Quaint Opening Sequences

At the dawn of the 1980s, the population of the UK was officially just over 56-million people, but if you watched the opening sequences to some of the television programmes at the time, you’d be forgiven for thinking that hardly anyone occupied our once green and pleasant land, and that those who did, lived in small villages or hamlets surrounded by vast swathes of countryside.

The stereotype that all English people live in mansions and go about their business wearing top hats and V-shaped bodices has long-been dismissed for the myth that it is, but the secluded country village, rolling fields and woodlands in all of their glory throughout the four seasons was a staple backdrop for many television programmes throughout the 1970s and 1980s. It was also reinforced by the lyrics to William Blake’s hymn, Jerusalem, which was sung in many English schools at the time.

In this post, we’ll look at some of the quaint opening sequences that had some of us convinced that we did indeed live in quaint opulence, even if the discarded television sets and pushchairs in the alleyways suggested otherwise.

First on the list is the intro sequence to Jamie and the Magic Torch. The series was created by Edward Kay and animated by Cosgrove Hall Productions for Thames Television. It ran from 1977 until 1979, and its opening sequence is what the late football pundit, Jimmy Greaves, would describe as, “A game of two halves”.

Starting with a close-up of the Moon, the camera zooms out revealing a quiet, serene-like village scene bathed in silvery-blue moonlight. There are no cars in this village, even though there were about 25-million vehicles in the UK at the time.

Fluffy cloud formations compliment well-maintained garden shrubs, and apart from the cries of a cat which has possibly been locked out, the hoot of a solitary owl and the soothing voice of Jamie’s mother, the tranquil sounds of a piano and a slide guitar evoke beautiful images of the idyllic childhood bedtime routine.

Jamie and the Magic Torch

As the sleep-inducing lullaby approaches its conclusion, a fierce rock riff signals the commencement of Jamie’s nighttime adventures. Following a rapid trip down a helter-skelter followed by his dog, Wordsworth, Jamie accesses Cuckoo Land, a place populated by characters such as Mr Boo the mayor, Jojo, the odd-job man, ragdoll Nutmeg, Strumpus Plunkett, and arguably one of the most terrifying police officers ever conceived of in the history of Freudian psychology. Officer Gotcha.

Officer Gotcha

I’m not sure whether or not the contrast between a quaint English village and Cuckoo Land would have been as impactful if Jamie had been portrayed as living on a council estate. Nevertheless, the idea that we continue our adventures in another realm when we are asleep in this one, will always be a important component of any child’s imagination.

Next up is, To the Manor Born. The BBC sitcom which was written by Peter Spence ran from 1979 until 1981 and followed the slow but sure romantic coming together of Audrey Fforbes-Hamilton and Richard DeVere played by Penelope Keith and Peter Bowles.

Its theme tune was composed by Ronnie Hazlehurst who was also behind the theme for Yes Minister. The compositions are often confused and the bane of many an egghead in pub quizzes. An easy way to distinguish between the two is that the intro to Yes Minister sounds basically more miserable, as politics generally is, and has a brief drum roll at the beginning.

The opening sequence of To the Manor Born is quintessentially (and stereotypically) upper class with visuals depicting a Rolls Royce, an antiquated walking cane next to a photograph of what appears to be a hunting party, a double-barrelled shotgun and champagne, before finally transitioning to a stately-looking manor house. The building in question was the Manor Cricket House in Cricket St Thomas, Somerset.

Manor Cricket House in Cricket St Thomas, Somerset

Many of the programmes we remember from the 1970s and 1980s are fixed in our memories purely because of their intro or outro sequences, to the point where in some cases we didn’t even bother watching the programme itself. Notable examples for me include: The South Bank show, Howard's Way and the bewildering Cubism of the introduction sequence to Agatha Christie's Poirot. However, in the case of To the Manor Born, even though its depictions of how the other half lived were so far removed from reality for many, it was one of those programmes which attracted millions of viewers from all walks of life which is testament to the great writing, acting and production values on display throughout the series.

The final intro sequence is from the timeless classic, The Snowman. The animated film based on Raymond Brigg’s 1978 picture book and directed by Dianne Jackson, was first broadcast on Channel 4 in 1982 and depicts the English countryside in winter. Thanks to the superb skills of the animators combined with Howard Blake’s masterful film score, the countryside is explored as if viewed from the perspective of a child flying through the air or someone having an out-of-body experience. Similar to Jamie and the Magic Torch, the landscape is sparsely populated and there aren’t any vehicles. A horse galloping freely through the freshly-fallen snow and an owl sawing silently towards the viewer transports us back to our childhood in an instant.

The Snowman

The original opening sequence to The Snowman included a short monologue by its creator Raymond Briggs.

“I remember that winter because it brought the heaviest snow that I’d ever seen. Snow had fallen steadily all night long, and in the morning, I awoke in a room filled with light and silence.

“The whole world seemed to be held in a dreamlike stillness. It was a magical day. And it was on that day, I made The Snowman.”

Raymond Briggs Introduction

For the film’s VHS release in the US, due to the sponsorship system in place and the requirement for a ‘big name’ to be involved, David Bowie was filmed in the attic of his childhood home narrating his own variation of Briggs’ original monologue.

David Bowie Introduction

"This attic's full of memories for me. We spent all our summers by the seaside, and in winter, at home, by the fire. Frost on the window and snow, snowballs and making snowmen.

"One winter I made a really big snowman. He got this scarf for me. You see, he was a real snowman."

Because of the size and reach of the old British Empire, it’s easy to forget that the UK is only about 840 mile’s long from tip to toe. And whereas some programmes often depicted it as a quiet, sparsely-populated green and pleasant land, in reality, it’s almost impossible to get truly lost in the country because it’s simply not big enough, and unless you’re atop one of its mountains or in a cave, then you’re unlikely to escape the distant hum of one of its nearby roads or motorways.

Even if the opening scenic depictions of England were some way off the mark for city and suburb-dwellers, what we can take from them is that it was far better to retire for the evening with blissful imagery in mind, rather than what we would eventually encounter following the deregulation of television programming, and the arrival of the World Wide Web.