The 1980s

248 shows that began in the 1980s, and the 272 title sequences they opened with.

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

2 sequences

The Simpsons

1989–·Fox·Animation

The only main title in television built to be different every week: the chalkboard, the saxophone solo and the couch gag all change, so the sequence is a format rather than a film.

• Seasons 1–20
• Season 21

1 sequence

The Golden Girls

1985–1992·NBC·Comedy

'Thank You for Being a Friend' over four women and a Miami kitchen — a theme so tied to the show that the original songwriter's version is now the obscure one.

• Season 7

1 sequence

Seinfeld

1989–1998·NBC·Comedy

A slap bass figure and a stand-up set — an opening that is literally the comedian's act, which is what the show was sold as.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Star Trek: The Next Generation

1987–1994·Syndication·Sci-Fi

The Enterprise-D passing the camera at warp while Patrick Stewart reads the mission statement. Stately, slow and completely confident — it takes almost a minute and a half before anything happens, and it never once feels the need to hurry.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Seasons 3–7

1 sequence

Cheers

1982–1993·NBC·Comedy

A minute of hand-tinted engravings and old photographs of strangers drinking, none of them from the show and none of them the cast. The bar you are about to spend eleven years in is introduced as the latest in a very long line of them.

• Seasons 1–11

2 sequences

EastEnders

1985–·BBC One·Drama

An aerial pull-back over the Thames and the drum that answers it — thirty-two seconds that have barely changed in forty years.

• Season 1
• Season 41

1 sequence

Married... with Children

1987–1997·Fox·Comedy

Sinatra's 'Love and Marriage' over a Chicago family who demonstrably have neither — one of television's earliest deliberately sarcastic openings.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Baywatch

1989–2001·NBC / Syndication·Drama

Los Angeles County lifeguards, and at its peak the most-watched television programme on Earth.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Miami Vice

1984–1990·NBC·Crime

Flamingos, jai alai and pastel architecture over Jan Hammer — a title sequence that sold an entire aesthetic and arguably a city.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murder, She Wrote

1984–1996·CBS·Crime

A typewriter, a bicycle and Cabot Cove — twelve seasons of the most reassuring opening ever attached to a programme about repeated homicide.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lonesome Dove

1989·CBS·Drama

Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Only Fools and Horses

1981–2003·BBC One·Comedy

A theme sung by the show's own writer, explaining the premise in verse — and one of the very few British sitcom openings to have charted.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Roseanne

1988–2018·ABC·Comedy

A family at a kitchen table, laughing at something you cannot hear, rebuilt for every season across twenty years and a thirty-year gap.

• Season 1
• Season 10

4 sequences

Blackadder

1983–1989·BBC One·Comedy

Four series, four centuries, and a theme re-orchestrated each time to suit the period — lute, harpsichord, military band.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 1 more

1 sequence

Agatha Christie's Poirot

1989–2013·ITV·Crime

Art Deco geometry and Christopher Gunning's theme — a title sequence that establishes the period, the register and the fastidiousness of the detective in one gesture.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Neighbours

1985–2025·Seven / Ten (Australia)·Drama

Ramsay Street across forty years, and a theme song that survived every cast, network and cancellation.

• Season 1
• Season 39

1 sequence

Magnum, P.I.

1980–1988·CBS·Crime

Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Bold and the Beautiful

1987–·CBS·Drama

Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.

• Season 1
• Season 38

1 sequence

The Cosby Show

1984–1992·NBC·Comedy

A family dancing to a new arrangement of the same theme every season — jazz, big band, calypso — which makes it one of the earliest American sitcoms to treat its opening as something to redo annually.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tales from the Crypt

1989–1996·HBO·Horror

A crawl through a derelict house towards a coffin, which opens — Danny Elfman's theme, and a host who was a puppet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Matlock

1986–1995·NBC / ABC·Crime

Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mystery Science Theater 3000

1988–1999, 2017–2018·Comedy Central / Sci-Fi Channel / Netflix·Comedy

A man and two robots heckling films, whose theme song exists to explain the premise and then says so out loud.

• Season 1

1 sequence

In the Heat of the Night

1988–1995·NBC / CBS·Crime

The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pingu

1986–2006·SF DRS·Animation

A Swiss claymation penguin speaking an invented language, so it needed no dubbing to sell anywhere.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Different World

1987–1993·NBC·Comedy

A historically Black college rendered in bold graphic design, with the theme re-recorded by a different artist across the run — Aretha Franklin among them.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Knight Rider

1982–1986·NBC·Drama

A narrated premise, a scanning red light and a synth arpeggio — the most efficient piece of eighties television branding after the A-Team's.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dynasty

1981–1989·ABC·Drama

Gold lettering, oil money and an orchestral theme played with no irony whatsoever — the decade's idea of wealth, stated in ninety seconds.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Quantum Leap

1989–1993·NBC·Sci-Fi

Narration explaining a premise too complicated to infer, over a theme by Mike Post — the anthology format's problem solved in sixty seconds every week.

