Edge of Darkness
Eric Clapton and Michael Kamen scoring a nuclear conspiracy thriller, in what is still cited as the best British serial of the eighties.
One opening sequence is catalogued for Edge of Darkness, covering season 1.
It arrived on BBC Two in 1985, when Great Railway Journeys, The Old Grey Whistle Test and Alas Smith and Jones were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
No usable clip kept. Searching returns The Edge of Night, an American soap opera from 1976, which also fails the moving-picture check. Naming Kamen's score returns the serial itself, but only as complete episodes.
More drama opening titles from the 1980s
2 sequences
EastEnders
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
Los Angeles County lifeguards, and at its peak the most-watched television programme on Earth.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLonesome Dove
Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Neighbours
Ramsay Street across forty years, and a theme song that survived every cast, network and cancellation.
- Season 1
- Season 39
2 sequences
The Bold and the Beautiful
Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.
- Season 1
- Season 38
1 sequenceKnight Rider
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