Top Ten 80s TV Themes - Number 4

Though devising the entire order of this list was no easy task, figuring out the proper structure for the top four themes was especially difficult.  The four songs are each quite different from one another but could easily be subbed in and out among themselves.  Still, order must be kept or else there is anarchy.


For number four, we feature a tragically underrated and oft forgotten theme.  Here's the link if embedding doesn't work. You'll want to listen to this one again and again:

Powered by the very distinctive slap electric bass technique and moved along by the jazz-fusion saxophone, it's the theme from Night Court and goddamn does it deliver every single time.

Night Court was one of the weirder shows on television - starting with a more serious, grounded approach before devolving into a balls-to-the-wall slapstick setup.  Still, throughout the show's run, it stayed (relatively) funny.  Similarly, the theme stayed the same for eight years and with good reason.  

Have you ever been to a court house during the day?  Some shady, shady folks huh? Well imagine that the courthouse was open well after the "normal" people went to bed.  Imagine the people who you'd find there!   Once you hear that opening bass lick, it's like you've been transported to the nighttime streets of New York circa 1984.  Well either the streets of New York or John Holmes' house out in LA right before a pizza gets delivered.  Regardless, that bass line provides the seedy underbelly that was at the core of most all the Night Court cases.  

But before you think that you're watching an LA Law rip-off, the levity of the saxophone is introduced along with the main riff.  It's now clear that this show will have a lighter tone than you previously thought.  We breeze through the rest of the intro as the saxophones play different melodies to the freeze frames of our beloved characters. (I think that's typically a good sign as well - it's hard to feel too intimidated by a show when you have random, pre-episode screen freezes in the intro).

It may only be forty five seconds (and note that you can find an extended version of the theme here), but it packs one hell of a fun punch.  It's the kind of song that Daniel R. "Dan" Fielding would have played on loop when he was alone with a lady friend.  And that is quite enough for me.