Some contenders I didn’t see nominated:
the Avengers
the New, Original Wonder Woman (w/ lyrics)
Barney Miller
Night Court
I Love Lucy
Bah. All very Ameri-centric.
Airwolf
Eastenders (crap show, great title track…)
Cheers
The NFL on Fox
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (Winner!)
Taxi
Barney Miller
Northern Exposure
WKRP
Hill Street Blues
What, no love for Welcome Back, Kotter? Am I the only one? It was a #1 hit and everything.
Lalo rules… Along with Barry.
Ahem.
Without prefering one over the other
Hawaii Five-0
Mission: Impossible
The Persuaders*
MASH
Dr Who
- I haven’t read the whole thread, but - unfortunately - I don’t expect this to get many nominations, even though it’s on par with the James Bond Theme.
Certainly not from John Sebastian, the author & singer of the theme! He has gone on record stating that he rues the day he wrote it, as it has become his unwanted trademark hit and has felt pressured to rehash it whenever/where-ever he performed.
Rockford Files
Monday Night Football
Dallas
Miami Vice
Battlestar Galactica (1980s)
Honorable Mention
CHiPs
L.A. Law
WKRP
MASH
Match Game
Scrabble
Buck Rogers
TJ Hooker
BJ & The Bear
Get Smart
Battle of the Planets (G-Force)
Cheers
Emergency!
Bosom Buddies
All in the Family
One Day at a Time
Jeffersons
Hawaii Five-O
Super Chicken
Batman (1960s)
Spider-man (1960s)
Monkees
Munsters
$100,000 Pyramid
Gong Show
Benny Hill Show
… and probably more
The Pink Panther
Hawaii Five-0
Star Trek - Original Series
High Chaparral
Matlock
Batman
Twin Peaks
The Addams Family
Hill Street Blues
F Troop
That’s interesting, and too bad. He was also the founder of The Lovin’ Spoonful, though. I would have thought he’d be sick of “Summer in the City” by now moreso than “Welcome Back”. I love both tunes, but I associate him more with the 'Spoonful than with the Kotter theme.
I want to replace my votes for Hawaii Five-O and Peter Gunn (which I’ve not even seen) with:
UFO a parallel universe version 
UFO our universe version.
and. . .
Stingray (just beats Thunderbirds because it has bongos).
Are we talking about the opening “Stingrayyyyyy, Stingray! dun da dah dah dah dah” one or the closing credits “Marina, aqua Marina, why won’t you whisper the words that my heart is longing to hear?” one…?
Greatest American Hero
Rescue Me
The Jeffersons!!!
All in the Family
Fat Albert
The Muppet Show (it’s the most sensational, inspirational, celebrational, Muppetational song around!)
Doctor Who (even people who don’t watch it can hum it)
Pinky & the Brain
The Addams Family
Fresh Prince of Bel Air (I’ve been known to sit in front of the TV and sing along with every single word)
I’ve purposely not read the thread so as not to influence my vote.
- Moonlighting
- Greatest American Hero
- Twin Peaks
- Doctor Who
- Perfect Strangers (guilty pleasure, don’t judge me)
Wow, talk about being stuck in the past. Somehow I couldn’t really remember any intros of series I watch these days. Well, maybe apart from “House”, and I think that shouldn’t count since it’s a Massive Attack song that I knew beforehand.
[sort of hijack]
When I was looking for the Doctor Who intro to think about whether it could be classified as a “theme song”, I found Doctor Snuggles, which is one heck of a weird theme song in German (link is NSFpeople who are afraid of ultrasonic voices). And then I found different theme songs for that cartoon that were used in other countries, which is kind of strange. I never stopped to think that cartoons seem to have had different theme songs depending on the country they were broadcast in!
I started looking for other examples. Do you know “Captain Future”? Here’s the German intro to Captain Future. Eeexcellent. (This was even in the charts over here some time ago, everybody liked it so much…NO! Please do not invoke the spirit of David Hasselhoff at this point!) The Spanish/Arabian one is also quite nice. Also the Japanese one. But I’m afraid to say the US version, oh dear…complete suckitude.
[/soh]
The Bill Cosby Show (1969-71)
The Simpsons
The Avengers
Sanford and Son
Hawaii Five-0
I’d love to nominate the ‘60s kids’ show Shrimpenstein, but no one outside of southern California would ever have heard of it…
MAS*H
Pinky and the Brain
Psych
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
Monk
My only nomination is:
Jonny Quest
Mickey Mouse Club (M-I-C, see you real soon…K-E-Y, why? Because we like you!)
Patty Duke Show (But Patty loves to Rock-n-Roll, a hot dog makes her lose control)
Ironsides
Dragnet (Dum-de-dum-dum)
and, if we’re including closing themes…Roy Rogers (Happy Trails to you, until we meet again…)
This is great!
My five are:
Cops
Addams Family
The Twilight Zone
Laverne & Shirley
Andy Griffith Show
ETA: Changed Star Trek to Cops