Comedy · 1980s

86 shows97 sequences

The Golden Girls

1985–1992NBCComedy

'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

1989–1998NBCComedy

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

1 sequence

Cheers

1982–1993NBCComedy

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

1 sequence

Married... with Children

1987–1997FoxComedy

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

Only Fools and Horses

1981–2003BBC OneComedy

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

1988–2018ABCComedy

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

1983–1989BBC OneComedy

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

The Cosby Show

1984–1992NBCComedy

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

Mystery Science Theater 3000

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

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

A Different World

1987–1993NBCComedy

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

Moonlighting

1985–1989ABCComedy

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?

1984–1992ABCComedy

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

1986–1993CBSComedy

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

Season 6

1 sequence

Perfect Strangers

1986–1993ABCComedy

'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

The Young Ones

1982–1984BBC TwoComedy

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

1984–1992NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Fraggle Rock

1983–1987HBOComedy

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

Yes Minister

1980–1984BBC TwoComedy

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

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

'Allo 'Allo!

1982–1992BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Doogie Howser, M.D.

1989–1993ABCComedy

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

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Murphy Brown

1988–2018CBSComedy

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

Newhart

1982–1990CBSComedy

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

Pee-wee's Playhouse

1986–1990CBSComedy

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

1989–2020BBC One / ITVComedy

Two sisters in Chigwell whose husbands are both in prison.

Season 1
Season 10

1 sequence

Late Night with David Letterman

1982–1993NBCComedy

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

Round the Twist

1989–2001ABC / Seven NetworkComedy

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

Hi-de-Hi!

1980–1988BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

The Wonder Years

1988–1993ABCComedy

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

The Kids in the Hall

1988–1995CBC / HBOComedy

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

Ever Decreasing Circles

1984–1989BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

French and Saunders

1987–2007BBC TwoComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

It's Garry Shandling's Show

1986–1990ShowtimeComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Spitting Image

1984–1996ITVComedy

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

Season 1

2 sequences

Yes, Prime Minister

1986–1988, 2013BBC Two / GoldComedy

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

Seasons 1–2
Season 3

2 sequences

ChuckleVision

1987–2009BBC OneComedy

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

Alas Smith and Jones

1984–1998BBC TwoComedy

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

Square One TV

1987–1994PBSComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Metal Mickey

1980–1983ITVComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV

1985–1987BBC TwoComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

227

1985–1990NBCComedy

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

Season 1

2 sequences

ALF

1986–1990NBCComedy

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

Season 1
Season 3

2 sequences

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet

1983–1986ITVComedy

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

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

1987–1995BBC TwoComedy

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

Season 2

1 sequence

Bosom Buddies

1980–1982ABCComedy

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

1986–1991BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Brush Strokes

1986–1991BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Charles in Charge

1984–1990CBS / SyndicationComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Coach

1989–1997ABCComedy

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

Dear John

1986–1987BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Empty Nest

1988–1995NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Eureeka's Castle

1989–1991NickelodeonComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998ABC / CBSComedy

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

1982–1989NBCComedy

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

Fridays

1980–1982ABCComedy

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

1987–1995ABCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Gimme a Break!

1981–1987NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Good Morning, Miss Bliss

1987–1989NBC / Disney ChannelComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Growing Pains

1985–1992ABCComedy

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

1988–1998ITVComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Head of the Class

1986–1991ABCComedy

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

1989–1991NickelodeonComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

The Hogan Family

1986–1990NBCComedy

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

Season 1

2 sequences

It's a Living

1980–1989ABC / SyndicationComedy

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

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Just the Ten of Us

1988–1990ABCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Kate & Allie

1984–1989CBSComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Kids Incorporated

1984–1994Syndication / Disney ChannelComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Life with Lucy

1986ABCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Mama's Family

1983–1990NBC / SyndicationComedy

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

Mr. Belvedere

1985–1990ABCComedy

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

1987–1990NBCComedy

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

Out of This World

1987–1991SyndicationComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Police Squad!

1982ABCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Punky Brewster

1984–1986NBCComedy

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 / DaveComedy

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

Saved by the Bell

1989–1993NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Shining Time Station

1989–1995PBSComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Silver Spoons

1982–1986NBCComedy

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!

1986–1988ABCComedy

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

1985–1989SyndicationComedy

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

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Square Pegs

1982–1983CBSComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Too Close for Comfort

1980–1987ABC / SyndicationComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tortellis

1987NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tracey Ullman Show

1987–1990FoxComedy

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

Webster

1983–1989ABC / SyndicationComedy

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!!

1985–1988SyndicationComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

You Rang, M'Lord?

1988–1993BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1