The 1970s

151 shows that began in the 1970s, and the 160 title sequences they opened with.

Filed by first broadcast. A show that ran for thirty years appears once, under the decade it started in.

Saturday Night Live

1975–NBCComedy

A new cast montage every single season for fifty years — New York at night, the current company photographed in it, and a band playing over the top. The longest-running rotating title sequence on television.

Season 1

1 sequence

All in the Family

1971–1979CBSComedy

Two people at an upright piano singing about how things used to be — an opening performed live by the cast rather than scored.

Season 1

1 sequence

Columbo

1971–2003NBC / ABCCrime

Twenty-four seconds, and for much of the run no sequence at all — a series confident enough to open on the murder and let the detective arrive late.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Waltons

1972–1981CBSDrama

A Virginia mountain homestead in the Depression, introduced with a warmth the decade's other dramas had no interest in.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fawlty Towers

1975–1979BBC TwoComedy

A hotel sign whose letters are rearranged into a different rude anagram every episode — the earliest running title gag in this catalogue by two decades.

Season 1

1 sequence

Happy Days

1974–1984ABCComedy

A fifties jukebox theme that started as a closing song and was promoted to the opening once it became a hit record.

Season 1

2 sequences

The Young and the Restless

1973–CBSDrama

Genoa City, and the daytime ratings leader in America for more than thirty-five consecutive years.

Season 16
Season 45

1 sequence

Dallas

1978–1991CBSDrama

A three-panel split screen over the Dallas skyline, and the theme that defined what a primetime soap was allowed to sound like.

Season 10

1 sequence

Three's Company

1976–1984ABCComedy

A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.

Season 1

2 sequences

Family Feud

1976–ABC / SyndicationDocumentary

Survey says — two families, a buzzer, and a theme rearranged for every host since Richard Dawson.

Season 1
Season 35

2 sequences

Emmerdale

1972–ITVDrama

A Yorkshire Dales farming serial that dropped Farm from its name in 1989 and kept the landscape.

Season 27
Season 49

1 sequence

The Love Boat

1977–1987ABCComedy

A cruise ship with a new guest cast every week, introduced by name in the titles.

Season 3

2 sequences

The Price Is Right

1972–CBSDocumentary

"Come on down" — the longest-running game show in American television, opening the same way for fifty years.

Season 1
Season 36

1 sequence

Taxi

1978–1983ABC / NBCComedy

A single cab crossing the Queensboro Bridge to Bob James's electric piano — no cast, no jokes, and an unusually melancholy opening for a comedy.

Season 1

1 sequence

Emergency!

1972–1977NBCDrama

Los Angeles County paramedics, made with the fire department's cooperation and credited with popularising the profession.

Season 1

1 sequence

Roots

1977ABCDrama

The miniseries that changed what American television believed it was allowed to broadcast, opened with Quincy Jones and a slave ship.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sanford and Son

1972–1977NBCComedy

Quincy Jones writing a harmonica blues for a junkyard — one of the few sitcom themes composed by someone of that stature.

Season 1

1 sequence

WKRP in Cincinnati

1978–1982CBSComedy

A radio-station sitcom whose theme was written to sound like a record the station would actually play.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Rockford Files

1974–1980NBCCrime

A telephone rings, an answering machine picks up, and a stranger leaves a message that is usually bad news and occasionally a joke at Rockford's expense. Then the theme starts. The private detective is introduced by the people avoiding him.

Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

The Six Million Dollar Man

1973–1978ABCSci-Fi

A crash, a countdown and the promise that they can rebuild him — narration that entered the language more thoroughly than the show did.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Muppet Show

1976–1981ITV / SyndicationComedy

An opening that changes every week by design: Statler and Waldorf get a new heckle, Gonzo gets a new way to fail the closing note, and the arch fills with whoever is in that episode.

Season 1

2 sequences

All My Children

1970–2011ABCDrama

Pine Valley, Agnes Nixon's serial, and the first American soap to put issue storylines in daytime.

Season 23
Season 41

1 sequence

The Jeffersons

1975–1985CBSComedy

'Movin' On Up' over a family arriving at a Manhattan apartment — a theme that functions as a plot summary and a thesis at once.

Season 1

1 sequence

Monday Night Football

1970–ABCDocumentary

The programme that moved American football into primetime, and gave it a fanfare to arrive on.

Season 2

1 sequence

Good Times

1974–1979CBSComedy

A Chicago housing project and a gospel-inflected theme whose lyrics nobody has ever fully agreed on.

