This version was made in 1992 or 1993...when I was a senior-high student. The version of 1982...is still in my mind. I was about eight years old when I watched "Van der Valk" for the first time and I was happy.
Van Der Valk was revived as a mini-series in the early 1990s though Mr Van Der Valk's superior had been largely phased out in favour of Wim and other junior officers and Mr Van Der Valk was now a grandfather.
Elmgate is producer Chris Burt's production company. I imagine the Euston Films of the 90s was very different to Lloyd Shirley's of the 70s. Van Der Valk was maybe a bit too staid... Who knows. Euston was also pretty much finished as an entity too by this time. I think Capital City was the final series made for Thames before the 1992 ITV franchise change. These final series of Van Der Valk are still spiritually Euston though, shot on 16mm and on location by a lot of the same directors who did the 1977 series.
By the 90s long opening sequences and prolonged credits were becoming unfashionable so I imagine they sped the score up to make it fit. At least they kept the original theme unlike the latest reboot, which only has a tiny hint of the original score in the new music.
@@morgansifer This was before the days of the standard end credit duration we have today. So 90 second end creds on a two hour film were fine. The only difference in duration is there is one less repeat of the transition before the strings in the middle of the track. For the 1991 series, the opening music was used for the end credits. I quite like Alan Parker's version of the theme. It's far less twee than Trombey's and has more life to it. And the reinvention of the theme for 2020 is also great because it modernises, let's be honest, a totally inappropriate theme for a hard hitting cop drama.
Can anybody remember this being a theme tune to an American show back in the early 90s perhaps. I ve known this as a theme tune all my life but I've never seen Vandervalk I'm sure. I'd remember the name.
The track "Eye Level" wasn't written as the theme to Van der Valk. It was a library/stock music track on the De Wolfe label composed by Jack Trombey. As a piece of library music, it would have been easy to license for lots of other productions. It is usually used to accompany anything Dutch. Another commercial release along with the famous Simon Park Orchestra was Matt Munro's "And You Smiled" in 1973.
