Recently in TV Title Sequences Category

It's been a while since I posted a TV Title Sequence, and there's one that's been on my mind the last couple days. As it happens, this one is very MTV-esque, so it can double as a Friday Evening Video, for those who enjoy those and missed seeing one this week... two for the price of one! Just another little favor from your friends here at Simple Tricks and Nonsense!

If you don't remember it -- and really, why should you? -- Booker was a short-lived spin-off from 21 Jump Street, that early hit for the fledgling Fox network that brought Johnny Depp to the public's attention. As I understand it -- and I could be totally offbase here, as I was never more than a casual fan and occasional viewer of Jump Street -- Depp started talking about leaving the series early on in its five-season run and Richard Greico, who had a similar look, was brought on in the third season as a possible replacement for him. When Greico's character, Dennis Booker, proved to popular and Depp was placated by some behind-the-scenes negotiations, Booker got his own show, which lasted a single season. (Depp ended up leaving Jump Street at the end of the fourth season, which coincided with the end of Booker's run as well.)

Although I generally enjoyed Jump Street, I never got into Booker much. Greico annoyed me on an almost cellular level, no doubt because of the way my girlfriend at the time used to react whenever his face popped up somewhere. (I was so easily threatened by virtual competition from media heartthrobs in those days, and I was so not a Richard Greico type, that I couldn't help but loathe the guy on general principles. I had similar issues with Johnny Depp back then, and several members of Duran Duran as well.) It didn't help that the only episode of Booker that made an impression on me was such a blatant rip-off of Die Hard that I'm amazed nobody got sued. But the opening credits... ah, I liked the opening. I used to tune in every week just to catch that one-minute sequence, and then I'd go find something else to do. It's a near-perfect marriage of sound and imagery, in my opinion.

The sound is Billy Idol's "Hot in the City," of course, specifically the "Exterminator Remix" from the 1987 compilation album Vital Idol. Billy Idol was another one I didn't much like at the time -- I've since come to appreciate him quite a bit -- but this song was awesome. Strangely enough, the official music video for the song bears a lot of resemblance to Booker's opening credits. Apparently Bruce Willis movies weren't the only thing the producers were ripping off. I can't find an embeddable clip, but you can see the Idol video here.

And just as a bonus, here's the music video for the original version of "Hot in the City," which was first released in 1982:

I like the original, but this is a rare, rare case in which I think I prefer the remix. I like that pounding bass line at the beginning...

Astounding! Earlier in the week, I reported the DVD release date for the 1982-83 TV series Tales of the Gold Monkey; now this morning I read the even more unlikely news that Max Headroom is on its way as well!

Although I'm sure most children of the '80s will remember Max from the Coke and New Coke commercials of the day, the series Max Headroom had nothing to do with those, aside from the character of Max himself. Based on a British made-for-TV movie called Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, the American-made series followed the adventures of Edison Carter, an investigative journalist living in a near-future dystopia entirely dominated by massive corporations and television. When Carter gets a little too close to uncovering his employers' nasty secret, they attempt to download his brain and create a virtual replica of their top-rated news personality so they can eliminate the troublesome original. The experiment doesn't quite succeed, and a smart-mouthed AI named Max Headroom is born!

Max Headroom was a trippy show, a biting satire of consumerism and mass media wrapped up in a tissue of futuristic ideas that wouldn't penetrate the consciousness of mainstream audiences for another 10 or 15 years. (I'm not ashamed to admit that I didn't fully comprehend some aspects of it myself.) Weirdly prescient in a lot of ways, and just plain weird in a lot of others, the show failed to find much of an audience, and it lasted less than a single season. Nevertheless, it made an impact on those who liked it; I don't think it's a stretch to call it a minor landmark in the history of science fiction, and certainly in the pop culture of the 1980s. I can't begin to imagine how well it holds up today, but I'm excited to add it to my collection.

The press release doesn't mention anything about possible extra features on the DVDs -- I'd love to have those old Coke ads at least, and ideally the complete 20 Minutes into the Future movie -- but the way these things go, I'll count myself lucky just to have the series itself.

The release date for this set is August 10. I ought to be finished with Gold Monkey by then, so that will be just about perfect...

