Home > PSB Lists >

PSB songs that have been used in films and "non-musical" TV shows

This list doesn't include:

• films or shows primarily concerning the Pet Shop Boys themselves, such as It Couldn't Happen Here, Pet Shop Boys: A Life in Pop, or the episode of The South Bank Show focusing on them;
• live performances by the Boys appearing as guests, even on shows that aren't primarily known for music;
• tracks by other artists that feature Chris and/or Neil in a supporting role;
• renditions in variety shows or music-related documentaries (both of which I would consider "musical" TV programs);
• occurrences as "bumper music" (such as when a news show or sports report uses a brief segment of a song as a lead-in to or lead-out from a commercial break) or as easily overlooked "ambiance" or "background noise" (such as the song playing faintly on the radio during a scene);
• most instances of a PSB song being performed "live" in stadiums/arenas during broadcast sporting events (as distinct from use during broadcasts but not in the stadium/arena itself); and (of course)
• the Boys' own score for Battleship Potemkin as used in that film itself.

1. West End Girls

Many occurrences, which isn't surprising considering it's the Boys' biggest hit:

• Its first appearance was very early on—a Christmas Day 1985 episode of the British comedy Only Fools and Horses titled "To Hull and Back." Denzil is playing the song on his boom box while walking to work.
• Another early use (April 1, 1986) was in "Sleep Talkin' Guy," a second-season episode of the lighthearted U.S. "romantic action show" Moonlighting.
• About a minute of WEG served as the background music for the opening titles of Pista!, a "family show" that aired on Italian television from February 1986 through June 1987.
• Years later, it appeared in the November 18, 2002 episode of tlc, a short-lived U.K. "hospital comedy."
• It played in an episode of The Simpsons ("Three Gays of the Condo") that originally broadcast on April 3, 2003. It's featured during a sequence in which Homer—temporarily living with a gay couple in the aftermath of a spat with Marge—tries on some new clothes while on a shopping spree with his new friends. (At least they had the good sense not to use "Shopping.")
• It barely counts considering its extreme brevity, but a fragmentary segment of "West End Girls" can be heard in the April 23, 2006, episode (titled "Roger 'n Me") of another U.S. animated comedy, American Dad. A one-second snippet can be heard during a phone message instructing a character to to go to the "West End" of a shopping mall.
• The Brazilian telenovela (i.e., soap opera) Selva de Pedra (Forest of Rock) also aired "West End Girls" in 1986.
• "The Creeper," a 12^th-series episode of the U.K. mystery Midsomer Murders (which, interestingly, appears actually to have had its first airing outside the U.K. on September 27, 2009), includes "West End Girls" in several scenes set during a party that proves central to the plot.
• In Victoria Wood: Seen on TV, a BBC2 retrospective about the career of the British comedian (or, as they used to say, comedienne) that first aired on December 21, 2009, "West End Girls" can be heard during a sequence focusing on her following in gay clubs.
• The sketch-comedy show Goodness Gracious Me, which ran on BBC from 1998 to 2001 (and before that on radio 1996-1998), had a recurring bit with the "Minx Twins"—a couple of Asian-British teenage girls who hang around "inappropriate" places (such as gay bars and outside men's toilets), complaining about unwanted male attention and making assorted rude comments. "West End Girls" very often served as the background music for these skits.
• It's worth noting that the original "rough cut" of the 2001 thriller/fantasy cult hit Donnie Darko, which played at the film's world premiere at that year's Sundance Film Festival, included "West End Girls" during a dance sequence. But, apparently because the parties involved couldn't come to the necessary legal and financial agreements, the PSB song was excised from the general-release version of the movie and Duran Duran's "Notorious" was substituted in its place. Pity.
• The November 2, 2010 episode of the BBC2 sitcom Whites features one of the cast members—Amit Shah, I believe, although I could be mistaken—performing a cover version of "West End Girls."
• If you really stretch it, you might say that another "cover" of WEG was used on the July 26, 2007 episode of the U.K. E4 network's Fonejacker comedy series. It was in a sketch in which Kayvan Novak's recurring character of Mr. Doovdé phones a record shop clerk asking him to identify a song he's looking for, only he doesn't know the title. So he sings bits of "West End Girls," but uses ridiculous nonsense lyrics, which ends up cracking up the clerk—who, incidentally, fails to recognize the song.
• It could be heard playing in the January 1, 1992 episode of the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street in a scene set at a New Year's Eve party, and again in the May 22 episode that same year in a dance-club setting. Even as late as November 30, 2020, Coronation Street had it playing in the background during one scene.
• I should also note that the popular Canadian teen TV show Degrassi: The Next Generation, which titles every episode after a pop song, dubbed its January 31, 2005 episode "West End Girls"—although the song itself was nowhere to be heard.
• On November 24, 2012, the third episode of the U.S. cable network's comedy/drama (aka "dramedy") Wedding Band features two of the titular band members, Barry and Stevie (portrayed by Derek Miller and Harold Perrineau, respectively), performing an "impromptu" rendition (only the first verse and chorus) of "West End Girls" on glockenspiel (or something like it) and cello, with the two of them trading off on vocal (Barry raps the verse, Stevie sings the chorus).