Season 1

1 sequence

CHiPs

1977–1983NBCCrime

California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, filmed almost entirely on freeways.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mork & Mindy

1978–1982ABCComedy

An egg-shaped spacecraft over Boulder, Colorado, and a theme that has to establish an alien, a roommate and a sitcom simultaneously.

Season 1

1 sequence

Barney Miller

1975–1982ABCComedy

A bass line so good it outlived the show entirely — a police-station sitcom remembered chiefly for forty seconds of funk.

Season 3

1 sequence

The Good Life

1975–1978BBC OneComedy

A couple turning their Surbiton garden into a smallholding, next door to neighbours who would rather they did not.

Season 1

1 sequence

El Chavo del Ocho

1971–1980TelevisaComedy

A boy living in a barrel in a Mexico City tenement, and the most watched Spanish-language series ever made.

Seasons 4–6

1 sequence

Maude

1972–1978CBSComedy

The All in the Family spin-off, with a theme song that lists historical women and lands on Maude.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eight Is Enough

1977–1981ABCDrama

A newspaper columnist with eight children, and a theme song that counts them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Upstairs, Downstairs

1971–1975ITVDrama

The Edwardian household drama that Downton Abbey is, by its own creator's admission, a direct descendant of.

Season 1

1 sequence

Starsky & Hutch

1975–1979ABCCrime

Two Bay City detectives and a red Ford Torino with a white stripe.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Incredible Hulk

1977–1982CBSSci-Fi

A narrated origin, a green transformation, and a piano coda so sad it became the show's real signature — though that plays over the closing credits, not these.

Season 1

1 sequence

Soap

1977–1981ABCComedy

A narrator recapping a plot that has already become unmanageable, ending every week on the same weary question about what will happen next.

Season 1

1 sequence

Knots Landing

1979–1993CBSDrama

A cul-de-sac shot from above, with the neighbours' houses laid out like a diagram of everyone's business.

Season 1

2 sequences

Space: 1999

1975–1977ITVSci-Fi

The most confident opening Gerry Anderson ever made: a burst of brass, then a rapid-fire montage of clips from the episode you are about to watch, so no two broadcasts were identical.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

I, Claudius

1976BBC TwoDrama

A snake crossing a Roman mosaic — one image, held for forty-five seconds, and among the most efficient title sequences ever made.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mind Your Language

1977–1979ITV (LWT)Comedy

An adult English class of national stereotypes, opened by a blackboard that spells the title out in every student's hand.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

1974–1975ABCHorror

A reporter whistling in a car park, and a premise established in twenty-six seconds — the direct ancestor of The X-Files, as Chris Carter has said repeatedly.

Season 1

1 sequence

Minder

1979–1994ITVComedy

Arthur Daley and his minder, and a theme song sung by Dennis Waterman about Dennis Waterman.

Season 1

1 sequence

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

1979–1981NBCSci-Fi

A disco-scored space opera that opens with a shuttle, a starfield and absolutely no embarrassment about either.

Season 1

1 sequence

Land of the Lost

1974–1976NBCSci-Fi

A raft over a waterfall into a closed pocket universe, written by Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold for Saturday mornings.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hart to Hart

1979–1984ABCCrime

A wealthy married couple who solve murders, introduced by their own butler in voiceover.

Season 1

1 sequence

Soul Train

1971–2006SyndicationDocumentary

An animated locomotive pulling into a city drawn in airbrush — the longest-running first-run syndicated show in American history opens like a record sleeve.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

1972–1985CBSAnimation

A North Philadelphia junkyard, with a moral at the end and a live-action introduction at the start.

Season 1

1 sequence

Blake's 7

1978–1981BBC OneSci-Fi

BBC electronic music and a rotating logo, rebuilt each series as the crew was killed off — which on this show happened often enough to matter.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

The World at War

1973–1974ITV (Thames)Documentary

Thames Television's twenty-six part history of the Second World War, still the benchmark for the form.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

1979BBC TwoDrama

A Russian nesting doll opening onto a blank face, over Geoffrey Burgon's setting of the Nunc Dimittis — the most quietly devastating title sequence the BBC has made.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Bionic Woman

1976–1978ABC / NBCSci-Fi

The Six Million Dollar Man's spinoff, with the same narrated-reconstruction structure and a better theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trapper John, M.D.

1979–1986CBSDrama

The MASH surgeon twenty-eight years later, running a San Francisco hospital.