• Season 1
• Season 4

1 sequence

Moonlighting

1985–1989·ABC·Comedy

Al Jarreau singing a theme written for the show, over two people who spend four seasons refusing to admit anything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Who's the Boss?

1984–1992·ABC·Comedy

A theme called 'Brand New Life' over a move from Brooklyn to Connecticut, which is the entire premise sung aloud.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Designing Women

1986–1993·CBS·Comedy

Georgia On My Mind over an Atlanta design firm, with the cast photographed like a society page.

• Season 6

1 sequence

Perfect Strangers

1986–1993·ABC·Comedy

'Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now' over Chicago — one of the decade's most earnest sitcom themes attached to one of its silliest premises.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Casualty

1986–·BBC One·Drama

Holby City Hospital's emergency department, and the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world.

• Season 27

1 sequence

St. Elsewhere

1982–1988·NBC·Drama

A Boston hospital and another Dave Grusin-adjacent piano theme, from the network and era that produced Hill Street Blues and shared its restraint.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hill Street Blues

1981–1987·NBC·Crime

Mike Post's piano over squad cars pulling out into snow — the sequence that taught American drama an opening could be melancholy rather than exciting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Ones

1982–1984·BBC Two·Comedy

Four students in a condemned house, and the series that ended the British sitcom's post-war manners in one go.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Night Court

1984–1992·NBC·Comedy

Eighteen seconds of bass guitar and a Manhattan courthouse at night.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fraggle Rock

1983–1987·HBO·Comedy

Jim Henson's series about three societies who cannot see each other properly, made to be co-produced in every country that bought it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fall Guy

1981–1986·ABC·Drama

A Hollywood stuntman working as a bounty hunter, with a theme song about being unknown.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Yes Minister

1980–1984·BBC Two·Comedy

Whitehall obstructing its own minister, opened by Gerald Scarfe caricatures drawing themselves.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Unsolved Mysteries

1987–2002·NBC·Documentary

Robert Stack in a trench coat, a synthesiser and a fog machine — the most frightening thing on American television that was not fiction.

• Season 1

1 sequence

thirtysomething

1987–1991·ABC·Drama

The series that invented the domestic-anxiety drama, and gave a generation of television writers their register.

• Season 1

1 sequence

'Allo 'Allo!

1982–1992·BBC One·Comedy

A French café in occupied France, from the same writer as Dad's Army twenty years on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Airwolf

1984–1987·CBS / USA·Drama

A helicopter emerging from a desert mesa to a synth fanfare, at a level of self-seriousness the decade rewarded.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cagney & Lacey

1981–1988·CBS·Crime

Two detectives introduced as colleagues rather than as a novelty, which in 1981 was itself the statement.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Doogie Howser, M.D.

1989–1993·ABC·Comedy

A sixteen-year-old physician, and a synth theme that became shorthand for the entire decade.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Remington Steele

1982–1987·NBC·Crime

A narrated premise about a detective agency with an invented boss, delivered by the woman who invented him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

North and South

1985–1994·ABC·Drama

Two West Point friends on opposite sides of the Civil War, over a Bill Conti march.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murphy Brown

1988–2018·CBS·Comedy

A Washington newsroom and a Motown needle-drop that changed every episode — the theme was a different soul record each week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

MacGyver

1985–1992·ABC·Drama

Improvised solutions cut fast enough that you never see how any of them work, which is also true of the episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Newhart

1982–1990·CBS·Comedy

The Vermont inn sitcom, and the source of what is still widely held to be the best final scene in American television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

DuckTales

1987–1990·Syndication·Animation

One of the most durable theme songs ever written for television, over a minute of ducks solving problems with money.

• Season 1

1 sequence

L.A. Law

1986–1994·NBC·Drama

A car boot slamming on a personalised numberplate, and Mike Post again — the legal drama that defined the form for a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

War of the Worlds

1988–1990·Syndication·Sci-Fi

A sequel to the 1953 film in which the aliens were never defeated, only dormant.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Reading Rainbow

1983–2006·PBS·Documentary

LeVar Burton reading to children for twenty-three years, and "but you don't have to take my word for it".

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brookside

1982–2003·Channel 4·Drama

Channel 4's launch-night serial, shot on a real close of houses the production company had bought.