• The Argentine TV comedy Graduados (Graduates)—which centers on a group of friends who went to high school together back in the 1980s and makes frequent use of flashbacks to that decade—has employed a number of PSB songs. "West End Girls," for instance, could be heard on the May 16, 2012 episode.
• In the September 28, 1986 episode (titled "Video Nasty") of the British sitcom Only Fools and Horses, WEG plays in the background during the opening scene, which is set in a pub.
• The 2013 film Diana, which deals with the final years of the life of the late Princess of Wales, includes a scene in which a distraught Diana tries to console herself by heading out to a dance club (complete with glitterball), where she ends up dancing to "West End Girls."
• One of the most remarkable occurrences of WEG on television took place on the February 2, 2015 episode of the Dutch TV show Mindf*ck (I'm not being coy—that's how it's officially spelled), which involves its stars, including magician Victor Mids, playing "magic tricks" on people. In this case, Victor hands DJ Gerard Ekdom a gift-wrapped CD and then asks him to name any band of his choice, an album by that band, and a song on that album. Gerard chooses Pet Shop Boys, Discography, and "West End Girls." Victor then tells Gerard to unwrap the CD and to play it. None other than "West End Girls" begins to play! Amazing! (Yes, subliminal messaging appears to have been involved, but it's still amazing.)
• The fourth (of five) episodes of the BBC Two series Back In Time For Dinner—a cultural-history documentary that takes a decade-by-decade look at food trends and dining habits from the 1950s to the 1990s—used "West End Girls" as background music during a sequence that focused on working women in London's financial district. The episode in question (which, not surprisingly, dealt with the 1980s) first aired on April 7, 2015.
• "West End Girls" can reportedly be heard in the obscure 2007 crime film Midnight Heat (directed by Brad Jones—a point I make to distinguish it from a TV movie from around the same time with the same title), but I have no idea of the context in which it appears.
• The 2014 film Pride, which focuses on the way in which U.K. gay activists worked to help miners during a 1984 National Union of Mineworkers strike, also includes the song.
• It's one of five PSB songs heard in the two-part BBC documentary Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain. In the case of WEG, it was Episode 2, first airing on August 3, 2017.
• "West End Girls" is used in the 2018 biographical film Gotti starring John Travolta as the famed New York mobster John Gotti. The song appears just over an hour into the film, appropriately enough in a scene set in the 1980s involving a mob assassination by means of a bomb detonated in a car—doubly apropos considering the first line of the song, "Sometimes you're better off dead."
• It could be heard in the January 26, 2019 episode of the British TV game show Through the Keyhole during a segment in which the host, Keith Lemon, gave viewers a tour of the home of U.K. soap-actress Charlie Brooks.
• First airing on June 3, 2020, Series 6, Episode 7 of The Great British Sewing Bee included a bit of WEG (as well as segments of various other hits from the 1980s by other artists) as contestants were challenged to create eighties-themed outfits.
• It was used on The One Show on BBC1 on May 14, 2021 in a segment about the imminent reopening of West End theaters as the COVID-19 pandemic began to "wind down" following widespread use of vaccines in the U.K.
• The eighth (and final) episode, titled "The One That Holds Everything," of the 2018 U.S. miniseries The Romanoffs features WEG, played at the end following a poisoning as the murderer (the main character of the episode) exits a train and walks through the train station in a scene that bears a strong visual resemblance to the famous PSB music video. The song continues to play through the end credits.
• The October 5, 2022 episode of the U.K. soap EastEnders featured most of the song during longtime character Jay's surprise birthday party. And it was used again on EastEnders just a few weeks later, on October 26, 2022, in a scene set in the Queen Vic pub during a conversation between Kheerat Panesar and Ash Kaur.
• To celebrate the sixtieth anniversity of its popular academic quiz show University Challenge, the BBC first aired on August 29, 2022 the documentary University Challenge at 60. WEG could be heard during a segment about how one of the question writers was inspired by the line "From Lake Geneva to the Finland Station" to link the song to Lenin in a question. As it turns out, "West End Girls" was the answer!
• The 2022 British murder mystery Medusa Deluxe includes a character whose cellphone employs WEG as its ringtone. (The film's director, Thomas Hardiman, reportedly persuaded the Boys to grant permission for their song to be used this way in the film after their initial reluctance, explaining to them that it was a personal tribute to a friend of his who had inspired the film.)
• Based on Reginald Hill's 1970 novel of the same name, "A Clubbable Woman" is the 1996 debut episode of the U.K. crime drama Dalziel and Pascoe. "West End Girls" can be heard about 30 minutes into this episode as background music during a scene set at the local rugby club.
• WEG can be heard during a scene set in a gay dance club in 1986 in the March 27, 2024 edition of the German cold-case reality TV show Aktenzeichen XY... ungelöst ("Case number XY... unsolved").
• The December 12, 2022 episode of the Apple TV+ series Little America uses it in a scene where Maksim performs a sexy dance for Yana.

