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Drama · 1980s

The 1980s account for 46 of the 575 drama shows here, and 51 opening sequences.

ABC carries the most, with ten.

Five of them rebuilt their titles mid-run.

46 shows51 sequences

Still from the opening titles of EastEnders2 sequences

EastEnders

1985–BBC OneDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Baywatch1 sequence

Baywatch

1989–2001NBC / SyndicationDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lonesome Dove1 sequence

Lonesome Dove

1989CBSDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Neighbours2 sequences

Neighbours

1985–2025Seven / Ten (Australia)Drama

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 39
Still from the opening titles of The Bold and the Beautiful2 sequences

The Bold and the Beautiful

1987–CBSDrama

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 38
Still from the opening titles of Knight Rider1 sequence

Knight Rider

1982–1986NBCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Dynasty1 sequence

Dynasty

1981–1989ABCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Casualty1 sequence

Casualty

1986–BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 27
Still from the opening titles of St. Elsewhere1 sequence

St. Elsewhere

1982–1988NBCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of The Fall Guy1 sequence

The Fall Guy

1981–1986ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of thirtysomething1 sequence

thirtysomething

1987–1991ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Airwolf1 sequence

Airwolf

1984–1987CBS / USADrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of North and South1 sequence

North and South

1985–1994ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of MacGyver1 sequence

MacGyver

1985–1992ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of L.A. Law1 sequence

L.A. Law

1986–1994NBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Brookside1 sequence

Brookside

1982–2003Channel 4Drama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Falcon Crest1 sequence

Falcon Crest

1981–1990CBSDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Shōgun (1980)1 sequence

Shōgun (1980)

1980NBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Byker Grove1 sequence

Byker Grove

1989–2006BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 11
Still from the opening titles of Brideshead Revisited1 sequence

Brideshead Revisited

1981ITVDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Degrassi Junior High1 sequence

Degrassi Junior High

1987–1989CBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Scarecrow and Mrs. King1 sequence

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

1983–1987CBSDrama

A divorced housewife recruited into intelligence work by accident.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Faerie Tale Theatre1 sequence

Faerie Tale Theatre

1982–1987ShowtimeDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Singing Detective1 sequence

The Singing Detective

1986BBC OneDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of A Country Practice1 sequence

A Country Practice

1981–1994Seven NetworkDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Press Gang1 sequence

Press Gang

1989–1993ITVDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of China Beach1 sequence

China Beach

1988–1991ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Chronicles of Narnia1 sequence

The Chronicles of Narnia

1988–1990BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cover Up1 sequence

Cover Up

1984–1985CBSDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Degrassi High1 sequence

Degrassi High

1989–1991CBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fame1 sequence

Fame

1982–1987NBC / SyndicationDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Home and Away2 sequences

Home and Away

1988–Seven NetworkDrama

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 38
Still from the opening titles of Howards' Way1 sequence

Howards' Way

1985–1990BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life Goes On1 sequence

Life Goes On

1989–1993ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Midnight Caller1 sequence

Midnight Caller

1988–1991NBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Noble House1 sequence

Noble House

1988NBCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Reilly, Ace of Spies1 sequence

Reilly, Ace of Spies

1983ITVDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Robin of Sherwood1 sequence

Robin of Sherwood

1984–1986ITVDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Stig of the Dump1 sequence

Stig of the Dump

1981ITVDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Storyteller2 sequences

The Storyteller

1987–1988NBC / Channel 4Drama

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Thorn Birds1 sequence

The Thorn Birds

1983ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Tour of Duty1 sequence

Tour of Duty

1987–1990CBSDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Very Peculiar Practice1 sequence

A Very Peculiar Practice

1986–1992BBC TwoDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Winds of War1 sequence

The Winds of War

1983ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Woman of Substance1 sequence

A Woman of Substance

1985Channel 4 / SyndicationDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Young Riders1 sequence

The Young Riders

1989–1992ABCDrama

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

  • Season 1