• Season 1

1 sequence

America's Most Wanted

1988–2013·Fox·Documentary

The programme Fox launched itself on, and the one that turned a network into a switchboard.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Falcon Crest

1981–1990·CBS·Drama

Napa vineyards filmed like an estate agent's brochure, for a family who spend nine seasons trying to take it from each other.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Postman Pat

1981–2017·BBC One·Animation

A rural postman and his black and white cat, stop-motion, with a theme everyone in Britain can finish.

• Season 1

1 sequence

MTV Unplugged

1989–·MTV·Documentary

Sixteen seconds and an acoustic guitar — a format whose whole argument is in the title card.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Inspector Gadget

1983–1986·Syndication·Animation

A Peter Sellers impression with helicopter arms, and a theme that is In the Hall of the Mountain King with the serial numbers filed off.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fireman Sam

1987–·BBC One·Animation

A Welsh fire station in stop-motion, made in Welsh first and dubbed into English second.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shōgun (1980)

1980·NBC·Drama

The Clavell miniseries that ran five nights and made a genre out of the Western sailor in feudal Japan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Twilight Zone (1985)

1985–1989·CBS·Sci-Fi

The first revival, with the Grateful Dead re-recording Marius Constant's motif — the middle of three attempts at the same idea, all of which are now in this catalogue.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Real Ghostbusters

1986–1991·ABC·Animation

The film continued as a cartoon, keeping the theme and adding Real to the title because another studio already had the name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pee-wee's Playhouse

1986–1990·CBS·Comedy

A Saturday morning show designed by artists from the New York gallery scene, with a theme sung by Cyndi Lauper under a pseudonym.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Birds of a Feather

1989–2020·BBC One / ITV·Comedy

Two sisters in Chigwell whose husbands are both in prison.

• Season 1
• Season 10

1 sequence

Dungeons & Dragons

1983–1985·CBS·Animation

Six children pulled off a fairground ride into the game, with the ride itself doing the work of the title sequence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

ThunderCats

1985–1989·Syndication·Animation

A sword extending, a cat's eye opening, and a shout — eighties syndication at its most confident.

• Season 1

1 sequence

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986·ABC / CBS·Crime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Late Night with David Letterman

1982–1993·NBC·Comedy

New York at night shot from a moving car, over a jazz-organ theme — the opening that decided what a late-night talk show looks like.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Byker Grove

1989–2006·BBC One·Drama

A Newcastle youth club, and the series Ant and Dec came out of.

• Season 11

1 sequence

Danger Mouse

1981–1992·ITV (Cosgrove Hall)·Animation

A one-eyed secret-agent mouse under a Mayfair pillar box, and the most exported British cartoon of its decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brideshead Revisited

1981·ITV·Drama

Geoffrey Burgon's theme over an English country house — eleven hours of television that changed what British drama believed it could spend money on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alien Nation

1989–1990·Fox·Sci-Fi

The film continued as a series, with a buddy-cop format used to work through immigration and prejudice week by week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Simon & Simon

1981–1989·CBS·Crime

Two brothers running a San Diego detective agency with opposite methods.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tales from the Darkside

1983–1988·Syndication·Horror

George Romero's anthology, opened by pastoral countryside that turns to negative while a narrator explains why.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Amazing Stories

1985–1987·NBC·Sci-Fi

John Williams scoring an animated history of storytelling — cave paintings to campfires to television — for Spielberg's anthology.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Muppet Babies

1984–1991·CBS·Animation

The Muppets as toddlers in a nursery, spun out of a dream sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Friday the 13th: The Series

1987–1990·Syndication·Horror

An antiques shop recovering cursed objects, sharing nothing with the films but a title.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Round the Twist

1989–2001·ABC / Seven Network·Comedy

An Australian children's series set in a lighthouse, with a theme song that asks whether strange things ever happen to you.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Freddy's Nightmares

1988–1990·Syndication·Horror

An anthology hosted by Freddy Krueger, made while the films were still coming out and stranger than any of them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Max Headroom

1987–1988·ABC·Sci-Fi

A cyberpunk satire about television, broadcast on television, twenty minutes into the future.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hi-de-Hi!

1980–1988·BBC One·Comedy

A 1950s holiday camp, the fourth David Croft series in this catalogue.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Little Pony 'n Friends

1986–1987·Syndication·Animation

The Hasbro line's first series, thirty years before the franchise found an audience it had not been aimed at.

