Theme tunes for some of the most popular series on TV are intimately connected with the shows.
From Star Trek to Succession, Shortland Street to The Casketeers, the best TV theme tunes are musical synopses of the shows they open, and an essential part of their success.
Coming up with the right theme, like most creative activities, depends on a mixture of good luck, hard work and some talent. One of the most talented of the current generation of television composers is Joel Haines. He's not sure how many shows he has written for but his credits range from The Brokenwood Mysteries to Ake Ake Ake. His big break was the early 2000s South Pacific Pictures drama, Mercy Peak, for which he wrote the music when he was 24.
Haines likes to start by getting as much information about a show as possible. "Half the time I have a script," says the composer. "You ask as many questions as you can. I usually ask for mood boards or anything else they've got, like location shots. I hang them all over the studio and try to get into that place. These things will work if you can really put yourself in that setting."
It's not that different from the way Bernie Allen, who started in TV in the 1960s as musical director for pop music shows C'Mon and Happen Inn, liked to work.
"I used to hang around the early stages of a show being filmed, if I could, to just try to get a feeling for the people and where you were," says Allen. "I remember doing Hunters Gold - we went out to Skippers Canyon and suddenly seeing the magnificence of the Southern Alps. I was speechless." But not tuneless. Inspiration and an Apra Silver Scroll for his work on the show duly followed.
Despite their half-century age gap, Allen and Haines share a clear and realistic understanding of their place in the scheme of things.
"Composing in those areas is not about me as a composer," says Allen. "It is about 'am I conveying the right sort of feeling?' If someone has gone off to make a cup of tea and the music starts, do I make them say: 'Oh such and such is coming on.'" It's about getting them out of the kitchen and back on the couch.
"I do a lot of advertising as well," says Haines. "So you get used to the fact it is not about the piece of art you are making. You are trying to satisfy a brief. At the end of the day, it is about getting bums on seats and ratings."
He sums up the theme tune's many jobs: "A lot of it is branding. It's got to speak of the narrative of the show. You don't want people being misled into thinking it's a different kind of show. Most producers want something to have its own voice to be a standout."
It's a big help if the producer knows a bit about what they want: "Quite often it can be: 'We don't know what we want, but we will when we hear it.' So you have to have a rainbow of everything you can possibly think of to second guess what they want." From the producer's point of view, this approach – not actually saying anything – means only the composer can get it wrong. "It is much nicer working for a company like South Pacific Pictures, who are very experienced and know what they are making."
Either way, the composer has a lot of people to answer to, starting, usually, with the producers, like Phil Smith of Great Southern TV, makers of The Lion Man and The Casketeers. He says a great theme is "a front door into the worlds you're trying to create".
Sometimes a good hook with the right emotion is all you need. Other times, something more elaborate is required.
"Lion Man became an instant number one in New Zealand and sold to over 100 countries," says Smith. However, he had been grappling with how to explain the show to audiences, when he heard the story of Sherwood Schwartz, who had had the same problem with the 50s sitcom Gilligan's Island. "The networks couldn't understand the story, so he sat down one night and wrote a song explaining the plot. I thought why don't we do that for The Lion Man? So we wrote lyrics and got a writer in to do the music: 'From the depths of southern Africa, the big cats they have come …' By the time you got to the end of the titles you had been introduced to the whole concept of the show."
There's no predicting where a successful theme will originate. Allen's classic intro to 1970s comedy cooking show Hudson and Halls came out of a "mad bull session" with legendary entertainment producer Kevan Moore.
"We would meet up in the pub then go back to his office and start planning programmes, sometimes all night. Both of us realised we had to be absolutely crazy. We had this mad idea of doing a sequence in Happen Inn based on the story of Livingstone the explorer and Stanley the missionary meeting up in Africa. We didn't use the music but I remembered it later and used it as the theme for Hudson and Halls. I tell students: never throw anything away. One day you might need something and that will be exactly right."
Haines has the opposite approach: "I always start from scratch, pretty much. I rarely ferret away ideas. That's been the beauty of having a soundproof studio in the house. You lock yourself away with your things hanging on the wall and fully immerse yourself."
Surely coming up with the right music for something like The Casketeers, with its delicate balance of pathos and comedy coupled with potential pitfalls around taste and privacy, would have been a tough gig for producer Smith.
"That was always going to be tricky," he says. "We wanted to be wary of it being too campy, which is part of what the show is about, but we didn't want to glorify it in the title sequence. We wanted to pay credit to people who were giving their family life stories to us in a really respectful way. This was a unique theme where we had to be quite cautious about not turning it into a poppy commercial romp. Karl Steven is probably one of the most talented songwriters. He was given a clear brief, which was to keep it restrained and respectful but uplifting. He was able to go away and pretty much came up with that off the bat and we were happy right from the start."
Before the composer's work is judged by the audience, it will be judged by network executives like TVNZ's drama and scripted comedy commissioner Steve Barr, who describes his job thus: "On behalf of TVNZ I work with the creative community to select, get financed, develop, shoot and distribute TV shows." So, an oversight job with lots of input.
He describes the theme tune's job as one of "creating a context: this is the kind of show, these are the emotions you are likely to feel while watching it. Then there is a little dopamine trigger: 'Oh yay. It's that show again.' So they need to be pretty distinctive in the first five or 10 seconds."
By the time he hears a new tune, "I've been working on the show and collaborating with the producers for a year or two on various aspects. By then we are all on the same page about what is the core emotional offering of the show and the audience experience. Points of friction can happen if you disagree on the core emotional offering. But if you are still disagreeing when you get to the title song, it is a clue that there is a bigger problem."
There's a stereotype of creation by committee resulting in an ugly hybrid. But the more positive flip side – to employ a musical metaphor – is of productive collaboration.
Barr says this process can lead to two problems: "One is that it can take a lot of time. The other is that in order to end up with something that fits within the Venn diagram of everyone's tastes you can get something very bland. The interesting bits can be whittled off because one person out of 30 didn't like it."
Smith, who would be on the receiving end of network gripes, if any, says the process is generally a happy one, with minimal interference "Overall, networks tend to look more at the content and trust the producer to create theme and feel."
Haines can live with it. He understands the pressures: "You have producers who are answering to other people, who are answering to networks. The network usually has a bunch of people fearful about their jobs. That whole aspect is involved."
He is no table-thumping misunderstood genius, fighting the philistines. "I'm not one to say: this is the right way. I prefer if they choose. Sometimes they will want me to explore other things I know won't work. But I will go down that track to the best of my abilities, to see if it will work, and usually we come back to where it began. Usually, the first instincts are right."
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