Scoring for television or: "they don't write 'em like they used to" (1 Viewer)

[Greg Madsen]

Murphy Brown is the first I remember. They played a different Mowtown song each week.

 

[Katherine_K]

I think the most striking television music of late to me has been Battlestar Galactica, who's sound tracks I pick up with as much egarness as the dvds. It ranks right up there with Babylon 5 to me, which as Joseph mentioned already, had evocative scores for every episode. In fact each B5 episode was scored seperately, they didn't reuse music, and as a consequence you can find CDs for a great many individual episodes of B5. I think I own about a dozen or more. The score specifically to "In the Beginning" the prequel TV movie can still make me cry at points.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

For some reason, this made me think about Arrested Development, which managed to have a very distinctive opening-theme (albeit one which Ron Howard spoke over) played on the ukelele. And still managed to pack in an astonishing amount of substance into the show, despite sacrificing 20 seconds to the opening-credits.

 

[TravisR]

But some episodes of Arrested Development did drop the opening.

That was a good point in Post 13 about Lost and 24 having their themes at the end of the show. I never thought of it that way but it's true.

 

[Nick Martin]

Also, there are series like ANGEL that have a title theme, but it is never woven into an episode score - ANGEL had two main themes that were totally separate. One was made up of two chords that played mostly over establishing shots / montages of various Los Angeles locations (those jump-cut scene transitions as well) and there was a brass fanfare used mostly in season 1 for Angel himself.

The series also had some character themes - composer Rob Kral loved writing for Darla. The soundtrack album is a testament to that.

CSI is obviously famous for its use of great "Who" songs edited down into a main title for each show, but while the scores are fairly generic electronica, sometimes they hit a home run emotionally. The season 1 episode 'Crate 'n Burial' featured a lovely jazz piano melody representing the bond between a grandfather (Everwood's John Beasley) and his grandson (Smallville's Sam Jones III) who was a hit and run suspect. Beautiful music.

For all the times that it seemed as though one was watching TV with the radio on over it, the teen soap 'Dawson's Creek' featured some soft, americana orchestral music that had a "The Spitfire Grill" sound to it. Quite surprising considering the overreliance on pop/alt rock songs.

Everwood featured not only a grand theme, but fun orchestral music that stood out whenever Dr. Abbott was on screen.

In 1997, Fox had a short-lived show called "The Visitor". Because it was from the creators of 'Stargate' and 'Independence Day', the music for the pilot was written my David Arnold, who scored both those films and went on to be the resident 007 composer. To this day, the music from that pilot episode remains my all-time favorite television music score. It resembled the softer/somber musical moments of ID4, with that grand and noble sound. I still have the pilot on a VHS tape. For the remaining episodes of the show, Arnold's pilot music was arranged and expanded on by another composer.