• Season 1

1 sequence

G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero

1985–1986·Syndication·Animation

A toy line turned into a war cartoon where nobody is ever hit, and a theme that spells the acronym out.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Degrassi Junior High

1987–1989·CBC·Drama

The Canadian schools series that cast actual teenagers and let them look like it, and the start of a franchise still running.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Thundarr the Barbarian

1980–1982·ABC·Animation

A post-apocalyptic Earth designed by Jack Kirby, with a narrated prologue doing all the world-building in twenty seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

1983–1987·CBS·Drama

A divorced housewife recruited into intelligence work by accident.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Wonder Years

1988–1993·ABC·Comedy

Home-movie footage and Joe Cocker singing 'With a Little Help from My Friends' — an opening that establishes the entire retrospective frame before a word of narration.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Count Duckula

1988–1993·ITV (Cosgrove Hall)·Animation

The Danger Mouse villain spun off into his own castle, a vegetarian vampire duck.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Kids in the Hall

1988–1995·CBC / HBO·Comedy

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet playing surf rock over five men in a doorway — a sketch show whose theme became more famous than most of its sketches.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beetlejuice

1989–1991·ABC / Fox Kids·Animation

The Burton film animated with Danny Elfman's theme intact, and Lydia and the ghost as friends rather than adversaries.

• Season 1

1 sequence

SilverHawks

1986·Syndication·Animation

ThunderCats moved into space by the same studio, with the same narrator shouting the same way.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Riptide

1984–1986·NBC·Crime

Two Vietnam veterans running a detective agency from a boat, with a helicopter called the Screaming Mimi.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ever Decreasing Circles

1984–1989·BBC One·Comedy

Richard Briers after The Good Life, running every committee in his cul-de-sac.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Robotech

1985·Syndication·Animation

Three unrelated Japanese series cut together into one American saga, and the opening is where the seam shows: the same theme and the same establishing pan every week, then a different logo card and a different war.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

1 sequence

Faerie Tale Theatre

1982–1987·Showtime·Drama

Shelley Duvall's anthology of fairy tales, each directed by a different film-maker and cast from Hollywood.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Catchphrase

1986–·ITV·Documentary

Say what you see, and a golden robot called Mr Chips who was the reason anyone watched.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Singing Detective

1986·BBC One·Drama

Dennis Potter's serial, in which a hospitalised writer's hallucinations arrive as 1940s dance numbers — and the titles set that up without explaining it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

French and Saunders

1987–2007·BBC Two·Comedy

Twenty years of film parodies, and the double act that came out of the Comic Strip.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Country Practice

1981–1994·Seven Network·Drama

A rural New South Wales medical practice, and one of Australian television's defining serials.

• Season 1

1 sequence

BraveStarr

1987–1988·Syndication·Animation

Filmation's science-fiction western, and the last series the studio finished before it closed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Monsters

1988–1991·Syndication·Horror

A half-hour anthology from the Tales from the Darkside producers, with a creature in every episode and a budget for none of them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Solid Gold

1980–1988·Syndication·Documentary

The weekly chart countdown as a dance routine, with its own troupe named after it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Hitchhiker

1983–1991·HBO·Horror

HBO's first original series: an anthology introduced by a man on a road who never explains himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Newsnight

1980–·BBC Two·Documentary

The BBC's late analysis programme, opening on a rotating globe of headlines rather than a presenter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hammer House of Horror

1980·ITV·Horror

Hammer's one television anthology, made after the films had stopped and shot on the same estate.

• Season 1

1 sequence

It's Garry Shandling's Show

1986–1990·Showtime·Comedy

A sitcom whose theme song is about being a sitcom theme song, six years before The Larry Sanders Show.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Automan

1983–1984·ABC·Sci-Fi

A hologram crime-fighter generated by a police clerk's own program, made the year after Tron and looking it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spitting Image

1984–1996·ITV·Comedy

Latex puppets of everyone in public life, opening on the workshop that built them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Press Gang

1989–1993·ITV·Drama

A school newspaper written by Steven Moffat, which is why the dialogue is faster than the format.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Yes, Prime Minister

1986–1988, 2013·BBC Two / Gold·Comedy

The sequel that promotes Hacker to Number Ten, and the 2013 revival that recast the whole thing.

• Seasons 1–2
• Season 3

1 sequence

The Trap Door

1984–1986·ITV·Animation

Plasticine creatures in a castle basement, with a theme built from a voice going "don't you open that trap door".

• Season 1

1 sequence

SuperTed

1983–1986·S4C / BBC·Animation

A discarded teddy bear given powers by a spotty alien, made in Wales and sold to Disney.

• Season 1

2 sequences

ChuckleVision

1987–2009·BBC One·Comedy

Two brothers and a slapstick format that ran for twenty-one series on the strength of one exchange.

• Season 1
• Seasons 17–20

1 sequence

V

1984–1985·NBC·Sci-Fi

Visitor iconography and a red banner, borrowing its design language from twentieth-century propaganda quite deliberately.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Knightmare

1987–1994·ITV·Sci-Fi

A blindfolded child walked through a bluescreen dungeon by teammates who can see it — the first television format built on a video game's logic.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rainbow Brite

1984–1986·Syndication·Animation

A Hallmark character licensed into a cartoon, in the era when the toy came first and the series followed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Countryfile

1988–·BBC One·Documentary

Sunday evening rural affairs, and one of the most watched factual programmes in Britain.

