Boon
A retired fireman on a motorcycle, in the ITV drama that ran nine years on the strength of Jim Diamond's theme.
Boon kept one opening title sequence, 72 seconds long, across season 5.
At 72 seconds, it opens well above the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ITV in 1986, when The Sooty Show, Thomas & Friends and Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 5
72sThe fifth series' titles, from a themes channel. The better-ranked copy is an upscale.
More crime opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequenceMiami Vice
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
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
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.
Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMatlock
Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn the Heat of the Night
The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.
- Season 1