Season 6

1 sequence

Rising Damp

1974–1978ITVComedy

Leonard Rossiter as a boarding-house landlord, and the most successful ITV sitcom of the seventies.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Odd Couple

1970–1975ABCComedy

A narrated premise about two divorced men sharing an apartment, delivered in the tone of a public information film.

Season 2

1 sequence

UFO

1970–1971ITVSci-Fi

Anderson's first live-action series, set in a 1980 that never arrived, with purple wigs and a Barry Gray theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Star Trek: The Animated Series

1973–1974NBCAnimation

Filmation's Saturday-morning continuation, with most of the original cast back on microphone duty. The theme is Courage's melody rescored for a cartoon orchestra, brighter and quicker than the live-action original.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Schoolhouse Rock!

1973–2009ABCAnimation

Three-minute songs about grammar and arithmetic dropped between Saturday morning cartoons, and remembered longer than the cartoons.

Season 1

1 sequence

To the Manor Born

1979–1981BBC OneComedy

A widow forced to sell the manor and move into the lodge at the end of its drive.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Sweeney

1975–1978ITVCrime

The Flying Squad in a Ford Granada, and the series that made British police drama violent.

Season 1

1 sequence

Wonder Woman

1975–1979ABC / CBSSci-Fi

An animated comic-book opening with a disco theme that names the character and tells her what to do, repeatedly.

Season 2

1 sequence

Benson

1979–1986ABCComedy

The Soap butler promoted into his own series and eventually into the lieutenant governorship.

Season 2

2 sequences

Grange Hill

1978–2008BBC OneDrama

A London comprehensive school taken seriously, opening on a comic strip and a sausage on a fork.

Season 1
Seasons 13–16

1 sequence

Porridge

1974–1977BBC OneComedy

Ronnie Barker inside HMP Slade, opened by a judge's sentencing read over the prison gates.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hong Kong Phooey

1974ABCAnimation

A janitor dog who is a secret kung fu detective, with Scatman Crothers singing his own theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rhoda

1974–1978CBSComedy

The first Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, following Rhoda Morgenstern back to New York.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tales of the Unexpected

1979–1988ITVHorror

A dancing silhouette, a spinning roulette wheel and Ron Grainer's theme — an anthology opening far more unsettling than most of the stories that follow it.

Season 1

1 sequence

It Ain't Half Hot Mum

1974–1981BBC OneComedy

A Royal Artillery concert party in wartime India, and the Croft series that has aged worst.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Two Ronnies

1971–1987BBC OneComedy

Barker and Corbett behind a news desk, with a pair of spectacles as the logo for sixteen years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Battlestar Galactica (1978)

1978–1979ABCSci-Fi

Stu Phillips's fanfare over Colonial Vipers and a narrated prologue about a lost tribe of humanity — the version the 2004 series would later strip of every ounce of that grandeur.

Season 1

1 sequence

Not the Nine O'Clock News

1979–1982BBC TwoComedy

The sketch show that launched Rowan Atkinson and Mel Smith, opening on a parody of the bulletin it was scheduled against.

Season 1

1 sequence

Battle of the Planets

1978–1980SyndicationAnimation

Gatchaman recut for America with a robot added to explain away the footage that was cut.

Season 1

1 sequence

S.W.A.T.

1975–1976ABCCrime

The original, cancelled after two seasons over its violence, and remembered mostly for a theme that reached number one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em

1973–1978BBC OneComedy

Frank Spencer in a beret, and stunts Michael Crawford performed himself.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Streets of San Francisco

1972–1977ABCCrime

Karl Malden and a young Michael Douglas, shot on location throughout.

Season 1

1 sequence

Open All Hours

1976–1985BBC OneComedy

Ronnie Barker again, this time behind a corner-shop till with a faulty cash register.

Season 1

1 sequence

Quincy, M.E.

1976–1983NBCCrime

A Los Angeles medical examiner who investigates, and the ancestor of every forensic procedural since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Josie and the Pussycats

1970–1971CBSAnimation

An Archie Comics spin-off built around a band, with records released under the characters' names.

Season 1

1 sequence

Barnaby Jones

1973–1980CBSCrime

Buddy Ebsen as a retired investigator who comes back to work after his son is killed.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Persuaders!

1971–1972ITVDrama

Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as bickering millionaires, opened by John Barry's most-covered television theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Lou Grant

1977–1982CBSDrama

The Mary Tyler Moore Show character moved into an hour-long newspaper drama — the only American series to make that jump.

Season 1

1 sequence

NBC Nightly News

1970–NBCDocumentary

Fourteen seconds of brass and a rotating globe, which is what a network evening bulletin has been reduced to.