2. In the Night

• The version of this song that appears on the Disco album served as the original theme music for the long-running British fashion program The Clothes Show (1986-2000). As the show moved into the mid-1990s, its producers asked Chris and Neil if they could remix it to make it sound "more contemporary." Instead of a remix, the Boys re-recorded an entirely new version in 1995, which then served as the theme music for the remainder of the show's run. This new version also served as one of the bonus tracks for the single "Before."
• As one of my site visitors has pointed out, the use of "In the Night" as theme music for The Clothes Show has resulted it in being "trotted out," so to speak, on other shows dealing with the fashion industry, often in a comic context. For example, a 1995 episode of the U.K comedy show Fist of Fun featured the duo of Mel & Sue in a fashion sketch, which included prominent use of the original version of "In the Night." (This same skit was included in the August 2017 program Funny Women: The Mel & Sue Story.) Similarly, in November 1988, the sixth episode of the first series of the U.K. comedy show Alexei Sayle's Stuff featured a parody of The Clothes Show, during which it could again be heard. And the April 16, 1992 edition of the U.K. crime-solvers show Crimewatch employed the track as the background music for a brief bit in which several small children "modeled" stolen clothing.
• In addition, a brief bit of the song could be heard in the March 24, 2011 episode of the BBC 2 Scotland sketch comedy Limmy's Show starring Brian Limond. It's in a rather engimatic little skit in which Limmy and his girlfriend are eating at a restaurant. The waiter comes by, lifts and holds up the spoons they've used to eat chocolate pudding, and (wordlessly but somewhat flirtatiously) seems to suggest there's something naughty about it. They all start laughing. Limmy suddenly jumps up and starts disco-dancing with the waiter (to the strains of "In the Night") while his girlfriend and others joyfully clap along. Then, just as suddenly, Limmy stops dancing and sits down, and the music stops. Cryptic, to say the least.
• An instrumental portion of "In the Night" was used during the second episode of the BBC Four architectural documentary The Brits Who Built the Modern World, which first aired on February 20, 2014.
• The July 17, 2014 edition of the BBC One news show This Week kicked off with a segment about U.K. Prime Minster David Cameron's recent reorganization of his cabinet, which included footage of the unusually large number of female politicians who have been offered positions visiting his offices, which had been dubbed by The Daily Mail (in a mildly sexist turn of phrase) a "Downing Street catwalk." Hence, the crew of The Week felt it fitting to use "In the Night" as the background music for this segment.
• It was one of two PSB tracks used on the February 23, 2016 episode of the U.K. TV show Back in Time for the Weekend, in which a family tries to live as folks did in some previous decade, without their more modern conveniences.
• It could briefly be heard less than five minutes into Episode 3 (titled "Possession") of the British sitcom Chewing Gum. This particular episode first aired on October 20, 2015.
• The December 6, 2017 episode of the U.K. comic discussion program The Apprentice: You're Fired! (the companion show to The Apprentice) made brief use of "In the Night" as background music during a compilation of clips from one of that week's "tasks" related to—appropriate enough given the history of the song with The Clothes Show—the fashion industry.
• "In the Night" played over the closing credits of the first episode ("Ignorance") of the three-part BBC documentary series AIDS: The Unheard Tapes, which first aired on June 27, 2022. It also serves as background music about 13 minutes into the second episode, "The AIDS Generation," which debuted a week later, on July 4, 2022.
• It also one of several PSB songs that could be heard on the December 20, 2023 episode of the BBC series What We Were Watching, in this case during a segment on the Christmas 1991 edition of The Clothes Show.
• The October 21, 1993 episode of the U.K. children's TV show Bad Influence! employed "In the Night" as background music during a segment on kids' fashion—an obvious takeoff on its use as the theme music for The Clothes Show.

