Comedy theme tunes

[Brainwrong]

Taxi! Love that theme tune.

[Dark Sky]

My favourite theme is from the League of Gentlemen, which sets the tone with pinpoint accuracy, with quite gothic classical-style music with a modern edge (I've no idea what I'm talking about, but it's a good theme).

Oh, yeah, absolutely...  Joby Talbot was a genius to nail the League of Gentlemen quite so perfectly...  He's a composer in modern idioms in his own right and has done some lovely stuff which I'm going to try and work into my University work next year, but in terms of composing for the media his theme for the League for series 1 and 2 (and really all his score for the series as well) is just perfect; the clichéd tritone usage represents a homage/satirisation of classic horror music which conforms to the deliberate mock horror of the series, with the string quartet sequence adding that frantic energy and the brass and sax pumping in some blues-influence to jazz it all up slightly... And the almost African style bongo drum beat infusing that sense of the bizarre and exotic... And then the sul ponticello tremolo bursts in the strings and the solo voiceless singer sequence towards the end just once again hammers in the B-horror movie angle.  It's just so perfect.

What is even more genius is when the League re-invented the show for the third series, and Joby redid the music into the funk rendition which just impresses me so much.  The same thematic material, but the tone changed from the gothic horror to the gritty drama...ah!  Goodness knows where the League would be without Joby; he's my favourite thing about it.

Joby's also going to be scoring the Hitchhiker's movie.  Now there's something to look forward to.

-Nick

PS I grew out of Howard Goodall's hummable but rather simplistic music for Red Dwarf and Blackadder years ago, but his theme to 2.4 Children is a wonderful piece of music, and his setting of Psalm 23 for the Vicar of Dibley is stunningly beautiful, especially the mid-section which never made it onto the TV edit.  The thing about Goodall is that although he's great at nailing the theme songs, his score for these programmes is often quite uninspiring, especially in Blackadder.  I would say he wrote some really great stuff for the later series of Red Dwarf, but I find it difficult to tell what is his stuff and what is the stock music they "famously" dug out from the BBC's vaults.

[Darrell]

Howard Goodall's film scores, for Bean and Back and Forth, are phenomenal, so it's only really when he has no orchestra and just his synth that his incidentals are a little stunted. And he's very good at songs too - his work on NTNOCN, though less pointedly angry than Peter Brewis's contributions, yielded numerous numbers which could proudly stand as great pop songs if it was called of them.

There's a documentary about him on the Red Dwarf VI DVD, in which he plays lots of demos and unused thingies from Red Dwarf's music history.

And 'I Hate The French' is fucking fantastic.

So, in short - Howard Goodall's a good.

[Dr David V]

Whoever said the theme to King Of The Hill is correct. On a similar note, the theme tune to Beavis and Butthead is fantastic as a stand-alone track too.

[fbb bastard]

just a quick nod to the the "whistling in a subway" theme of shelley

simple and quite effective.....not a classic show by any chalk but i loved it and still hold it dearly to my heart

[Godzilla Bankrolls]

Someone may have mentioned the Steptoe theme before, but I'll mention it again.

I love Ronnie Hazelhurst's Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em theme. Is the morse code thing true? The mad jazzy midsection you never get to hear on TV (or on the DVDs) is really doomy.

[Dark Sky]

Howard Goodall's film scores, for Bean and Back and Forth, are phenomenal, so it's only really when he has no orchestra and just his synth that his incidentals are a little stunted. And he's very good at songs too - his work on NTNOCN, though less pointedly angry than Peter Brewis's contributions, yielded numerous numbers which could proudly stand as great pop songs if it was called of them.

Hmmm....I honestly don't really remember the Back and Forth score all that much, but I know that the Bean one was a tad too repetitive of its main theme with little variance in orchestration or anything for my taste, which annoyed me somewhat...  It certainly worked pretty well for the mood and tone of the film, but I wouldn't call it "phenomenal", though.  But then again, I'm a freak who's far too into analysing film scores for his own good!

But yeah, I agree, Goodall's forté really is with the songs.   And of course, his TV presenting skills!

There's a documentary about him on the Red Dwarf VI DVD, in which he plays lots of demos and unused thingies from Red Dwarf's music history.

Was that a typo, or do you mean in the upcoming DVD of series VI?  *interested*

-Nick

[Darrell]

The upcoming one, in Feb 2005.

[dan dirty ape]

Surely the theme from 'Sorry!' has to be up there. Cod-reggae jazz, that 'waaaaaaow' guitar when the drawing of Corbett flashes up.

Come to think of it, the theme from 'The Two Ronnies' as well.

[TJ]

Anyone got a good quality version of "Q8"?

[Morrisfan82]

Taxi! Love that theme tune.

'Angela' by Bob James. Beautiful.

[neveragain]

How could I forget Howard Goodall! Blackadder, Red Dwarf, 2.4 Children, they're all fantastic. Well done man. Oh, and the Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em morse code rumour must be true, I read it in The Sun!