• Season 24

1 sequence

Werewolf

1987–1988·Fox·Horror

One of the four series Fox launched its network with, and the first weekly werewolf on American television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Littles

1983–1985·ABC·Animation

Six-inch people with tails living inside the walls, from the John Peterson books.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Ray Bradbury Theater

1985–1992·HBO / USA Network·Sci-Fi

Bradbury adapting himself, introduced each week from an office full of the objects the stories came from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alas Smith and Jones

1984–1998·BBC Two·Comedy

Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones after Not the Nine O'Clock News, with a title that puns on a western.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Tripods

1984–1985·BBC One·Sci-Fi

The John Christopher novels adapted at great expense and cancelled two thirds of the way through the story.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Care Bears Family

1986–1988·ABC·Animation

The greetings-card bears given a series, with a stare that resolves every plot.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Square One TV

1987–1994·PBS·Comedy

Mathematics taught as sketch comedy, including a police procedural parody called Mathnet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Willo the Wisp

1981·BBC One·Animation

Kenneth Williams voicing every character, in five-minute films made to fill the gap before the news.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bananaman

1983–1986·BBC One·Animation

The Beano strip animated with the Goodies doing the voices, and a narrator who explains the transformation every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Button Moon

1980–1988·ITV·Animation

Puppets made of kitchen utensils flying to a moon made of a button, with a theme sung by Peter Davison's wife and later covered by him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin

1989·BBC One·Documentary

The Verne route without aircraft, and the series that turned a Python into Britain's travel presenter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Metal Mickey

1980–1983·ITV·Comedy

A robot in a suburban family sitcom, directed by Micky Dolenz of the Monkees.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV

1985–1987·BBC Two·Comedy

Sketches, songs at a piano, and the soap parody Acorn Antiques, which outlived the programme around it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Great Railway Journeys

1980–1999·BBC Two·Documentary

A writer and a railway line, one country per episode, in the strand that gave Michael Palin his second career.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Living Planet

1984·BBC One·Documentary

The Life on Earth sequel, on habitats rather than lineages, opening on the planet doing the sorting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pigeon Street

1981·BBC One·Animation

A street of neighbours introduced one at a time, including a long-distance lorry driver called Long Distance Clara.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nightline

1980–·ABC·Documentary

A late bulletin that began as nightly updates on the Iran hostage crisis and outlived the crisis by forty-five years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The $50,000 Pyramid

1981·Syndication·Documentary

One year of the Pyramid format at its highest stake, between the $20,000 and $25,000 versions.

• Season 1

1 sequence

21 Jump Street

1987–1990·Fox·Crime

Officers young enough to pass for pupils, in one of the four shows Fox launched its network with.

• Season 1

1 sequence

227

1985–1990·NBC·Comedy

A Washington apartment block told almost entirely from its front steps, where most of the cast spends most of the programme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

1984–1994·ITV (Granada)·Crime

Jeremy Brett's Holmes, and the Victorian-illustration open Granada reused across every retitled run of the series.

• Seasons 1–2

2 sequences

ALF

1986–1990·NBC·Comedy

A sitcom built around a puppet the cast could not see, worked from a trench cut into the set floor.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

America's Funniest Home Videos

1989–·ABC·Documentary

A clip show assembled entirely from what the audience sent in, and the longest-running entertainment programme ABC has.

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Gladiators

1989–1996·Syndication·Documentary

Members of the public running an assault course against professional athletes in lycra, in a format that outlived its own slot by decades.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Anpanman

1988–·NTV·Animation

A superhero whose head is made of bread and who tears pieces off it to feed the hungry, running now for more than a thousand episodes.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

1983–1986·ITV·Comedy

Seven British builders sharing a hut on a Düsseldorf site, written as a comedy about not being able to find work at home.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Babar

1989–1991·HBO·Animation

De Brunhof's elephant king animated in Canada, and told mostly in flashback to his own children.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beast King GoLion

1981–1982·TV Tokyo·Animation

Five lions that combine into one robot, later recut in America as Voltron.

• Season 1

3 sequences

The Bill

1983–2010·ITV·Crime

A London police station shot at ground level, under a rule the programme kept for twenty-seven years: no scene an officer is not present for.

