@@Diamondblade2008 Isn't it strange that a lot of people feel the same about this music - including me! For me when I think of World in Action and the BBC's Panorama back in the 60's and 70's I always think of Bernadette Devlin because it seemed as though every episode was filmed on the streets of Belfast during the troubles in Northern Ireland. And of course back then we used to have to watch whatever our parents were watching - because we only had the one TV and also there was only 3 TV channels to choose from! Kids of today don't know they're born!
@@hamishwhitehenderson5197 I agree but the blame lies with people who handled the film without gloves. TV film then was horrible and does not compare with cinematic film. If you look at old tv programmes especially from the 70s - they look unwatchable. Any programme that shot on video looks today to be much better. But there was and is a snobbishness about video vs film. Look at The Sweeney - The Professionals etc! Then look at the 80s version & Lucia's or Malice Aforethought location work and compare. These are just some examples.
The amount of pairs of pants I must have gone through as a child hearing this as a child. Themes to Picture Box and Armchair Thriller combined with those 1970s safety ads, I'm surprised I didn't have a prolapse by my 7th birthday
Alot of UK TV/content creators in the late 70s early 80s were those beardy types that had been on lots of severe trips in the late 60s etc.. If it is true that such experiences do help you to transcend into other (not always nice) realities it is no surprise that the whole vibe and style of some themes in the wake of this were sometimes almost evil sounding. You were right to be frightened as a child as It probably resonanted negatively with your astral spirit which at that point had only recently managed to be of this reality and not whatever reality inspired those creepy confidence shattering themes of the time..
Even if you knew little about the subject they were covering, or had no interest in it, World In Action was so well made you couldnt help but be glued to the telly even as a kiddie or teenager. Incredible television from start to finish that very little these days can hold a candle to. Theme tune encapsulates its serious, sombre and hard hitting tone. They didnt mess about or hang back. Not that long ago but already belongs to a different time.
My parents always let me stay up till ten so I could watch all of World in Action and things like The Sweeney. I loved the theme tune and was always fascinated by the subjects of the documentaries. What surprises me now, is that I was only around ten years old when we watched these in the 1970's.
On the 50th anniversary of the first World in Action a Channel 4 executive said that there had been a stark decline in the amount of investigative journalists since the show was ended in the 90's. The dumbing down of tv is obvious to anyone of a certain age and above with few hard hitting expose's of the level World in Action revealed. I for one really miss it, investigative journalism at its best, it was the television version of the best of Private Eye.
@@gingerfellah5665the opening bits of the Money Programme theme sounded like muffled farts on an old sofa your grandparents would do (lifted cheek sneaks)
Weekend World was a killer theme tune. I remember rocking out to it while waiting for Space 1999 to come on. My older brother had me going for years that it was Frank Zappa.
Reminds me of Monday nights just after Coronation Street. ITV and its viewers are all the poorer for being deprived of such great investigative documentaries. Those titles and music still kicks ass in 2012!
The feeling of dread and impending doom, and knowing something really nasty and violent is going to be shown in some part of the world, ironically most of the time it was closer to home in ireland....
How do you think it made my wife feel when she was a kid? She used to think that Dracula was after her whenever she heard this tune when she was a kid.
The most ominous theme tune and opening titles of them all. More unnerving than any horror film because this was real. It still fills me with a sense of foreboding.
Yes,like my mate says,you knew as soon as you heard the opening bars to this,depending on mums mood,you were destined for bed. Probably the greatest theme tune of all time,when I was a kid it was super ominous but now I think it sounds phenomenal.
COMM 42 One of the last great itv programmes and a brilliant theme that automatically realised the gravity of what you were about to view and digest ,these days i dare not watch for fear of throwing up. i guess thats why im here
Wonder why all the hard-hitting no-nonsense documentaries all had prog-rock theme tunes? Check out Weekend World if you're too young to remember. Even the kid's tv science show, "Don't Ask Me" was using Focus' "House of the King".
Abigail Finney because prog rock was serious stuff ! We lived through the age of Aquarius, quality, high ideals, Grammar Schools, order and discipline.
Abigail Finney Weekend World wasn’t a documentary series, but a politics show with lengthy interviews aimed at audiences who had attention spans. These days you get jump cuts every few seconds to make sure the audience is paying attention. Mind you, Nantucket Sleighride was a brilliant theme tune.
Blue Peter, the Clangers then dinner time, football in the garden and this theme was the last sound before trying to going to sleep. Almost as bad as Nick Ross on Crimewatch saying don't have nightmares at the end after an hour of stabbings, abductions and armed robbery.😱
And I bet the TOWIE and Love Island Generation haven't even heard of this, hahaha. Glad I was a Kid in the 80s - A lifetime, no amount of money can buy.
I was born in 2000 and love this theme, which is actually from the 1970s. stop being so arrogant. Also, current popular culture is saturated with 1980s aesthetic, from Vapourwave to Stranger Things, either looking at the past through rose tinted vision or outright taking the piss out of 1980s consumerist values.
We had a boy in school who played in goal when we played football at break times. We nicknamed him World In Action because he stood like the guy on this.
Fab tune and look how it shows our changing society. Some issues remain the same unemployment and youth unemployment but some change. Phone books are long gone now in paper format you rarely get them. When this was on I was small but I always remember it. A quality documentary like everything else it's been dumb downed. The music used to scare me as well as that horrible nun on the armchair thriller.
Granada and world in action was >>Closed Down for their program about the then gchq, that now is 14 million times more powerful, and growing, think about it!
I used to scream at the tv when the BBC test card clown came on, a few years later this was a close second. Need I mention frisbees and substations, fishing and power lines, if you know you know!
Brilliant if haunting and slightly disturbing music.. Monday night TV viewing in the 70's turned depressing once World in Action and Panorama came on. As a teenager I remember the mood on those days. Awful..Unless the Test match was on in the summer months.
I seem to recall a "watered-down" version of this theme tune prior to when World In Action stopped broadcasting. It was the same theme tune only played via a pretend Hammond Organ (clone!) and it sounded truly awful, nothing like THIS!!
Its not the only thing watered down, the whole of tv broadcasting has been dumbed down. There is no investigative journalism now on tv that is anywhere near the level of World in Action.
Investigative Journalism has been supplanted by a sectarian combination of wannabe bloggers and and managed storytellers. The majority are fed an opiated story managed by fiscally motivated politician courtiers whilst a minority follow genuinely heroic efforts from Warholian seekers of their fifteen minutes who will never enjoy mainstream acceptance for being too pretty to be taken seriously. Who here can forget (or perhaps even remember) Goliath’s like Roger Cook, feared and reviled in equal measure by those who suffered his scorn? The loss of a piece like WIA is indicative of an apathy and selfishness born of of own narcissism. A bomb obliterates 100 people on another continent, no matter: they are brown and far away. Someone with a sprained ankle has to wait a while in A&E, everyone looses their shit. We, an adulous audience, gave the infomongers an opening, desperate to consume fast food and palatable stories: Ask and thou shalt receive. Oh, that was a big rants and sanctimonious! My bad.
Great tune! Must learn to play it on me Bontempi organ. In the 70s I'd be playing with my matchbox cars on the carpet and this show would be on in the background. They often seemed to be going on about 'Gorilla' warfare which had me picturing some serious Planet of the Apes shit going on for real. Seven year old me didn't know the word guerilla. 🙄
Why aren’t programmes like this on terrestrial television anymore? Thought provoking investigative reporting at it’s best, these shows have been usurped by vacuous rubbish like reality shows and endless soaps.
