DIAGNOSIS: MURDER was a spinoff of JAKE AND THE FATMAN (1987-92), which I didn't count as a late-career procedural because William Conrad already had so many cop shows on his resume (e.g., CANNON) www.youtube.com/watch?v=qy4q...

A more recent instance is Dick Van Dyke's DIAGNOSIS: MURDER (1993-2001), where he plays a former Army doctor who consults with the police on cases, frequently assisting his police-detective son. www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFw_...

Keeping with the theme, here's BARNABY JONES (1973-80), which brought Buddy Ebsen back to TV only two years after the cancellation of BEVERLY HILLBILLIES. www.youtube.com/watch?v=upYY...

i haven't posted an intro in a while, and i'm home sick today, so let's do some catching up. MATLOCK (1986-95) was part of that subgenre we might call the "late-career procedural" www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgNH...

QUINCY, M.E. (1976-83) began as a spoke in the NBC Mystery Movie wheel but quickly got spun off into an independent series. At about 1:45 in this clip you'll see the "Dixieland = risqué" trope in action; it wasn't always part of the show's theme, though. www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nP3...

The intro to M SQUAD (1957-60) is going to look and sound awfully familiar to some of you. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ox0j...

The honky-tonk theme music of SIMON & SIMON (1981-9) conveys lighthearted action and elder brother Rick's cowboy personality, but as my wife has pointed out you could use this tune and arrangement for almost anything. (I still like the guitar riff, tho) www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCly...

DUE SOUTH (1994-99) was a fish-out-of-water procedural featuring Paul Gross as a Mountie who came to Chicago tracking his father's murderer and stayed as a liaison to the Canadian consulate to work with CPD detective Ray Vecchio. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhx1...

A&E's adaptation of NERO WOLFE (2001-2) set the show in the 1940s-50s of the original novels, and the theme music (often but not always "Boss Boogie" by Michael Small) was composed to establish that period feel. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGtl...

MOD SQUAD (1968-73) predates the funk era of cop show music, and it relies heavily on keyboard noodling for its "modness." That said, the beat goes *hard* (supplied primarily by horns) and it has achieved iconic status. www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZiP...

CAGNEY & LACEY (midseason 1982-1988) was less a procedural (though it did use the format) than a slice-of-life workplace dramedy about a pair of police detectives. Its Season 1 intro leans procedural, with brass fanfares, pulse-pounding tempo, etc. www.youtube.com/watch?v=21nE...

THE SAINT (1962-69) originally aired on UK tv and was picked up by NBC in 1966. Protagonist Simon Templar (played by Roger Moore) was a freelance troubleshooter, not quite private detective and not quite secret agent. www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRlb...

ELLERY QUEEN (1975-6) was at least the third TV go-round for the title amateur sleuth, here played by Jim Hutton. www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTLR...

THE THIN MAN (1957-9) cast Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk in the roles that Powell and Loy immortalized on the big screen. This rather confusing cut includes the themes used in both seasons, the first season theme about halfway through. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpYs...

THE HARDY BOYS/NANCY DREW MYSTERIES (1977-9) was originally a two-spoke wheel that alternated between the two classic children's mystery series. By the end of season 2 Nancy was crowded out, and the third Hardys-only season was the last. www.youtube.com/watch?v=llLZ...

BARNEY MILLER (1975-82) had a reputation for realism among real-life LEOs, who found the sitcom's plots closer to their day-to-day working lives. (IIRC the show rarely addressed actual misconduct.) I chose the season 3 intro because of that opening bass riff. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALIW...

The HUNTER theme is nearly as paint-by-numbers at the T. J. HOOKER one but for some reason it doesn't annoy me as much. Perhaps it's the guitar solo, who knows www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cc-C...

My second post today (to make up for yesterday) is THE DEFENDERS (1961-1965). Not every case that Preston & Preston took was a criminal matter, but enough were that I'm comfortable including it here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrOW...

The intro to the TV adaptation of ALIEN NATION (1989-90) starts with expository news footage of the extraterrestrial arrival before cuing up the Tenctonese music (with lyrics) over the opening credits. Un-cop-show-like, but also dramatic and compelling. www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxbt...

I may be wrong about this but T.J. HOOKER (1982-6) has the least inspired theme music in the history of cop shows, just thoughtlessly arranged off-the-shelf phoned-in trumpet fanfares and synthesized percussion. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hci3...

Going to Europe today for the Austro-Italian KOMMISSAR REX, which starred a German Shepherd in the title role. I've never seen it but it ran for eleven seasons (1994-2015) and kids apparently loved it, because pupper. This vid compiles the intros from seasons 1-10. www.youtube.com/watch?v=853G...

KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER (1974-5) was another journalist-procedural, starring Darrin McGavin as a crime reporter who kept running across supernatural phenomena. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ3X...

J. EDGAR HOOVER: It's gotta be *majestic.* We're representing the Bureau here, it has to have *grandeur.* BRONISLAW KAPER: You got it, Mr. Hoover. (writes insufferably pompous theme) www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR4z...

SWITCH (1975-78) was a sort of spiritual ancestor to LEVERAGE, featuring Robert Wagner as an ex- con man joining ex-cop Eddie Albert in a detective agency whose schtick was conning criminals into revealing their crimes. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hi0s...