Update: I've just remembered that I already wrote about Max Headroom a couple years ago, when I posted the show's opening credits as part of my TV Title Sequences series. It appears that the embedded video in that previous entry has been removed by the copyright Nazis; for your viewing pleasure, here is another version:

Over on his Atomic Pulp blog, Christopher Mills reminds us that Tales of the Gold Monkey wasn't the only high-adventure series set in the 1930s that ran during the '82-83 television season. CBS wanted in on the post-Raiders of the Lost Ark action as well (Gold Monkey was on NBC), so they offered up Bring 'Em Back Alive, starring Bruce Boxleitner as big-game hunter Frank Buck.

Buck was a real guy, a celebrity of the '30s and '40s who'd found fame by capturing exotic animals unharmed during a time period when people were a whole lot less sensitive about shooting things, even rare and beautiful things. He wrote a book about his experiences, from which the TV series took its title, and eventually parlayed his celebrity into starring roles in the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus and a whole string of jungle movies, including an Abbott and Costello comedy (Africa Screams) and a 15-part cliffhanger serial. Now, I'll be honest and admit that I don't remember too much about Bring 'Em Back Alive, but I think it's probably a fair bet that Boxleitner's version of Frank Buck didn't have too much to do with the actual man.

Christopher Mills says that, while Gold Monkey was largely character-driven, BEBA was "more like old Republic adventure serials, with exciting stunts, a likable, two-fisted swashbuckling lead, and action-packed stories." My memory of it is far less precise, as I said. I mostly recall thinking that Gold Monkey was the better of the two, with higher production values and a cool old airplane to boot (old airplanes being an immediate "value-add" in my book, even when I was 12). Weirdly enough, though, I have always remembered the show's opening theme, which went a little something like this:

You see, for a couple of years I was recording TV themes by holding my old SoundDesign clock-radio with the built-in cassette deck up to the television speaker and trying not to make too much noise as I depressed the clunky "Play" and "Record" buttons. I must've taped several dozen themes from that general time period, all on the same cassette. I can only imagine it would make for an incredible time capsule now. Sadly, and rather unexpectedly given how much crap I've managed to hold onto over the years, that particular tape went MIA long ago. But I know that it had the theme for Bring 'Em Back Alive on it, along with Gold Monkey, Magnum PI, Simon and Simon, Shogun, and a lot of other jaunty tunes that were just perfect for listening to on my Walkman as I rode around town on my old red Schwinn with the banana seat... damn, I wish I still had that tape.

Incidentally, you may have noticed Boxleitner's co-star in BEBA, Cindy Morgan. She's probably best known for playing the delectable Lacey Underall in Caddyshack, but she also appeared with Boxleitner in Tron the very same year that Bring 'Em Back Alive debuted on television. Boxleitner was, of course, the title character, and like him, Morgan played a double role: Lora, the girlfriend of Tron's User Alan in the real world, and Tron's girl Yori in the computer realm. Hollywood must've been a truly small town back in the day. Morgan is still a lovely woman, judging from the photos on her official web site. It features a pretty nifty collection of photos from all three of her major works, Caddyshack, Tron, and Bring 'Em Back Alive; the BEBA gallery is here.

I haven't done one of these in a long time, and in light of the previous entry, this one seems appropriate:

So, you know what I was saying in the previous entry about not remembering Ally McBeal very well? I'd totally spaced that Courtney Thorne-Smith and Greg Germann were in this show. It all seems like a dream that's evaporated before you make it from your bed to the bathroom for your morning rituals...

I really like that song, though, for whatever that's worth...

In honor of the late David Carradine:

Sorry for the poor quality of this clip; it's the only one I could find. Still, even with the warbly audio and washed-out picture, it gives a good idea of what Kung Fu was like for those who aren't familiar with it. If this piques your interest at all, the show is available on DVD (but not Hulu, oddly enough).

As always when I watch these old intros, I'm amazed how long this is. Back in the day, a television series went to huge lengths to explain its premise for newcomers, and to set the mood for what was to come. Now, I guess the assumption is that you already know what you're about to watch, and anyway we need to scrounge every spare second for actual storytelling so we can cram in another commercial or three. Seriously, if you compare the average runtime of an hour-long TV drama from 1975 to a modern show, we've lost nearly ten minutes to advertising.