• Season 1
• Season 4
• Season 5

1 sequence

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

1987–1995·BBC Two·Comedy

Sketches written and performed by two people who had just left Cambridge and sounded like it.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Boon

1986–1995·ITV·Crime

A retired fireman on a motorcycle, in the ITV drama that ran nine years on the strength of Jim Diamond's theme.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Bosom Buddies

1980–1982·ABC·Comedy

Two admen who take rooms in a women-only building in drag, and the first thing Tom Hanks was known for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bread

1986–1991·BBC One·Comedy

Carla Lane's Liverpool family, signing on and eating together, in the decade that made both political.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brush Strokes

1986–1991·BBC One·Comedy

A painter and decorator who cannot stop flirting, written by the Birds of a Feather pair.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bullseye

1981–1995·ITV·Documentary

Darts and general knowledge, and a cartoon bull who throws better than the contestants.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

1987–1988·Syndication·Sci-Fi

Live action against computer animation, built so that a toy could shoot at the screen.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Charles in Charge

1984–1990·CBS / Syndication·Comedy

A student paying his rent by minding somebody else's children, in a sitcom CBS cancelled and syndication brought back.

• Season 1

1 sequence

China Beach

1988–1991·ABC·Drama

An evacuation hospital on the Vietnamese coast, told from the women posted to it rather than the men passing through.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Chronicles of Narnia

1988–1990·BBC One·Drama

Lewis adapted across four serials, with costumes and matte paintings doing what the budget could not.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Coach

1989–1997·ABC·Comedy

A Minnesota football program run by three men who are markedly better at the game than at the rest of their lives.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Countdown

1982–·Channel 4·Documentary

The first programme Channel 4 ever broadcast, and a clock sequence that has been recognisable to British afternoons for forty years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cover Up

1984–1985·CBS·Drama

A fashion photographer and her model working as agents, and the series remembered for how its lead died.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dear John

1986–1987·BBC One·Comedy

A divorced man at a support group of the similarly abandoned, written by John Sullivan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Degrassi High

1989–1991·CBC·Drama

The Degrassi cast moved up to secondary school, and the point the series stopped softening anything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dempsey and Makepeace

1985–1986·ITV·Crime

An American detective seconded to London and the aristocrat he is partnered with, who married in real life.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dragon Ball

1986–1989·Fuji TV·Animation

Toriyama's Journey to the West, from before the series turned into the one everyone remembers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elvira's Movie Macabre

1981–1986·Syndication·Horror

A horror host wrapped around public-domain films, and the character that outlasted every film she introduced.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Empty Nest

1988–1995·NBC·Comedy

The Golden Girls' neighbour given his own house, two grown daughters and a conspicuously large dog.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Equalizer (1985)

1985–1989·CBS·Crime

A retired intelligence officer advertising his services in the classifieds, scored by Stewart Copeland the year after the Police stopped.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Eureeka's Castle

1989–1991·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Puppets in a castle carried by a giant, made for the channel's pre-school block before it had one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fame

1982–1987·NBC / Syndication·Drama

The film continued at the High School of Performing Arts, with a cast who did their own dancing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

A Chicago family and a theme about the tiny things adding up, from a spinoff that was quietly taken over by a neighbour.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Family Ties

1982–1989·NBC·Comedy

A family portrait being drawn and redrawn, over a duet about what would happen without you — sixties parents and a Reagan-voting son.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Father Dowling Mysteries

1989–1991·NBC / ABC·Crime

A Chicago priest and a nun solving murders, cancelled by NBC and picked up by ABC.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fridays

1980–1982·ABC·Comedy

ABC's answer to Saturday Night Live, best remembered for the night Andy Kaufman refused to say his lines.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Full House

1987–1995·ABC·Comedy

A San Francisco picnic and a song about everywhere you look — the platonic form of the American family-sitcom opening.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Galactica 1980

1980·ABC·Sci-Fi

The fleet reaching Earth at last, on a tenth of the original's budget and for ten episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gimme a Break!

1981–1987·NBC·Comedy

Nell Carter keeping house for a widowed police chief, in a sitcom built entirely around her.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Morning, Miss Bliss

1987–1989·NBC / Disney Channel·Comedy

The series Saved by the Bell was rebuilt out of, with Hayley Mills teaching in Indiana.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Greatest American Hero

1981–1983·ABC·Sci-Fi

A schoolteacher handed a flying suit by aliens who lost the instruction manual in the first episode and never found it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Growing Pains

1985–1992·ABC·Comedy

A Long Island psychiatrist who moved his practice into the house so his wife could go back to reporting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hale and Pace

1988–1998·ITV·Comedy

Two former schoolteachers doing sketch comedy for ITV for a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hardcastle and McCormick

1983–1986·ABC·Crime

A retired judge and the ex-convict he paroles into being his driver, chasing the cases he could not convict.