HOLMES & YOYO didn't even last half a season (Sept-Dec 1976). A half-hour sitcom featuring John Schuck as a Soviet-built robot policeman, it caught my nine-year-old fancy but suffered from not being very funny. The intro is mostly spoken exposition and little music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=NeJd...

CHiPS (1977-83) added an up-to-date synth riff to the triumpet fanfares of this California Highway Patrol show built on the ADAM-12 model (half procedural, half slice-of-life workplace drama). www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjI7...

SECRET AGENT (1964-6) was a repackage of the BBC series DANGER MAN for US audiences. CBS commissioned a new theme, which turned into a hit single for Johnny Rivers. www.youtube.com/watch?v=bG0u...

MATT HOUSTON (1982-85) was one of the most Eighties artifacts ever, a private-eye procedural about an *oil baron* who *fights crime.* AFAICT none of these crimes involved EPA violations. The theme is meh, the usual brass fanfares backed by 80s synth, plus strings to signal luxe.

The CANNON theme was surprisingly mod, considering the character. www.youtube.com/watch?v=yA_B...

We don't really think of ANDY GRIFFITH (1961-1968) as a cop show, but Andy Taylor was a county sheriff and a lot of the plots revolved around Andy's job (and his deputy Barney's nonsense). www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvSX...

REILLY, ACE OF SPIES starred a young (well, thirtysomething) Sam Neill as the historical Sydney Reilly, a Russian-Jewish immigrant who became Britain's best secret agent during WWI. The music is from Shostakovich's "Gadfly Suite" rather than an original composition.

This is scary but I'm taking The Film Maven off Substack and have transferred to Ghost. Not only does this give me complete ownership of my work, but also means I won't continue to lose money to Substack and Apple. I lay everything out for Subscribers here. thefilmmaven.substack.com/p/the-film-m...

Another early success for MYSTERY! was Ian Carmichael's portrayal of Lord Peter Wimsey in four BBC adaptations from the 1970s. The Jazz Age fox-trot theme set a light tone, perhaps a little lighter than some of the material. www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wDL...

The next few posts are going to be themes from programs showcased by MYSTERY! starting with everyone's favorite Legal Aid barrister RUMPOLE OF THE BAILEY www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqTs...

MYSTERY's stock-in-trade was BBC adaptations of classic British crime fiction, and both the Edward Gorey opening titles and the intro music leaned hard on that brand. www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAmG...

Speaking of typewriters, MURDER, SHE WROTE ran for like twelve seasons (1984-96). This is the season 4 intro, which I think changes the visuals but does little if anything to the arrangement of its cozy-mystery theme music. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSxQ...

While I'm on "procedurals about not-cops," I like the way THE NAME OF THE GAME's theme uses percussion to evoke typewriter keys for this wheel series about big-city journalism. www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG3R...

Not all procedurals/mysteries are police or detective stories; the model also works for journalism and medicine. So here's HOUSE, M.D. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuXW...

S.W.A.T. only ran a season and a half (2/1975-4/1976) but it was a heavily marketed season and a half. Not only was the theme song a top-40 hit, there were *dolls* www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFij...

I'm still a day behind, so here's the intro to the '90s late-night sexually-themed-crimes procedural SILK STALKINGS. (not entirely safe for work, so think before pressing "play") www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiv3...

PSYCH is 1) post-SOPRANOS and 2) really a sitcom with a procedural structure, so we shouldn't be surprised that the theme has lyrics (though not expository lyrics, which may be a thing of the past anyhow) www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLhK...

gil melle made a theme for columbo back in season 1, showed up across the 4 episodes he scored. this little tune youtu.be/qxd2uM3iHr4?...

Spent a large chunk of the last couple days looking for the definitive COLUMBO theme, which apparently does not exist since the intro music for each episode (as opposed to the NBC MYSTERY MOVIE theme) varied pretty frequently.

MCMILLAN AND WIFE had a very un-coplike smooth jazz theme to go with its ersatz "Thin Man" tone. Stuart McMillan was a police commissioner, but also a former criminal defense attorney (which sounds like it was meant to be progressive but actually feels kinda reactionary).

While we're on this wheel let's look at the other spokes. HEC RAMSEY is another exception to the "no lyrics" rule, a procedural set in early 20th c. Oklahoma. It only lasted a couple of seasons; I can't say the music made a difference, but who knows? www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYpD...

Here's the actual theme from MCCLOUD (1970-77, as part of the NBC MYSTERY MOVIE wheel). It still has that cowboy thing going on in the arrangement that I can't quite describe. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kc2w...

The NBC MYSTERY MOVIE was probably the best-known of the "wheel series" that platooned multiple shows in the same time slot. (These were usually procedurals, in part because the episodic format meant you didn't have to rememember plot points 3-4 weeks later.) www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQWp...

Here's one that really does break the "no lyrics in the theme song" rule: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, which I guess had its lighter moments (and heartwarming ones, too, especially in later seasons) but was firmly in the "dramatic procedural" lane nonetheless. www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ivb...

Funky Mid-70s procedural themes are my favorite genre of cop show music, and at bottom the reason this account exists. Here's THE STREETS OF SAN FRANCISCO. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mijB...

Because it's a slice-of-life drama and not a procedural or action show, HILL STREET BLUES eschews the usual brass in favor of a piano and a more introspective minor key www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUX3...