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Most Exposition In a Theme Song?

You know my love of theme songs that explain the premise — a lost art, at least for the moment. (Networks don’t have time to do them, and HBO and Showtime, which do have room for longer title sequences, don’t want to do that kind of theme song, even for comedies.) But I was wondering which of these theme songs contains the greatest amount of exposition. That is, who gets the most information into the lyrics of a one-minute song?

The Nanny and Fresh Prince and Gilligan’s Island are all contenders, but I think the champ has to be Open All Night, a short-lived comedy created by Tom Patchett and Jay Tarses (Buffalo Bill, The Days And Nights of Molly Dodd). They wrote the lyrics for the theme song, and the lyrics not only tell us the premise and identify most of the major characters, they fill us in on the protagonist’s entire life story from birth to the present.

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