Inspector Morse
Barrington Pheloung's theme spells M-O-R-S-E in Morse code, and on several episodes he encoded the murderer's name into the score as well — the most literal title music ever written for television.
One opening sequence is catalogued for Inspector Morse, covering season 1.
It arrived on ITV in 1987, when The Sooty Show, Thomas & Friends and Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
No usable clip kept. The best-ranked upload is explicitly the closing titles rather than the opening.
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