It’s funny, isn’t it, the difference a year or two can make in terms of style. Consider, for example, the title sequence of a previous Lost Gem, Mission: Impossible, starring Peter Graves, which first aired in 1966.
Slick, glossy, exciting – and in color! Now let’s go back just one year to 1965 to have a look at Court Martial, also starring Peter Graves and Bradford Dillman. Set during World War 2 and detailing the investigations of a Judge Advocate General’s office (yes, those guys who were in JAG), it originally started life as a two-part 1963 episode of NBC’s Kraft Suspense Theatre that also starred Graves and Dillman. Made by ITC, it ran for one season of 26 episodes, airing first in the UK on ITV and then in the US on ABC and even won a BAFTA for best dramatic series.
And here’s the title sequence.
Interesting, huh. All stock footage, black and white, sharp cuts, etc. But it’s very much of a type – consider the title sequence of the similarly themed and quite good John Thaw show Red Cap, which looked at investigations by the UK military police and aired from 1964-66.
Do you see how similar they are? Fashion, huh? Yes, it even applies to TV title sequences.
LA Heat, in my estimation, was possibly one of the worst TV shows ever made. Yes, worse than Angela’s Eyes and even Saving Grace. I’m not going to write epic swathes of text about why it was so bad. I’m just going to let the beyond-parody title sequence speak for itself.
If that didn’t persuade you, here’s the first episode of the second season. If your IQ drops as a result of watching it, that’s not my fault.
1983 was a time of change in the US. Ronald Regan was president. The power of technology was on the ascendant. Manliness was back in vogue. And people were worried about law and order and being soft on crime. Indeed, one frequent claim made was that guilty criminals were escaping the justice system on technicalities.
Hardcastle & McCormick was one of the shows that latched onto all those concerns and prospered for three seasons on ABC as a result. The show was created by TV wunderkind Stephen J Cannell, who wrote 450 episodes of TV shows, produced or exec-produced over 1,500 episodes, and created or co-created no fewer than 40 television series including The Rockford Files, The Greatest American Hero, The A-Team, Wiseguy, 21 Jump Street, Silk Stalkings and The Commish.
Its set-up was relatively simple: Judge Milton C Hardcastle (Brian Keith) is about to retire. However, he’s kept track of 200 criminals who escaped on technicalities and he plans to go after them in retirement and get them locked up. His final case is Mark McCormick (Daniel Hugh Kelly), a car thief who steals a prototype sports car, the Coyote X, which was designed by his best friend before he was murdered. Through a legal technicality, Hardcastle is able to take McCormick into his custody and McCormick accepts rather than go to jail. With McCormick living in the judge’s guest house, together they go after those 200 crims, helped just a little – and with a compulsory number of award-winning stunt scenes – by the Coyote X.
Curiously, the show had three different title sequences and two different theme tunes. The more famous and the best theme tune was ‘Drive’, written by another TV wunderkind, Mike Post, who composed the themes for shows including Law & Order, NYPD Blue, The Rockford Files, LA Law, Quantum Leap, Magnum, P.I., Hill Street Blues, The A-Team, CHiPs, MacGyver and Murder One. That accompanied the first season’s title sequence:
Then for the second season, the show switched to a dreadful country music theme.
Viewer outcry was enormous and it wasn’t long before ‘Drive’ was reinstated for the rest of the second season as well as for the third season.
While no classic of writing, Hardcastle & McCormick‘s appeal was relatively clear: as well as the camaraderie between the two leads, this was largely an adrenaline-fuelled show, with some surprisingly well directed high-speed car scenes involving the Coyote X, in actuality a Manta Montage kit car based on the McLaren M6GT with a Porsche 914 engine.
All the same, after three years, Hardcastle & McCormick‘s appeal had diminished enough that it wasn’t renewed for a fourth season. But for adrenaline junkies, it is at least all all available on DVD.
Yes, time for a show’s whose title wouldn’t get it past the approval stage these days: Jake and the Fatman. The story of an obese police officer from Honolulu who becomes an LA district attorney (that would be ‘Fatman’) and Jake, the special investigator he works with, Jake and the Fatman was one of a long slew of not especially good cop shows that dominated 80s TV (and, ahem, CBS in general to this day). It’s pretty much what you think – Jake and “the Fatman” fought crime each week, with Jake eyeing up lots of LA women along the way and the Fatman being gruff. He also brought his bulldog along with him to help.
Strangely, the show was originally set in LA, but come seasons two, three and four, it moved to Hawaii. Then it moved back again to LA midway through the fourth season and stayed there until the end. It also launched a spin-off show, Diagnosis Murder, the repeats of which still dominate daytime TV in the UK.
But have some weird old titles to confirm you that yes, William Conrad was overweight.
Normally for “Weird old title sequences” I like to confine myself to one show at a time. Had I remembered the show I was going to do this week, I’d be doing that right now. But I can’t and I forgot to write it down, even though I’m always forgetting things, so instead, I’m going to do a brief whistlestop tour through a whole host of title sequences for 60s spy shows which are gone, but thankfully not forgotten.
Here’s a tribute video for the shows I’m going to feature – The Wild Wild West, The Man From UNCLE, I, Spy, and Get Smart – but there are tributes to shows I’ve already covered, including The Avengers, The Champions, Honey West and Mission: Impossible as well, which should show you just how popular spy shows were in the 60s (and that’s barely scratching the surface).