Season 47

1 sequence

Mr Benn

1971–1972BBC OneAnimation

A man in a bowler hat, a costume shop and a changing room door, thirteen times.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rainbow

1972–1992ITVComedy

Zippy, George and Bungle, and a theme about a paintbox in the sky that ran for twenty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alias Smith and Jones

1971–1973ABCDrama

Two outlaws promised an amnesty they have to stay out of trouble for twenty months to collect.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Old Grey Whistle Test

1971–1988BBC TwoDocumentary

The serious music programme to Top of the Pops' singles chart, with a harmonica riff and a star-kicker cartoon.

Season 1

1 sequence

Baretta

1975–1978ABCCrime

An undercover detective and a cockatoo, with a Sammy Davis Jr. theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

1976–1979BBC OneComedy

A middle manager who fakes his own death by leaving his clothes on a beach, weekly.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Goodies

1970–1982BBC TwoComedy

Three men on a trandem who will do anything, anytime — sketch comedy shot like a silent film.

Season 1

1 sequence

McCloud

1970–1977NBCCrime

A New Mexico marshal seconded to the NYPD, part of the rotating NBC Mystery Movie wheel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

1973–1974BBC OneComedy

The sequel to the 1964 series, about two friends who have grown in opposite directions.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cannon

1971–1976CBSCrime

William Conrad as a private investigator, the first Quinn Martin series built around a heavy-set lead.

Season 1

1 sequence

Bagpuss

1974BBC OneAnimation

Thirteen episodes, and a sepia photograph opening that colours in when the cat wakes up — Smallfilms doing the whole premise in the titles.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sapphire & Steel

1979–1982ITVSci-Fi

Two operatives who are not people, sent to repair breaks in time, explained to the audience only by a narrated list of elements.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Electric Company

1971–1977PBSComedy

The Children's Television Workshop's reading show for older children, with Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno in the cast.

Season 1

1 sequence

Charlie's Angels

1976–1981ABCCrime

Three detectives working for a voice on a speakerphone, and a title sequence that explains the entire premise in narration before a scene is played.

Season 1

1 sequence

Zoom

1972–1978PBSComedy

A children's programme made entirely of what children sent in, down to the address they had to sing.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fantasy Island

1977–1984ABCDrama

"De plane! De plane!" — an island where wishes are granted and then examined.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jabberjaw

1976–1978ABCAnimation

A drumming shark in an underwater band, which is Scooby-Doo restaged in 2076 with Curly Howard's voice.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tomorrow People

1973–1979ITVSci-Fi

Children evolving telepathy in a Thames Television series remade twice since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Butterflies

1978–1983BBC TwoComedy

Carla Lane's series about a housewife considering an affair and never quite having one.

Season 1

1 sequence

A Question of Sport

1970–2023BBC OneDocumentary

The longest-running sports quiz on television, with a picture board and a what-happened-next round.

Season 20

1 sequence

Ryan's Hope

1975–1989ABCDrama

An Irish-American family running a bar near a Manhattan hospital, in a serial set in a real neighbourhood rather than an invented town.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Beachcombers

1972–1990CBCDrama

Log salvage on the British Columbia coast, and the longest-running dramatic series Canadian television has made.

Season 14

1 sequence

Life on Earth

1979BBC TwoDocumentary

The series that invented the modern natural history film, and the template for everything Attenborough made afterwards.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rentaghost

1976–1984BBC OneComedy

An agency staffed entirely by ghosts, which is a sitcom premise and a title sequence at the same time.

Season 1

1 sequence

Connections

1978BBC OneDocumentary

James Burke tracing one invention to another across centuries, in a structure the titles set up before he says a word.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

1973–1975NBCComedy

A sea monster thrown out by his family for being unable to frighten anyone, hidden in a beach clubhouse.

Season 1

1 sequence

Austin City Limits

1974–PBSDocumentary

The longest-running music programme in American television, opening on a painted Austin skyline that is not quite the real one.

Season 20

1 sequence

Thriller (1973)

1973–1976ITVHorror

Brian Clemens' anthology of feature-length suspense plays, sold to America as a late-night staple.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ascent of Man

1973BBC TwoDocumentary

Jacob Bronowski on science as a human activity, made as the BBC's answer to its own Civilisation.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Krypton Factor

1977–1995ITVDocumentary

A general knowledge round, an assault course and a mental agility test, opening on a rotating wireframe grid that was expensive in 1977.

