Action theme songs

I used to like playing with toy guns as a child. I had a few, not a great many but enough. I played with other children down my street. We played a variety of different types of games based on film or TV characters of the time. My favourites were shows like The Professionals and James Bond. These had great theme songs that inspired me to play at being a spy or a paramilitary person. I moved on from play to reading novels by Ian Fleming and Tom Clancy, and have moved back to play with the advent of realistic videogames like Modern Warfare. Here are a few of the themes I enjoyed as a kid, imagine me in my bedroom singing these and pretending it's me in the opening credits.

On Her Majesty's Secret Service, one of the best themes for Bond I think. I like the film but it's not my all time favourite Bond.

The Professionals, I loved this show. Bodie was my favourite character. I loved the way the actors would look up and the picture would freeze during the opening credits.


The Hawaii Five-O theme, a classic.


The Man from U.N.C.L.E. theme (embedding disabled). These were rarely shown on TV when I was a kid, maybe they shown late but I really loved them. My brother had the annuals and I pored over them, fascinated by the two characters and the mysterious U.N.C.L.E. agency.

Mission Impossible, I enjoyed these as a kid. The theme is now a classic because of the advertisements that have used it.


The New Avengers, I liked the drums on this one.


The A Team: I was getting older but I still enjoyed the A Team theme.



The Sweeney: a tough cop show featuring John Thaw who later played Inspector Morse (Colin Dexter's Morse books are very good apparently but I haven't read them myself).


The Persuaders theme (embedding disabled) a show I don't really remember much about but I always liked the theme however it's not one I could hum.
The Avengers were a little strange and troubling as a child (I must only have saw repeats) but the theme was really strong.


For a childrens sci-fi series I thought the opening credits of The Tomorrow People were great.


Blakes 7 was an adult sci-fi series that had a great theme song. I enjoyed acting this out.


The UFO theme was excellent, I saw this show a few times and it terrified me as a kid.


Actually, now I've pulled this list together there are a few other great themes I loved that didn't quite make it to this list: The Equalizer, Quincey, Miami Vice, The Rockford Files, Magnum P.I. and Starsky and Hutch to name but a few near the top of the list.