Crime · 1980s
26 shows28 sequences
1 sequenceMiami Vice
1984–1990NBCCrime
Flamingos, jai alai and pastel architecture over Jan Hammer — a title sequence that sold an entire aesthetic and arguably a city.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMurder, She Wrote
1984–1996CBSCrime
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 sequenceAgatha Christie's Poirot
1989–2013ITVCrime
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
1 sequenceMagnum, P.I.
1980–1988CBSCrime
Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMatlock
1986–1995NBC / ABCCrime
Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn the Heat of the Night
1988–1995NBC / CBSCrime
The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHill Street Blues
1981–1987NBCCrime
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 sequenceCagney & Lacey
1981–1988CBSCrime
Two detectives introduced as colleagues rather than as a novelty, which in 1981 was itself the statement.
- Season 2
1 sequenceRemington Steele
1982–1987NBCCrime
A narrated premise about a detective agency with an invented boss, delivered by the woman who invented him.
- Season 1
1 sequenceT. J. Hooker
1982–1986ABC / CBSCrime
William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSimon & Simon
1981–1989CBSCrime
Two brothers running a San Diego detective agency with opposite methods.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiptide
1984–1986NBCCrime
Two Vietnam veterans running a detective agency from a boat, with a helicopter called the Screaming Mimi.
- Season 1
1 sequence21 Jump Street
1987–1990FoxCrime
Officers young enough to pass for pupils, in one of the four shows Fox launched its network with.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
1984–1994ITV (Granada)Crime
Jeremy Brett's Holmes, and the Victorian-illustration open Granada reused across every retitled run of the series.
- Seasons 1–2
3 sequencesThe Bill
1983–2010ITVCrime
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 sequenceBoon
1986–1995ITVCrime
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 sequenceDempsey and Makepeace
1985–1986ITVCrime
An American detective seconded to London and the aristocrat he is partnered with, who married in real life.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Equalizer (1985)
1985–1989CBSCrime
A retired intelligence officer advertising his services in the classifieds, scored by Stewart Copeland the year after the Police stopped.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Dowling Mysteries
1989–1991NBC / ABCCrime
A Chicago priest and a nun solving murders, cancelled by NBC and picked up by ABC.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHardcastle and McCormick
1983–1986ABCCrime
A retired judge and the ex-convict he paroles into being his driver, chasing the cases he could not convict.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJake and the Fatman
1987–1992CBSCrime
A Hawaii prosecutor and his investigator, spun out of a single episode of Matlock.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMatt Houston
1982–1985ABCCrime
A Texas oil heir running a detective agency in Los Angeles because he is bored.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ruth Rendell Mysteries
1987–2000ITVCrime
Rendell adapted for thirteen years, mostly as Wexford and occasionally as the standalone novels.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSherlock Holmes (1984)
1984–1994ITVCrime
Granada's adaptation, played on a Baker Street built outdoors in Manchester and continued until Jeremy Brett could no longer work.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSpenser: For Hire
1985–1988ABCCrime
Robert B. Parker's Boston detective, with Avery Brooks as Hawk in the part that made him.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWiseguy
1987–1990CBSCrime
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