• Season 1

1 sequence

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

1983–1985·Syndication·Animation

A man holding a sword above his head announcing that he has the power, at a volume that defined an entire decade of toy advertising.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Head of the Class

1986–1991·ABC·Comedy

A history teacher handed the gifted programme at a Manhattan school, played by a stand-up who had never taught anyone.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hey Dude

1989–1991·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Teenagers working a dude ranch in Arizona, in one of the first scripted series Nickelodeon made itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Hogan Family

1986–1990·NBC·Comedy

A sitcom that changed its name twice while on the air, from Valerie to Valerie's Family to this one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hollywood Squares

1986–1989·Syndication·Documentary

The noughts-and-crosses game revived for syndication, with nine celebrities stacked in a lit grid.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Home and Away

1988–·Seven Network·Drama

Summer Bay, still running after nearly forty years, with the opening remade every few seasons.

• Season 1
• Season 38

1 sequence

Howards' Way

1985–1990·BBC One·Drama

Boatyards and money on the Solent, which the BBC ran opposite Dallas and Dynasty on purpose.

• Season 1

2 sequences

It's a Living

1980–1989·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

Waitresses at a restaurant on the thirteenth floor, cancelled by ABC and revived in syndication.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Jake and the Fatman

1987–1992·CBS·Crime

A Hawaii prosecutor and his investigator, spun out of a single episode of Matlock.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jem and the Holograms

1985–1988·Syndication·Animation

A record executive with a holographic alter ego, and a series that stopped for a music video every episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Joy of Painting

1983–1994·PBS·Documentary

Bob Ross finishing a landscape in twenty-six minutes, over thirty-one seasons and a permanent afterlife online.

• Season 29

1 sequence

Just the Ten of Us

1988–1990·ABC·Comedy

The Growing Pains teacher spun off with eight children of his own.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kate & Allie

1984–1989·CBS·Comedy

Two divorced friends sharing a Greenwich Village apartment and bringing up their children in it together.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kids Incorporated

1984–1994·Syndication / Disney Channel·Comedy

A band of children playing covers in a converted warehouse, and where Fergie and Jennifer Love Hewitt both started.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life Goes On

1989–1993·ABC·Drama

The first American series built around a lead actor with Down syndrome, opening on the Beatles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life with Lucy

1986·ABC·Comedy

Lucille Ball's last series, pulled after eight episodes of a thirteen-episode order.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mama's Family

1983–1990·NBC / Syndication·Comedy

A Carol Burnett Show sketch given its own house, dropped by NBC and then run for four more years in syndication.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Matt Houston

1982–1985·ABC·Crime

A Texas oil heir running a detective agency in Los Angeles because he is bored.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Midnight Caller

1988–1991·NBC·Drama

A former policeman taking calls on late-night radio, and one of the first American dramas to write about AIDS.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Belvedere

1985–1990·ABC·Comedy

An English butler working for a Pittsburgh family, out of a film series forty years older than the sitcom.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Two Dads

1987–1990·NBC·Comedy

A girl left to two men, either of whom might be her father, by a court that declines to establish which.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The New Adventures of He-Man

1989–1990·Syndication·Animation

He-Man moved off Eternia into space, with a redesigned cast and almost none of the original's iconography.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Noble House

1988·NBC·Drama

Four nights of Hong Kong boardroom warfare, from the James Clavell novel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Out of This World

1987–1991·Syndication·Comedy

A girl with an alien father who can stop time by touching her fingertips together.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Police Squad!

1982·ABC·Comedy

Six episodes of the Airplane! team's deadpan, cancelled on the grounds that watching it required looking at it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Press Your Luck

1983–1986·CBS·Documentary

A quiz built around a board that could take everything back, and a contestant who memorised its patterns.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Punky Brewster

1984–1986·NBC·Comedy

A girl abandoned in a Chicago apartment building and raised by the man who manages it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Red Dwarf

1988–·BBC Two / Dave·Comedy

The last human alive, three million years from Earth, introduced with a mining ship the size of a city and a theme sung over the end of it.

• Season 1
• Season 10

1 sequence

Reilly, Ace of Spies

1983·ITV·Drama

Sidney Reilly across twelve parts, and the serial that gave Sam Neill his first lead.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Robin of Sherwood

1984–1986·ITV·Drama

The Robin Hood that put a horned god behind the legend, scored throughout by Clannad.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Ruth Rendell Mysteries

1987–2000·ITV·Crime

Rendell adapted for thirteen years, mostly as Wexford and occasionally as the standalone novels.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Saved by the Bell

1989–1993·NBC·Comedy

Freeze-frames of six teenagers over a theme about being late — Saturday morning television's most durable export.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sherlock Holmes (1984)

1984–1994·ITV·Crime

Granada's adaptation, played on a Baker Street built outdoors in Manchester and continued until Jeremy Brett could no longer work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shining Time Station

1989–1995·PBS·Comedy

The American frame built around the Thomas films, with a foot-tall conductor living inside the station wall.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Silver Spoons

1982–1986·NBC·Comedy

A boy sent to live with the father who never grew up, and the model train he rides through the house.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sledge Hammer!

