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Batman

1966–1968ABCCrime

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Cartoon versions of the cast run at the camera and fight their way through the rogues' gallery, because the budget for that in live action did not exist and the animation is funnier anyway. Neal Hefti's twelve-bar riff has an eight-voice chorus whose entire lyric is the word Batman.

Batman rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–3.

It arrived on ABC in 1966, when The Bugs Bunny Show, ABC's Wide World of Sports and American Bandstand were also on the network.

Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Batman did so once.

2 sequences10th most looked up of 99 in the 1960sIMDb ↗
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All 2 opening title sequences

Seasons 1–2

The original, drawn in the house style of the comics it came from. A surf-guitar hook over low brass, and a theme so much shorter on words than melody that it charted as a single within two months of the premiere.

Season 3

Rebuilt when Batgirl arrived for the final year — she is added to the animation, and Billy May writes her a theme of her own rather than folding her into Hefti's. A duo becoming a trio is the kind of change these titles existed to announce.

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One patrol car, one shift, from the Dragnet producer.

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Twenty-six seconds of surgical instruments and a guitar figure, from a series that has now outlived most of the shows that copied it.

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A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.

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