M*A*S*H
A comedy that opens every week with casualties being carried off a helicopter. Nurses and surgeons run for the landing pad while the theme plays underneath — an instrumental of a song the network would not let anyone sing, because of what its chorus says.
One opening sequence is catalogued for M*A*S*H, covering seasons 1–11.
It arrived on CBS in 1972, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.
The opening titles
Seasons 1–11
One entry for eleven seasons. The montage was recut over the years, but only to keep up with a cast that turned over almost completely, which is the same reason Breaking Bad has one entry — the sequence itself never changed. Johnny Mandel's melody is played rather than sung throughout: the lyric is called 'Suicide Is Painless', and the network wanted the words nowhere near a Sunday night.
More comedy opening titles from the 1970s
1 sequence
Saturday Night Live
A new cast montage every single season for fifty years — New York at night, the current company photographed in it, and a band playing over the top. The longest-running rotating title sequence on television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAll in the Family
Two people at an upright piano singing about how things used to be — an opening performed live by the cast rather than scored.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFawlty Towers
A hotel sign whose letters are rearranged into a different rude anagram every episode — the earliest running title gag in this catalogue by two decades.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Days
A fifties jukebox theme that started as a closing song and was promoted to the opening once it became a hit record.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThree's Company
A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Love Boat
A cruise ship with a new guest cast every week, introduced by name in the titles.
- Season 3