The song adds a little extra grit and grime to an opening montage that hints at dark secrets and moral ambiguity, and the title highlights one of the perils of playing detective among your own peer group.
VERONICA MARS (2004-2007, mostly) was a noir implementation of the Nancy Drew formula: teenage girl with law-enforcement dad starts solving cases with him and on her own. The theme music is the Dandy Warhols' "We Used to Be Friends"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ugb...
Skip forward to season 6. Diana Rigg has moved on, replaced by Linda Thorson as rookie agent (not "talented amateur") Tara King. The Johnson theme remains for the new title sequence
www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LO8...
Which brings us to season 4, Emma Peel (wearing Cathy Gale's leathers) and Laurie Johnson's more whimsical theme.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V--...
S3 brought new animations but kept the music
www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHBq...
Season 2 introduced Honor Blackman as action anthropologist Cathy Gale; the theme remained basically the same and apparently used the same shots of MacNee in the opening sequence.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef4X...
I haven't seen any of these early ones, but I've read about them.
The music here sets a darker mood than the Peel-era theme, an almost somber brass fanfare drawing a muted response.
Now let us roll back to 1961 and the first season. Steed's partner is Dr. David Keel (Ian Hendry), and the contrast is between his idealism and Steed's hard-nosed spy pragmatism.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3e3...
Photo of a two-page spread opening an article entitled "Diana Rigg and the Emmapeeler" featuring Diana Rigg in two versions of the outfit: left, in dark red with gold trim, semi-recumbent with her weight on her hip and her hand; right, in bluewith white trim, in the middle of a martial arts kick. In the background is a seies of b/w images of Rigg striking various action poses in different versions of this outfit
The cover of WONDER WOMAN 178 (Oct. 1968). Diana Prince stands in a mod magenta-and-white tunic over shiny black leggings/boots, holding a can of paint from which a brish or roller handle protrudes. Behind her is a poster of an old-style WONDER WOMAN cover featuring WW in her old star-spangled costume next to Diana Prince in military uniform; a purple "X" has been painted iover the older image to underscore the change to a new look. Also, the poster background is flat goldenrod, whereas the cover's overall background is a vaguely psychedelic light green on medium green pattern of swirls and waves. Blurb text: "Forget the OLD, the NEW Wonder Woman is here!"
The "Emmapeeler" apparently inspired DC Comics' 1968 redesign of Wonder Woman.
(Peel image via Liz Eggleston's blog; WW image via eBay)
lizeggleston.com/wp-content/u...
Emma Peel would wear the leather catsuit through this season and then embrace modness as the show embraced color.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=10QW...
We'll see in the next post how big a shift in tone this was; the theme music is downright whimsical, and Steed has transformed from a trenchcoated Secret Agent to a dapper English Gentleman (though still a Secret Agent).
The introductory voiceover was added for the US market, when the American Broadcasting Company (or just ABC to us over here) started carrying the show in 1965, but I love it and wanted to make sure it was included.
I've been holding off on THE AVENGERS because the theme went through several revisions as the cast changed. This version, introduced with Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in 1966, is the one most folks associate with the show.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6Ji...
Larry Csonka, perhaps
a 1/6 scale doll of William Conrad as Frank Cannon, supported by a doll stand and staged in front of a photo from the show printed on what seems to be copy paper. The doll's build is standard for a male action figure muscular, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted) and therefore looks very little like William Conrad at the time (middle-aged fat guy)
omg that looks nothing like him, is that supposed to be dabney coleman or something
i.ebayimg.com/images/g/i6E...
where is my frank cannon action figure
Having now discovered a KOJAK action figure on eBay I am beginning to think the toy companies just licensed any show that regularly had car chases
Top to bottom: toy police cruiser, cardboard box with block print lettering (LOT NO. 924-4849; CAUTION: NOT RECOMMENDED FOR CHILDREN UNDER 3 YEARS OF AGE; MADE IN HONG KONG), package of toy police accessories, three dolls of male characters from THE ROOKIES
which also had dolls and a car (courtesy eBay seller Dog Breed Attire):
i.ebayimg.com/images/g/1-Q...
for contrast, the show i think really nailed it musically was THE ROOKIES (1972-6)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9fs...
I don't know whether the network found out that the show had youth appeal and tried to capitalize on it, or whether they retooled it for kids in order to find a bigger audience.
Starsky and Hutch dolls laid out on a table with a doll-scaled red and white Gran Torino, instruction sheet, the original box for the car, a model sawhorse (to use as a barricade) and a model street light (for craching into, i guess?)
As with S.W.A.T., there were dolls and a doll car (photos courtesy of eBay seller dyhrdjg24fan-2008)
i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~dA...
That's the season 2 music; the season 1 intro is much more traditional cop-show and doesn't really attempt to Reach The Youths
www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdOi...
I'm a little inclined to think the STARSKY & HUTCH (1975-9) theme tries a little too hard, at least in this iteration, to catch that funk vibe.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_vN...
Season 5 featured a revised, disco-era theme with lots of strings and a funkier backbeat. After a promising opening it too drops the tension levels and focuses on Telly's star quality instead of gritty police work.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_e6...
Abby Mann wanted the series to take seriously police corruption and disregard for the rights of the accused (the Wylie-Hoffert case that inspired him included a false confession extorted from a Black suspect); I don't know how long that spirit may have reigned in the writers' room.
The theme music doesn't sell the intensity, though; it has the big-city vibe you might expect from a show set in New York but none of the grime and funk that '70s NYC had to offer, and there's some tension in it but not *that* much. It's no STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO, that's for certain.
When I was a kid KOJAK (1973-78) had a rep for being too intense for younger viewers; watching clips of Telly Savalas harassing witnesses and suspects showed me why that might have been so. (Also the pilot was based on a real-life rape & murder case.)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=HY2r...
Musically, the theme is pretty straightforward action jazz - pleasant to hear, but not super interesting.
This show also gave Avery Brooks his breakout role (as Spenser's buddy Hawk), before he went on to DEEP SPACE NINE.
Robert B. Parker's novels about the literary-minded tough guy detective are set in Boston, and most of the location shooting was actually done there (instead of, say, Toronto), which pushed costs up and contributed to the series' demise.