Oh, and another Sullivan one, one which I've always loved and loathed in equal measure. The lyrics were really bleak (a word bandied about this thread) and possibly even slightly profound, if you can remember them. I can't. Its painful high-pitched tone set up the torture which the main character, a timid little lonely divorced teacher living in a squat, experienced each week:

'Deeeeear John,
doo doo doo do-do..' etc

[Jemble Fred]

'By the time you read these lines, I'll be gone...'

*Boo hoo hoo*

Lust For A Vampire is a great movie. On fast forward.

[Gavin]

http://www.cfhf.net/lyrics/dear.htm


Dear John.  Dear John.
By the time you read these lines I'll be gone.

Life goes on, right or wrong
Now the sun is dead and gone.  Dear John.

Since we've sung love's last song.  Dear John.
Since we've sung love's last song.  Poor John.
Since we've sung love's last song.  Dear John

[neveragain]

Lust For A Vampire is a great movie. On fast forward.

I feel a point is being made there but I can't work it out. And cheers Gavin. It's like a Christmas from the past!

[Jemble Fred]

Lust For A Vampire is a great movie. On fast forward.

I feel a point is being made there but I can't work it out.

The point is that I rather like lesbo vampire action. Sorry, but I do. Oh, and Ralph Bates (John) is in it.

[benthalo]

a timid little lonely divorced teacher living in a squat, experienced each week:

Give the man some dignity. It was a bedsit.

[neveragain]

Lust For A Vampire is a great movie. On fast forward.

I feel a point is being made there but I can't work it out.

The point is that I rather like lesbo vampire action. Sorry, but I do. Oh, and Ralph Bates (John) is in it.

Oh, right. I thought you were being intellectual and saying that although, on the surface, Dear John and its title sequence seemed to suggest pathos, in actuality it was barren of integrity and you were showing that through referencing a film that - due to its erotic content - is only good in fast forward.

[tygerbug]

Nearly all great shows tend to have great theme tunes. Even when the tunes are only "good," hearing them is always a sign that you're about to see something great that you love, thus making them instantly even better than they are.

    A new recent favorite is that crazy Italian music from Curb Your Enthusiasm. It makes Larry's whole sad world seem ironically happy.

    I remember hearing somewhere that the composer for Seinfeld's themes based them around mouth sounds as much as he could, because Seinfeld being a stand-up, his entire act was based around speaking into a microphone. Quite clever I thought.

    The award for a theme holding up during many, many, many alternate versions has to go to The Simpsons. Danny Elfman and Alf Clausen, still a joy after all these years.

    I'll repeat what was said about the season 1-2 opening theme to Red Dwarf being fantastic just like the closing theme and later opening theme.

   I wouldn't piss on the Friends theme either. A lot of people hate the show and therefore the theme, but c'mon - it's ridiculously cheery and fits the generally good-hearted unironic tone of the series perfectly.

    The full version of the song, which was played endlessly on the radio, has a nice enough bridge too.

    It was also a great moment when I heard the long version of the theme to Cheers. "And your husband wants to be a girl ... at least there's one place in the world where everybody knows your name ..."


   I never really liked the theme to Bottom, but it fits the show quite well and improves with time.



   "Get a Life" used as its theme the great REM song "Stand" ... which was cheating really. And yet still appreciated.



   You might recall that "I Dream of Jeannie," "The Flintstones," "I Love Lucy," and this is non comedy but "The Twilight Zone" and lots of other shows all had different themes when they first began ... hitting on their famous themes later. Seems to be true in a lot of American cases.

[Gazeuse]

Please Sir by Sam Fonteyn is a fantastic theme...If any of you whippersnappers remember that.

The way the bell always begins on an upbeat is just the sort of nerdy thing that gets me all excited!!!

My favourite listening at the moment is a disk from The Standard Music Library which contains beautifully remastered classics such as Please Sir, On The Buses, The Fenn Street Gang, Catweazle and Doctor In The House as well as other music which has cropped up in many classic comedies. My favourite from this disk is 'Counting The Costa' by the legendary Ron Grainer...It's one of the daftest things I've ever heard!!!

[butnut]

A new recent favorite is that crazy Italian music from Curb Your Enthusiasm. It makes Larry's whole sad world seem ironically happy.

Yes - it's the best. It's called 'Frolic' by Luciano Michelini. Who, I'm sure I read somewhere, was a pupil of Nino Rota, but I can't find anything about that now.

I remember hearing somewhere that the composer for Seinfeld's themes based them around mouth sounds as much as he could, because Seinfeld being a stand-up, his entire act was based around speaking into a microphone. Quite clever I thought.

It's the one thing I dislike about Seinfeld actually. Whenever I watch it, I always sing along with the cheesy slapbass and laugh at it. But having said that, I wouldn't like to suggest what would work better.

[Gazeuse]

That's right about the Seinfeld music. It's by Jonathan Wolff.

[Morrisfan82]

Please Sir by Sam Fonteyn is a fantastic theme...If any of you whippersnappers remember that.

Fantastic indeed. Played it whilst DJing on Wednesday.

I defy anyone to not sing "Blankety Blank, Blankety Blank! Ding-ding!" during the middle bit.