Time to light the lights, get yourself a gun, and go where everybody knows your name: Musically, the most important part of any series is the TV theme song, so this week, Consequence will explore just why that is with TV Theme Song Week, celebrating this proud tradition with features, interviews, and lists. We’ve also launched our “I Never Skip Intro” merch collection, to honor those who know how to appreciate a classic theme; get yours at the Consequence Shop now.

Bruce Miller, the original composer of the theme song for Frasier, recently told Consequence that in his eyes, the TV theme song is like the overture of a Broadway musical: “Can you imagine walking into some big theater in New York and all of a sudden, a curtain opens, and these people walk on, and the lights don’t even dim?”

While we’re currently living in an era when TV theme songs feel like an endangered species, Miller’s right when he says a great theme song adds so much to a series. It’s not just the opportunity to get a catchy tune stuck in the viewer’s head — a great theme song can give a show its identity, communicating everything a new viewer needs to know about what’s to come while welcoming the returning fan back to a safe and familiar place, one where you might be “dead and out of this world” or where “everybody knows your name.”

Even when the memory of a show might fade, the power of music means that by hearing just a few notes, thoughts of comedy or drama or adventure or terror immediately come to mind. None of the songs listed below are all that long, but through clever composition and repetition, they’ve become immortal — an immortality found within the collective subconscious, if nothing else.

— Liz Shannon Miller
Senior Entertainment Editor