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Of course, "liberties" are taken with the arrangements but all are done in homage to their original versions. Some purists may take offense with the arrangements as well as the selection 100 "greatest" themes. However, "brownie points" must be given for providing boomers with reflections from their television past. To be honest, some of the arrangements extend the themes, adding depth to the original or even making "extending" some well beyond the length of the familiar.Highlights include themes from "The Addams Family", "The Avengers", "Barnaby Jones", "Batman", "Battlestar Galactica", "Cagney & Lacey", "Dallas" "Dr. Kildare", "Dynasty", "Falcon Crest, "The Fugitive", "Hawaii 5-0", "The High Chaparral", "The Incredible Hulk", the acclaimed mini-series "Jesus of Nazareth", "Little House on the Prairie", Irwin Allen's sci-fi quartet ("Land of the Giants", "Lost in Space", "The Time Tunnel" and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea"), "Newhart", "The Outer Limits", two Roger Moore shows: "The Persuaders" and "The Saint", three Trek shows (the original, "Deep Space Nine" and "Voyager", "The Streets of San Francisco", and "The X-Files".However, the piece de resistance is "Perry Mason", one of the most memorable of all themes and the interpretation does the original justice and then some.While there are still some that probably others would say rank higher than this compilation but it still comes highly recommended for a trek down memory lane.
Being a 4 disc set each about 70 minutes this covers some tv from the 50's with Bonanza and Bewitched to the 90's with x files and star trek deep space 9. Mostly due to the instruments are not dead on exact but they close enough some might not notice. It does a Fair job covering the shows listed. But they are remade versions and some sound not quite as the tv version did. They also made some of them longer then as heard on tv like murder she wrote didn't ever have almost 3 minutes of title sequence. As far as tv theme cds go this set does include quite a bit of stuff.
Some of these aren't even close to the originals. Face it, the appeal of TV theme songs is their familiarity. A lot are performed on cheap, lifeless digital synths. You know every sound in your favorites. You won't find any of that here. All of them sound like tired run-throughs of the music. There is no apparent interest on the part of the performers, so why should any listener be interested.
The Mission Impossible theme is performed well.The Fireball theme is actually much improved on this version. I prefer the orchestra and the vocals over the original.
Much of the instrumentation has been reduced to a cheezy, thin, plastic synthesized replica. As a musician myself, I know too well that one of the most important ingredients in ANY performance (live or recorded) is passion. The recordings here generally lack the same passion and sheer drama of the originals. The performances are simply a watered-down lackluster version of the classic originals. If it were not for the sheer volume of tracks compiled here, I would have rated the comp only "one star".
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