The Banana Splits Adventure Hour
Four costumed animals in a rock band, wrapped around cartoons and serials, with a theme that has outlived all of it.
The Banana Splits Adventure Hour opens with a main title sequence of 85 seconds.
At 85 seconds, it opens well above the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1968, when Truth or Consequences, Another World and Search for Tomorrow were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
85sMachine-upscaled fan upload of the opening alone; the other copy in circulation runs the closing theme with it.
More comedy opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Sesame Street
Children running through a New York street to a song asking how to get there — an opening that has been remade every decade for over fifty years.
- Season 1
- Seasons 24–25
1 sequenceThe Addams Family
Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceThe Brady Bunch
A three-by-three grid of faces all looking at each other — a title sequence so structurally famous that the grid alone is the reference.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBewitched
Animated witches and a swing arrangement — a live-action sitcom that opens as a cartoon, which was the only way to show the magic on a 1964 budget.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGilligan's Island
A theme song that narrates the entire premise, names every castaway, and was rewritten after the first season to stop leaving two of them out.
- Season 3
1 sequenceThe Andy Griffith Show
A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.
- Season 1