Yet another piece of evidence that, in a lot of ways, the 1970s and '80s were a much better time...

I made several references in the previous entry to St. Elsewhere, a series I remember with a lot of affection but honestly not much detail. It's been a long time since I posted a TV title sequence, so I thought this might be a good time to revive the category. The sound quality on this clip is a little dodgy; the source appears to be an old VHS tape that's seen its better days:

I always liked that music. Somewhere I have an old audio cassette containing a bunch of themes from the early '80s that I recorded by holding a microphone up to the television speaker, and I know the St. Elsewhere theme is one of them. And I'd completely forgotten that Denzel Washington got his start on this show! How unlike me, given my usual command of useless trivia. Would it redeem me in the eyes of my loyal readers if I mention that William Daniels, a.k.a. Dr. Mark Craig, was the voice of KITT in the original Knight Rider series?

The first season of St. Elsewhere is available on DVD or Hulu, if you're interested. I'm thinking I need to check it out again myself...

It's Friday morning and time for another wander down televisual memory lane. Given the subject matter of the only entry I've managed to write this week, I'll bet you smart kids out there in the audience can guess which TV opening we're about to see...

As I recall, the title sequence for The Muppet Show varied a little bit for each of the five years it was on the air, and there were also week-to-week variations consisting of a different "cold opening" -- the little gag before the music starts, usually featuring that week's guest star -- for each episode, a fresh grumble from Statler and Waldorf (the two grouchy old guys in the balcony), and a unique closing gag involving Gonzo and his trumpet. YouTube has several different examples; naturally, I had to choose this one featuring Mark Hamill (who turned 57 yesterday; happy birthday, Mark!) and the droids from Star Wars. Well, Empire, judging from Luke's outfit.

The Muppet Show ran on Sunday afternoons around these parts, which meant I was usually at my grandma's house and competing with the grown-up menfolk for control of the TV. I rarely had much success at talking them into switching from the football game to a Ray Harryhausen movie, Star Trek, or -- god forbid! -- Space: 1999, but The Muppet Show was another matter. That was something pretty much everyone liked, even grandma, who frankly didn't understand why we had to have the TV on at all when there was so much "visitin'" to be done. But she did like those "crazy puppets." Didn't we all?

In light of the occasion, how could I not post this particular title sequence?

For you trivia hounds out there, this is not the title sequence from the premiere movie that aired thirty years ago tonight. "Saga of a Star World" had more cinematic titles, without the "mugshot" visuals of the cast, simply words receding into the distance, something like the titles for Superman: The Movie, which I believe had debuted earlier that summer.

These titles came with the show's first regular episode; the sequence was later shortened somewhat, and the opening voiceover by Patrick Macnee was dropped. A pity... I always liked that voiceover. Yeah, I suppose the "life here began out there" angle sounds silly now, but back in the day this stuff raised the hair on our arms, kids... because we had these things called imaginations.

In an effort to cleanse my eyes of the filthy residue left over from Highlander: The Suck, er, The Source, I've begun re-watching my DVDs of Highlander: The Series. And considering that I haven't done a TV Title Sequence entry in a while, well, you can probably guess where I'm going with this one...

It's not uncommon for title sequences to evolve as the show goes along: the theme music changes, background visuals get updated with more recent footage, cast members come and go. But I can't think of any other series that had as many distinct variants of their openings as Highlander. There were at least four major ones, and probably several minor ones as well if you obsessively cataloged every little tweak that was made over the show's six-season run. The problem was the same one I always run into whenever I try to write or talk about the show, which is the need to somehow convey a lot of pretty far-out backstory for first-time viewers who don't know a Quickening from a Kwik-E-Mart. The premise and formula of Highlander isn't really that complicated once you've watched a couple of episodes, but I still remember how baffling it was to be thrown into the first movie with no prior knowledge of what the hell was going on, and the showrunners were surely aware of that newbie reaction.

Here's their first attempt to spell it all out:

Today's title sequence is something of a departure in that I don't actually remember this one. I remember the show -- this is the one I mentioned the other day that I used to think I might have imagined -- and there are some familiar elements in the video clip, but the sequence as a whole is a total blank spot. See if it rings a bell for you: