60’s TV Themes is the third volume of music to reminisce with, trying to recapture some childhood feelings. The set consists of both American and British programs, though the British theme tunes tend to be from shows which also gained popularity in America.

The various theme tunes are here rerecorded by the likes of the City of Prague Philharmonic, The Royal Philharmonic and London Music Works and you get eighteen tracks in all including:

Batman - TV Theme (Neal Hefti); Bewitched (Greenfield, Keller); Doctor Who (Ron Grainer); Danger Man (Edwin Astley); Get Smart (Irving Szathmary); I Dream Of Jeannie (Hugo Montenegro); Ironside (Quincy Jones); Mission: Impossible (Lalo Schifrin); Please Sir! (Sam Fonteyn); Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased) (Edwin Astley); Star Trek (Original series version) (Alexander Courage); The Addams Family (Vic Mizzy); Top Cat & instrumental (Hoyt Curtin, Joseph Barbera, William Hanna); The Jetsons - Theme & Variations (William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, Hoyt Curtin); The Magic Roundabout (Alain Legrand, Jacques Charriere, Luc Aulivier, Serge Danot); The Flintstones & instrumental (William Hanna, Joseph Barbera, Hoyt Curtin); Thunderbirds (Barry Gray); and The Benny Hill Show - Yakety Sax (Boots Randolph).

I did have a problem in reviewing this collection, there was nothing provided to indicate whether these were modern recordings of the music or the originals. You would think that telling the difference would be easy, but it isn’t. For instance Thunderbirds, or any of the others which were recorded by an orchestra sound just like they should, Doctor Who, however, sounds decidedly dodgy, but then there were a number of interpretations of this tune.

My problems became worse the more I played individual tracks, now I had convinced myself that these were the original recordings. In the end I decided that it really didn’t matter as if these were modern recoding then they were near perfect in most cases.

So take a trip back to a more innocent age of television where the theme tunes were a lot funkier.

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Charles Packer