Baywatch Movie Intro Song
Oliver Parkes
If you can make it through the 45 minute intro song, you get to see a fin slicing through the water. Oh boy! Something sharky is afoot. The basic storyline is that an unscrupulous prick named Bucky Allen is throwing a shark derby to promote his restaurant. He hires two teenage boys to chum the waters and install a shark attracting gizmo in the bay. More sharks than they bargained for show up and this sharktastic episode really kicks into gear.
Mitch (Hasselhoff) wants the derby postponed to keep the public safe. Meanwhile his son enters the derby under the supervision of Captain Thorpe, who is clearly the offspring of William Shatner and Troy McClure.
So obviously, Bucky gets his comeuppance for drawing in this hodge podge of sharks and causing poor Jill to get mauled. Mitch comes in for justice just as the synth music drops. But alas! Jill is dead of a blood embolism. Cue the slo-mo Jill montage set to a Bonnie Tyler-esque power ballad that goes on for a good 15 minutes!
While of course, a good story and a strong cast are essential parts to any TV show, a theme tune can be what reels the viewer into it in the first place. Would 'Happy Days' really have been as happy without that little doo-wop number at the start? Would 'Baywatch' have even gone to AIR, without that Jimmi Jamison belter playing over the slow motion running on the beach?
The TV theme tunes have suffered a little bit of a slump in recent years, with many shows like Lost and the like just deciding to ditch it all together. Thankfully though, gone are those cheesy '90's style intros where we would see all cast members in mid-action shots, or smiling off into the distance as we were introduced to them all. Nope, we are much too cool for all that now, it's all arty farty graphics and intense, dramatic music and what not.
No matter what though, the TV theme tune becomes intrinsically linked with the show in the viewers mind, as well as with the point in your life you were watching it. Have you listened to some of the intros to shows you watched when you were a kid recently? It can literally feel like stepping into a time capsule.
So, we've gone and picked ten of the best - the theme tunes of all theme tunes, the opener to end all openers... and yeah well, you get it. There are no doubt a zillion trillion decent ones left out but look, none of us have got all day.
10. The first honour just has to go to Mr Soprano here. Not sure if any other song besides 'Woke up this Morning' by the Alabama 3 could have served as a better intro into the world of Tony Soprano. The song - which plays as he drives into his New Jersey neighbourhood - perfectly encapsulates the anticipation you feel waiting for the show to start, and has been cited as a paradigmatic example of a "great theme song".
9. Just once in my life, I would like to get into my car and put this music on as I drive away. 'Knight Rider' - cool as f*ck.
8. Has any TV theme tune ever made you feel the chills like the unearthly whistling sound of 'The X Files'? You'd be shitting a brick before it even started.
7. We mentioned it earlier, but come on, it's got to go in there. Nothing said Saturday afternoon like this song. Sing it with me: 'Some people stand in the daaaaarkness'. You're not singing, are you? It's also one hell of an ear worm, so apologies for you now having it in your head for the rest of the day, but we needed to inflict it on others.
6. Speaking of blasts from the past. You didn't grow up in Ireland if the sound of this next music didn't send panic through your SOUL - Is your homework done? Are you ready for bed? You may just hear a tinwhistle - we hear DOOM.
5. Don't roll your eyes. We didn't want to wait for our lives to be over, and we did want to know right now what would it be. Plus, the theme tune was about the only thing we understood amongst all the highfalutin crap they talked on this show.
3. Look, how could we NOT put the 'Friends' song in the list? Nobody may have heard of The Rembrandts after that, but what a one-hit wonder to have. 'I'll Be There For You' was the feel good, poppy number which at one point brightened up our whole week. Although, there have been some more let's say... melancholy versions of it since.
1. This may actually bring a tear to your eye - Joe Cocker's rendition of The Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends" is a fantastic song as is, never mind that it was also the intro to one of the best TV shows of the 80's and '90's. Make sure you hear the appropriate voice over as you watch. Maybe along the lines of; 'And as I pressed play on youtube, I knew that, forever more, my life would never be the same'. Now excuse us, we may have something in our eye...
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