If you’re like me, the way you watch TV has changed a lot over the years.
In 1983, I was one of millions who tuned in to watch the series finale of M*A*S*H (105 million in the U.S. alone). Today, that show’s swan song is not even in the top 10, as successive Super Bowls have eclipsed everything that came before.
But 40 years ago, series television was king. In fact, NBC, for a good chunk of the 1980s, completely dominated Thursday nights, promoting its lineup as “Must See TV,” and they weren’t wrong. On Friday mornings, you didn’t have to ask your friends what they watched the night before. It was just automatic.
You sat your butt down in front of the TV at 9 o’clock on a Thursday night in time to watch The Cosby Show and, except for grabbing a snack on ads, you didn’t move until Hill Street Blues ended at midnight. In between, you had Family Ties, Cheers and Night Court.
Today, there’s no running to the fridge on ads. Shows are streamed, paused for your convenience, and no one has a shared TV experience like they did back then, except, of course, when you’re talking about the Super Bowl.
I even have trouble having a shared TV experience with my wife. We don’t watch anything live anymore. We record and watch back favourite shows like North of North and everything else is Netflix. We’ll find an English mini-series on Netflix and I’m asleep in 10 minutes, and the conversation the next morning is predictable.
“Did you finish that episode we started last night?” I ask.
“Yes, and three more as well,” comes the reply.
So, for the next couple of evenings I pretend to watch the remaining episodes, while my wife’s attempts to catch me up fall on deaf ears.
Probably what I miss as much as anything are the musical themes from my favourite TV shows. Some of my earliest TV memories are of sitting down to watch Hawaii Five-0. I was only five and didn’t really have a clue what was going on in this popular crime show, but the opening theme song pulled you in – it didn’t matter how old you were.
There were other memorable instrumental intros, like Magnum PI, Taxi and Star Trek. But the real winners are the songs that so many of us remember to this day. Decades after they last aired, many of us can still sing every word of the themes from shows like The Jeffersons, Cheers and The Golden Girls.
It’s surprising today to find out that not all the themes you’ve grown to love were actually written for the shows they opened. Songwriter Gary Portnoy’s “Where Everybody Knows Your Name” wasn’t written for Cheers. It was written for an unproduced Broadway musical about a prep school when it came to the attention of Cheers’ co-creators Glen and Les Charles.
The Charles brothers, as it turned out, didn’t use the entire song, sticking to the opening verse and the chorus. And there’s good reason for this, as evidenced by the following two verses which feature a decidedly darker tone:
All those nights when you’ve got no lights,
The check is in the mail.
And your little angel
Hung the cat up by its tail.
And your third fiancé didn’t show
Sometimes you wanna go…
Roll out of bed, Mr. Coffee’s dead;
The morning’s looking bright.
And your shrink ran off to Europe
And didn’t even write.
And your husband wants to be a girl.
Be glad there’s one place in the world
Where everybody knows your name…
Probably the most divisive opening theme for any TV show is the theme for Coronation Street. Unless you’re a fan, the opening notes of the theme can have you scrambling for the remote. But if you’re a fan, like I am, the show’s longevity opens up a whole new can of worms, as there’s something very unsettling about realizing that you’re not likely ever going to see the show’s final episode.
You see, Coronation Street, the longest running continuous drama in the world, premiered on December 9, 1960. People who don’t watch the show are always puzzled when I inform them that one of the current cast members was on that first episode almost 66 years ago.
William Roache, who portrays Barlow family patriarch Ken Barlow, is still a fixture on the show. Even more remarkable is the fact that Roache, who is now 94, was already 28 in 1960, though he was a playing a 21-year-old student.
My wife and I have been watching the show since the 90s, and although we’re never likely to watch the series finale, our hope is that we can at least outlast Roache. Honoured in 2022 as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE), he has repeatedly expressed no desire to retire, so we’ll have to see.