Evanier announced something interesting today: “Off and on… I’m going to link to videos of openings I liked for TV shows. In some cases, I didn’t like the show but I liked the opening.” This is an idea I’ve been toying with for quite a while, if for no other reason than to let me dig up YouTube clips of things I haven’t seen in a long, long time and wallow in a momentary glow of nostalgia for all the dreck that shaped me into the charming fellow I am today. Without further ado, here’s my first entry in this whole new category of blogging:
For the record, I don’t remember ever watching Hardcastle and McCormick; if I did, I don’t remember enough about it to even tell you what the series was about. By all appearances, it was just another run-of-the-mill Stephen J. Cannell buddy-cop/private-eye/mysterious-extra-legal-defenders-of-justice show. (I’m not dissing Cannell; I liked a lot of his shows. But at one point in the ’80s, it seemed like there was one on every night of the week, and there was a certain sameness to them all.) However, I do remember tuning in long enough to catch this opening credit sequence, because that theme song (written by uber-TV-composer Mike Post with Pete Carpenter) rocked. The final few seconds, when the music is paired with the shot over the hood of the car and the onrushing highway, still sets off my adrenal gland; watching it here at the office makes me want to blow off my boring job and get out on the road with the wind in my ears and my heart pounding in my chest.
Oddly enough, the producers of H&M elected to change the theme for the show’s second season, ditching this aggressive rocker for a namby-pamby feel-good number akin to the theme from The Greatest American Hero. While “Believe It or Not” fit the lightweight, semi-comedic tone of GAH, I think a similar song was all wrong for a more action-oriented series. I won’t post the revised opening here, but if you’re curious, you know what to do…
(A brief tangent: I can’t help but think this song should’ve been resurrected for the short-lived series Drive, which I’d just started getting into when Fox canned it. Bastards. Would it have made a difference in that show’s rapid trip to oblivion if it had had a cool theme song? I don’t know… but it couldn’t have hurt.)