3. Left to My Own Devices

• The popular U.K. television game show The Krypton Factor ran for almost two decades, from 1977 to 1995 (and reruns are still airing even now), challenging teams of contestants to compete in assorted challenges that tested their mental and physical abilities. The music that regularly played in the 1988 episodes during the scoring at the end of one of the rounds was the Pet Shop Boys' "Left To My Own Devices."
• On a related note, when the May 14, 2017 episode of the sporadic U.K. series When… Goes Horribly Wrong—in this case, When Game Shows Go Horribly Wrong—aired a clip from The Krypton Factor in which a woman broke her leg during the competition and still managed to come in third place, they played LTMOD.
• Also back in 1988, Coronation Street played the song during a household scene on its December 7 episode.
• More than two decades later, it could be heard about three-quarters of the way through the BBC3 documentary The Truth About Tanning, an exposé of the dangers of tanning beds hosted by Girls Aloud member Nicola Roberts, which first aired on February 4, 2010. (I don't have any information yet about the context in which the song was used, however. It's worth noting, of course, that Nicola's group Girls Aloud had recorded the PSB co-authored track "The Loving Kind" back in 2008.)
• The Argentine TV comedy Graduados (Graduates) used "Left to My Own Devices" on its April 9, 2012 episode.
• The first episode of the four-part BBC television show Your Money, Their Tricks, airing on July 3, 2013, used the song during a segment on how much it costs to buy popcorn at U.K. cinemas these days.
• Another Argentine comic telenovela, Viudas e hijos del Rock and Roll (Widows and Children of Rock and Roll), played the song quite prominently during the climax of its January 26, 2015 episode (Chapter 88), with Neil's words "I could leave you" coinciding with the female lead confronting another man who appears to be having an affair with her husband.
• The May 3, 2015 edition of the U.K. TV show For the Love of Cars employed excerpts of two PSB songs, one of them "Left to My Own Devices," during a segment on a Volkswagen Golf from the 1980s.
• A loop of the introductory portion of "Devices" (thereby avoiding any of the vocal) is used in the March 25, 2016 episode of the BBC "action game show" Can't Touch This.
• LTMOD can be heard playing on the radio during a scene about a minute into Episode 1 of Series 13 (first airing on January 2, 1990) of the long-running U.K. children's television show Grange Hill.

4. So Hard

Neil once referred to the fact that this song was used in an episode of the popular nineties U.S. nighttime soap Beverly Hills, 90210. It played during a party scene in the first-season episode titled "BYOB," which originally aired on January 10, 1991.

5. Can You Forgive Her?

Portions of this song, relatively new at the time, were heard during the third season (set in San Francisco) of MTV's pioneering reality show The Real World—more specifically in the episode titled "You Gotta Have Art," which first aired on July 21, 1994. And, very interestingly, it wasn't the familiar single/album mix of the song that could be heard on the cafe jukebox on the October 25, 1995 episode of the U.K. soap opera Coronation Street but rather the MK Remix. "Can You Forgive Her?" was also one of two PSB songs (the other being "I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing") used in the BBC Two series I Love the 1990s—specifically the "1993 episode" I Love 1993—which first aired on September 8, 2001. With more than a touch of dark humor, CYFH served as the backdrop to a segment on the infamous incident in which Lorena Bobbitt cut off the penis of her husband, John Wayne Bobbitt, as he slept. Much more recently, the Argentine comic telenovela Viudas e hijos del Rock and Roll (Widows and Children of Rock and Roll) used "Can You Forgive Her?" in its January 15, 2015 episode (Chapter 82) in a situation (the female lead discovering her husband holding hands with a male horsekeeper) roughly parallelling the plot of the song itself.

6. Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)

Surpassing "West End Girls" in frequency of use—almost certainly on account of its salient topicality—this song boasts the following occurrences:

• The 1987 U.S. two-part NBC TV movie Billionaire Boys Club includes "Opportunities," but it's not the Pet Shop Boys' original. Rather, it's a cover version—but by whom? Incredibly, the film's closing credits don't say. The music and instrumentation are pretty good facsimiles of the original, but the singer is unmistakably not Neil. It plays during a montage sequence that, interestingly, focuses not so much on making money as on spending it. Of course, for most people the point of one is the other.
• It's featured in a scene set in (wouldn't you know it?) a gay dance club in an episode of the U.S. sitcom Living Single titled "Swing Out Sisters," which first aired on March 20, 1997. (To be fair, the producers probably chose that song not merely for the "gay connection" but also to serve as sly commentary on the surprise revelation of a heterosexual male character working at the club as a bartender, which he explains by the unusually large tips he gets there.)
• It appears in the American TV drama Joan of Arcadia; in the episode titled "Wealth of Nations," which was originally broadcast on October 29, 2004, Joan and a friend were selling clothes to raise money while "Opportunities" played in the background.
• In a particularly high-profile usage, "Opportunities" serves as the opening theme music of the U.S. "reality show" Beauty and the Geek, which premiered on June 1, 2005. (It has also served the same function for the Dutch version—as it almost certainly will for any other version that should appear.) The line "I've got the brains, you've got the looks" proved irresistible for this program, in which stereotypically brainy/nerdy guys are teamed with stereotypically attractive/dumb gals in a competition to see which pair can learn and benefit the most from each other and thereby win a big cash prize. "Let's make lots of money"—a perfect match!
• It appears as background music to a montage depicting "yuppies" on cell phones in the fourth episode (titled "Revolution!") of the BBC 2 documentary Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain (focusing on the years 1979-1990), which first aired on June 12, 2007.
• Maybe it's a stretch, but on the September 14, 2007 edition of the HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher, there was a discussion of Bill and Hillary Clinton's marriage, during which guest Drew Carey briefly sang the chorus ("I've got the brains, you've got the looks …").
• Getting back to the Boys' own version, "Opportunities" also plays in the November 18, 2007 episode of The Simpsons, titled "Husbands and Knives," during a montage of Marge appearing on magazine covers in the wake of her success with her own women's fitness center.
• The February 8, 2008 episode of the U.S. crime drama Psych includes a portion of the song during a segment in which several characters are walking through an alley toward their waiting limousine.
• The February 20, 2008 edition of the U.S. morning news institution Today (I say "institution" because it was the first U.S. nationally broadcast news show and has been a fixture on the NBC network since 1952) played this song during a story about celebrity baby pictures being sold to magazine.
• On March 9, 2008, BBC Four first aired a documentary titled The Rise and Fall of the Ad Man, which covered the British advertising industry during the 1970s and '80s. "Opportunities" could be heard during a sequence focusing on the firm of Saatchi & Saatchi, which spent much of the early eighties expanding rapidly by buying out competitors.
• The June 15, 2009 episode of the BBC2 show The Supersizers Eat… (in which the hosts, a restaurant critic and a comedian, discuss and sample the cuisines of different historical periods) deals with "food of the 1980s." A segment that focuses on eating on the floor of the stock exchange (I kid you not!) is accompanied by—what else?—"Opportunities." Is this a case of someone using an ironic song, which they may not actually realize is ironic, in what they regard as an ironic manner because they believe the irony stems from them rather than from the songwriters? That, of course, would be ironic.
• During the second part of the BBC3 comic documentary The Noughties… Was That It?, which first aired on November 11, 2009, "Opportunities" was used during a segment about the ascendancy of "celebrity chefs."
• The January 25, 2010 episode of the five-part BBC2 series Delia Through the Decades—a career retrospective of popular U.K. cooking show host Delia Smith—focuses on the 1980s. Not surprisingly a PSB tune pops up, and just as unsurprisingly it's "Opportunities." By this point there's can be no doubt that this song has taken on near-totemic significance as a sort of "objective correlative"—or symbolic shorthand, if you will—for the decade of Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan.
