[Si-Co]

Brookside always seemed to have widely varying end credit lengths. On occasion the theme music fades in almost from the very start (took me years to work out how it DOES start, as it it’s not the same as the opening theme music), other times it fades in quite close to the end and the credits scroll really quickly. We’ve seen both in these ten episodes. Also the first two had that different edit of the theme that runs on past where it usually ends.

Although the music stopped at the usual place, Episode Seven played the closing theme right from the start, which is quite unusual. The “extended” version we heard in the first two episodes is occasionally used in 1983, but after that only on the final episode of each year which includes all the cast and crew who contributed to the show in the last twelve months and a wave from the cast and some crew. After the theme changed in, I think, 1991 we never heard an extended version and by 1994 the closing credits across all channels were shortened. 

First time around, I started watching in mid-1983 and like you I didn’t know how the closing theme started. Occasionally we were teased when they played a bit more of it than normal but it was only when I bought the record that I heard the first bars of the “quiet” part of the theme.