Season 1

1 sequence

Doomwatch

1970–1972BBC OneSci-Fi

A government department investigating the science that is about to go wrong, from two Doctor Who writers.

Season 1

1 sequence

Survivors

1975–1977BBC OneSci-Fi

Terry Nation's plague series, in which the titles kill the world in forty seconds using nothing but a broken test tube and a series of passport stamps.

Season 1

1 sequence

Roobarb

1974BBC OneAnimation

Felt-tip animation that boils and shimmers because it was drawn one frame at a time and never traced twice.

Season 1

1 sequence

King of Kensington

1975–1980CBCComedy

A Toronto corner-shop owner in the Kensington Market, and the sitcom a fifth of the country watched.

Season 2

1 sequence

The Wombles

1973–1975BBC OneAnimation

Litter-collecting creatures under Wimbledon Common, whose fictional band had six top-twenty singles in one year.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ski Sunday

1978–BBC TwoDocumentary

A downhill run cut to Pop Looks Bach, and a theme that in Britain means winter rather than skiing.

Season 43

1 sequence

Circle of Fear

1972–1973NBCHorror

An anthology that began as Ghost Story with a host and a hotel, then dropped both and renamed itself halfway through.

Season 1

1 sequence

Laverne & Shirley

1976–1983ABCComedy

A skipping chant and two women walking through Milwaukee — the Happy Days spinoff that outrated its parent.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chorlton and the Wheelies

1976–1979ITVAnimation

A happiness dragon in Wheelie World, from the studio that went on to make Danger Mouse.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jamie and the Magic Torch

1976–1979ITVAnimation

A torch that opens a hole in the bedroom floor down a helter-skelter into Cuckoo Land.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Spider-Man

1977–1979CBSSci-Fi

CBS's live-action Spider-Man, dropped in part because the network did not want to be known for comic books.

Season 1

1 sequence

Archie Bunker's Place

1979–1983CBSComedy

All in the Family continued as a bar, four more years after the series that made Archie famous had finished.

Season 1

1 sequence

Are You Being Served?

1972–1985BBC OneComedy

The Grace Brothers department store, opened by a lift announcing each floor's stock.

Season 1

1 sequence

Blankety Blank

1979–1990BBC OneDocumentary

A panel game with a deliberately worthless prize, and a microphone shaped like a fishing rod.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Bob Newhart Show

1972–1978CBSComedy

A psychologist commuting through Chicago, filmed at the pace of a man who is not looking forward to his day.

Season 1

1 sequence

Citizen Smith

1977–1980BBC OneComedy

John Sullivan's first series, a Tooting revolutionary with no revolution, written five years before Only Fools and Horses.

Season 1

1 sequence

Diff'rent Strokes

1978–1985NBCComedy

Two boys from Harlem adopted by a Park Avenue widower, in the sitcom that turned a nine-year-old's disbelief into a catchphrase.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Dukes of Hazzard

1979–1985CBSComedy

A Georgia county run by the man who owns it, and a car that spends a good part of every hour off the ground.

Season 1

3 sequences

The Facts of Life

1979–1988NBCComedy

A girls' boarding school in Peekskill, spun off from Diff'rent Strokes and running three years longer than it.

Season 1
Season 7
Season 8

1 sequence

Going Straight

1978BBC OneComedy

Fletcher out of prison and trying to stay out, six episodes after Porridge finished.

Season 1

1 sequence

Holocaust

1978NBCDrama

The miniseries that put the word into everyday use in Germany, where half the country watched it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jesus of Nazareth

1977RAI / ITVDrama

Zeffirelli's six-hour life of Christ, cast so deeply that the titles are mostly name cards.

Season 1

1 sequence

Kojak

1973–1978CBSCrime

New York in the seventies, a lollipop, and a brass theme that has aged considerably better than the decade around it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams

1977–1978NBCDrama

A man wrongly accused who goes to live in the mountains with a bear, and NBC's biggest surprise of 1977.

Season 1

1 sequence

Little House on the Prairie

1974–1983NBCDrama

Three girls running down a hill, one of whom falls — a shot kept in for nine years because it was better than the take where nobody did.

Season 1

1 sequence

Logan's Run

1977–1978CBSSci-Fi

The film continued as a series, running fourteen episodes before CBS stopped it.

Season 1

1 sequence

MAS*H

1972–1983CBSComedy

A comedy that opens every week with casualties being carried off a helicopter. Nurses and surgeons run for the landing pad while the theme plays underneath — an instrumental of a song the network would not let anyone sing, because of what its chorus says.