• It was also used by BBC London News early the week of August 15, 2011 (sorry, but I can't be any more specific than that) to accompany a story about a bargain-price bakery chain where every item of food costs no more than £1.
• Episode 43, first airing on October 15, 2010, of the British show Homes Under the Hammer briefly used "Opportunities" during a segment in which one of the hosts discusses how the home then under consideration might be expanded and developed to increase its value on the market, bemoaning the fact that it isn't meeting its full financial potential. (Actually, as it turns out, this show has apparently re-used "Opportunities" on a number of subsequent occasions; I won't bother listing these other instances.)
• It could also be heard in an episode of the 1990s U.S. series Clueless (based on the hit movie of the same name). The episode in question, "Cher, Inc." first aired on December 20, 1996, and it focused on the central character Cher starting her own company making and selling "muff purses." Sounds like a natural to me!
• On March 9, 2012, Episode 3 of the BBC2 series Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture used "Opportunities" as the background to footage from the 1980s of urban businesspeople indeed making lots of money. (The same episode at another point featured a clip of Tony Blair's famed 1997 "Cool Britannia" party at 10 Downing Street, during which Neil could be briefly glimpsed.)
• It was used at length during a segment of the BBC "technology consumer news" show Click on October 21, 2012.
• Considering everything, it's hardly surprising that BBC News would use "Opportunities" as background music during more than one of their April 8, 2013 news reports on the death of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
• The May 3, 2013 edition of the BBC One daily newsmagazine The One Show featured a segment on "unusual Christians" (such as a heavy metal fan and a former football hooligan), during which "Opportunities" played while focusing on a worker in the financial sector. (Whether that really is an unusual field of endeavor in this day and age for Christians is another matter altogether. Jesus himself may have felt so but, then again, he did recruit a tax collector as one of his disciples.)
• The documentary Rewind the Tube, which first aired on U.K. Channel 4 on September 20, 2013, dealt with the history of the famed 1980s British music show The Tube. "Opportunities" (featuring a snippet of the song's second video) was used during a segment about the cultural shift toward "yuppiedom" during the Thatcher era. (One might consider this a borderline case of being a "non-musical" rather than "musical" TV show, but in this case I'm erring on the side of inclusivity.)
• Season 2, Episode 2 of the U.S. TV comedy Raising Hope (first airing November 15, 2013) used "Opportunities (Let's Make Lots of Money)" in a mildly punning fashion by playing it during a montage sequence depicting how Burt and Virginia literally make money by printing inflationary amounts of their own barter-currency "Burt Bucks."
• A June 8, 2014 U.K. Channel 5 special on The Greatest 80s Movies played a portion of the song during its segment on the film Wall Street.
• On June 11, 2014, the third episode of the BBC limited investigative series Gangsters.com included a brief excerpt of the "Version Latina" mix.
• It was used in the second episode ("A Touch of Class"), first airing on November 22, 2014, of the four-part BBC Two documentary miniseries Perry and Croft: Made in Britain.
• The February 17, 2015 episode of The Fixer—a BBC2 show in which struggling small-business owners receive advice on improving their fortunes—included "Opportunities" during a segment focusing on a gay couple running a pet shop in Wimbledon. (Is it too much to say that, under the circumstances, this particular selection was all but inevitable?)
• It could also be heard on the April 21, 2015 episode of the U.S. ABC TV comedy Fresh Off the Boat during a scene in which the father, Louis, daydreams of all the business opportunities he'll enjoy if he and his family become members of the local country club.
• The May 3, 2015 edition of hte U.K. TV show For the Love of Cars employed excerpts of two PSB songs, one of them "Opportunities," during a segment on a Volkswagen Golf from the 1980s.
• The BBC2 documentary Jazzie B's 1980s: From Dole to Soul, focusing on the life and career of Soul II Soul frontman Jazzie B, which premiered on November 26, 2016, featured an excerpt of the Pet Shop Boys performing "Opportunities" during a segment on the cultural-economic impact of Thatcherism during that decade.