1986–1988·ABC·Comedy

A detective who holds conversations with his revolver, in a parody ABC scheduled directly against the police shows it was mocking.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Small Wonder

1985–1989·Syndication·Comedy

A robot girl passed off as a daughter, in a syndicated sitcom that few people quite believe existed.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Spenser: For Hire

1985–1988·ABC·Crime

Robert B. Parker's Boston detective, with Avery Brooks as Hawk in the part that made him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Square Pegs

1982–1983·CBS·Comedy

Two girls trying to be popular at a Californian high school, one season long and much imitated since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Star Search

1983–1995·Syndication·Documentary

The syndicated talent contest that ran twelve years and handed the singing-competition format almost everything Idol later inherited.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Star Wars: Droids

1985–1986·ABC·Animation

The two droids between the trilogies, in the first Star Wars television made for children.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Stig of the Dump

1981·ITV·Drama

Clive King's boy in a chalk pit and the person living at the bottom of it, adapted by Thames.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Storyteller

1987–1988·NBC / Channel 4·Drama

European folk tales retold by John Hurt beside a fire, with Henson's creature shop doing the rest.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Superbook

1981–1983·CBN·Animation

A Japanese-animated series in which a book sends two children into Bible stories, made for an American religious broadcaster.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Superboy

1988–1992·Syndication·Sci-Fi

Clark Kent at university in Florida, made for syndication while the films were between instalments.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Takeshi's Castle

1986–1990·TBS·Documentary

A hundred contestants a week storming a fortress, and the origin of every obstacle-course format that came after it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

This Morning

1988–·ITV·Documentary

Daytime television broadcast from the Albert Dock, with a weather map floated in the water outside.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Thomas & Friends

1984–2021·ITV·Animation

Model locomotives shot a frame at a time on a table in Britain, narrated for the first two series by Ringo Starr.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends

1984–2021·ITV·Animation

Model railway engines shot at eye level and narrated by Ringo Starr, from the Awdry books.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Thorn Birds

1983·ABC·Drama

The second most-watched miniseries in American television history, after Roots.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Too Close for Comfort

1980–1987·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

A cartoonist whose grown daughters move into the flat downstairs, which is the entire problem.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Tortellis

1987·NBC·Comedy

Carla's ex-husband and his family moved to Las Vegas, and the shortest-lived thing Cheers produced.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tour of Duty

1987–1990·CBS·Drama

An infantry platoon in Vietnam, and the first American drama series to be set there.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Tracey Ullman Show

1987–1990·Fox·Comedy

The sketch show Fox launched its network with, and the one that carried the Simpsons as thirty-second interstitials before they left.

• Season 1

1 sequence

TUGS

1989·ITV·Animation

Model tugboats in a 1920s harbour, made by the Thomas the Tank Engine team and considerably darker.

• Season 1

1 sequence

V: The Final Battle

1984·NBC·Sci-Fi

The sequel miniseries to V, three nights long, and the point the story stopped being an allegory and became a war.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Very Peculiar Practice

1986–1992·BBC Two·Drama

A campus medical practice used as a way of writing about what was happening to universities.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Voltron: Defender of the Universe

1984–1985·Syndication·Animation

Five lions forming a robot, explained by narration because the animation alone could not carry it — and the sequence is better for the commitment.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Webster

1983–1989·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

A boy adopted by his late father's team-mate, in the sitcom ABC ran in Diff'rent Strokes' shadow.

• Season 1

1 sequence

What's Happening Now!!

1985–1988·Syndication·Comedy

The seventies sitcom revived with the same cast grown up and running the diner.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Winds of War

1983·ABC·Drama

Wouk's novel as eighteen hours across a single week, and the most expensive thing American television had made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wiseguy

1987–1990·CBS·Crime

An undercover agent left inside one organisation for a whole arc at a time, which is roughly where American television learned to serialise.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Woman of Substance

1985·Channel 4 / Syndication·Drama

Barbara Taylor Bradford's servant girl who builds a department store empire, across three nights.

• Season 1

1 sequence

You Rang, M'Lord?

1988–1993·BBC One·Comedy

Croft and Perry's between-the-wars house, played at fifty minutes an episode rather than thirty.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Riders

1989–1992·ABC·Drama

Pony Express riders in the years before the Civil War, with Billy the Kid among them.

• Season 1