The Bill24
EastEnders (1985)
4.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Simon May wrote the theme for the Albert Square soap, which began on February 19, 1985 (Leslie Osborne holds a contractual credit but did not contribute to the composition). It has two famous halves: the drums that crash in at a cliffhanger, known to everyone as the doof doofs, and the soaring melody that follows.
Those drums may be the most effective few seconds of music in British television, because the whole country knows what they mean. The tune also became a hit in its own right when Anita Dobson, who played Angie Watts, sang a lyric version called Anyone Can Fall in Love in 1986, reaching number four in the UK singles chart.
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