Drama · 1980s
46 shows51 sequences
2 sequencesEastEnders
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
1 sequenceBaywatch
1989–2001NBC / SyndicationDrama
Los Angeles County lifeguards, and at its peak the most-watched television programme on Earth.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLonesome 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
2 sequencesNeighbours
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
2 sequencesThe Bold and the Beautiful
1987–CBSDrama
Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.
- Season 1
- Season 38
1 sequenceKnight 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
1 sequenceDynasty
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
1 sequenceCasualty
1986–BBC OneDrama
Holby City Hospital's emergency department, and the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world.
- Season 27
1 sequenceSt. 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
1 sequenceThe Fall Guy
1981–1986ABCDrama
A Hollywood stuntman working as a bounty hunter, with a theme song about being unknown.
- Season 1
1 sequencethirtysomething
1987–1991ABCDrama
The series that invented the domestic-anxiety drama, and gave a generation of television writers their register.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAirwolf
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
1 sequenceNorth and South
1985–1994ABCDrama
Two West Point friends on opposite sides of the Civil War, over a Bill Conti march.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMacGyver
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
1 sequenceL.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
1 sequenceBrookside
1982–2003Channel 4Drama
Channel 4's launch-night serial, shot on a real close of houses the production company had bought.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFalcon 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
1 sequenceShōgun (1980)
1980NBCDrama
The Clavell miniseries that ran five nights and made a genre out of the Western sailor in feudal Japan.
- Season 1
1 sequenceByker Grove
1989–2006BBC OneDrama
A Newcastle youth club, and the series Ant and Dec came out of.
- Season 11
1 sequenceBrideshead 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
1 sequenceDegrassi 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
1 sequenceScarecrow and Mrs. King
1983–1987CBSDrama
A divorced housewife recruited into intelligence work by accident.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFaerie Tale Theatre
1982–1987ShowtimeDrama
Shelley Duvall's anthology of fairy tales, each directed by a different film-maker and cast from Hollywood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceA Country Practice
1981–1994Seven NetworkDrama
A rural New South Wales medical practice, and one of Australian television's defining serials.
- Season 1
1 sequencePress Gang
1989–1993ITVDrama
A school newspaper written by Steven Moffat, which is why the dialogue is faster than the format.
- Season 1
1 sequenceChina 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
1 sequenceThe Chronicles of Narnia
1988–1990BBC OneDrama
Lewis adapted across four serials, with costumes and matte paintings doing what the budget could not.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCover Up
1984–1985CBSDrama
A fashion photographer and her model working as agents, and the series remembered for how its lead died.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDegrassi High
1989–1991CBCDrama
The Degrassi cast moved up to secondary school, and the point the series stopped softening anything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFame
1982–1987NBC / SyndicationDrama
The film continued at the High School of Performing Arts, with a cast who did their own dancing.
- Season 1
2 sequencesHome and Away
1988–Seven NetworkDrama
Summer Bay, still running after nearly forty years, with the opening remade every few seasons.
- Season 1
- Season 38
1 sequenceHowards' Way
1985–1990BBC OneDrama
Boatyards and money on the Solent, which the BBC ran opposite Dallas and Dynasty on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife Goes On
1989–1993ABCDrama
The first American series built around a lead actor with Down syndrome, opening on the Beatles.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMidnight 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
1 sequenceNoble House
1988NBCDrama
Four nights of Hong Kong boardroom warfare, from the James Clavell novel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReilly, Ace of Spies
1983ITVDrama
Sidney Reilly across twelve parts, and the serial that gave Sam Neill his first lead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRobin of Sherwood
1984–1986ITVDrama
The Robin Hood that put a horned god behind the legend, scored throughout by Clannad.
- Season 1
1 sequenceStig 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
2 sequencesThe 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
1 sequenceThe Thorn Birds
1983ABCDrama
The second most-watched miniseries in American television history, after Roots.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTour of Duty
1987–1990CBSDrama
An infantry platoon in Vietnam, and the first American drama series to be set there.
- Season 1
1 sequenceA Very Peculiar Practice
1986–1992BBC TwoDrama
A campus medical practice used as a way of writing about what was happening to universities.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceA Woman of Substance
1985Channel 4 / SyndicationDrama
Barbara Taylor Bradford's servant girl who builds a department store empire, across three nights.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Young Riders
1989–1992ABCDrama
Pony Express riders in the years before the Civil War, with Billy the Kid among them.
- Season 1