• The February 17, 2017 episode of the BBC news/current affairs program Newsnight employed the mix of "Opportunites" that appears on the Disco album as background music for a segment on the decreased value of the British pound in the wake of the "Brexit" vote.
• At the very end of Episode 7 of Season 2 (first streaming on December 5, 2018) of the Amazon Prime series The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, "Opportunities" starts playing as two characters in a bar discuss making money from the title heroine going out on tour with her standup comedy act. The song continues playing through the full length of the closing credits.
• Series 3, Episode 1 (March 2, 2015) of the Irish sitcom Moone Boy features "Opportunities" during a scene in which the teenage protagonist Martin and a friend try to earn some money selling encyclopedias.
• First airing on June 18, 2005, the BBC documentary Live Aid - Against All Odds, which tells the story of the famed July 13, 1985 Live Aid benefit concert, includes a brief bit of "Opportunities" during an early discussion of the socio-economic backdrop of the event—namely, Thatcherite Britain.
• The 2019 Japanese series The Naked Director featured "Opportunities" in TV commercials that aired on Netflix, on which it ran in the States. I don't know for certain at this time whether it was used in the series itself, but the song did appear on the series soundtrack album, so it seems pretty likely.
• "The Man Who Wasn't There," the first episode of the second series of the somewhat light-hearted U.K. crime drama McDonald & Dodds, first airing on February 28, 2021, briefly employs a snippet of one of the remixes of this song—no doubt inspired by McDonald's immediately preceding question, "Did they grab this opportunity [my emphasis] to get rid of Frankie Marsh?"—as faint background music during a sequence in which the four murder suspects take turns speaking to investigators. (It's especially appropriate because the suspects had been powerful, influential figures in popular music, described as "the crème de la crème of cool, hip London," in the 1980s.)
• First airing on April 15, 2022, Season 1, Episode 7 ("The Power of Me") of the Apple TV+/HBO series WeCrashed played "Opportunities" almost in its entirety during a scene in which the main character, entrepreneur Adam Neumann (played by Jared Leto), finds himself broke and uncertain as to where next to take his struggling company.
• The episode dated August 25, 2022 of the U.K. soap EastEnders (actually released a little in advance of that date on BBC iPlayer) played a portion of "Opportunities" for the sendoff of the characters Rainie and Stuart Highway, departing the scene and the series in a stolen hearse.
• The U.K. soap Emmerdale celebrated its fiftieth anniversary on the air with the special Emmerdale - 50 Unforgettable Years, which first aired on October 16, 2022. "Opportunities" could be heard at one point during this commemorative episode.
• "Opportunities" was one of three PSB songs part of which could be heard in the 1993 BBC2 documentary The Thatcher Years.
• The 2023 film Tetris concludes with the song, which plays over the end credits. It starts as an instrumental introduction, roughly three minutes in length, by the filmscore composer, Lorne Balfe—quite slow at first but later more uptempo, incorporating melodic snippets and a few percussive elements of the song—out from which emerges a newly remixed version of the PSB original. Then, at the end, the Tetris theme music emerges out of it.
• First airing on April 20, 2023, the episode titled "Game Over" (Season 4, Episode 10) of the superhero series Titans on HBO Max includes a scene in which a villain is playing a video game. "Opportunities" plays in the background for nearly the entire scene.
• The concluding 20 seconds or so of "Opportunities" could be heard on the May 24, 2023 episode of The Great British Sewing Bee during a sequence in which the contestants had to select scraps of fabric to use in making something from scratch.
• Season 3, Episode 1 (debuting August 11, 2024) of the UK/US TV series Industry uses "Opportunities" as ironic background music for a sequence during which one of its characters suffers a serious business setback.

7. Single

Reportedly plays during a bar scene—a singles bar, no doubt—focusing on the character Anna in a Series 2 episode of the popular mid-1990s BBC2 TV show This Life, which concerned a group of young solicitors and barristers (aka "lawyers" and "attorneys" in the States) sharing a house in London. I'm not sure of the precise episode or the original air date, but it would have been sometime from March to August 1997.

8. How Can You Expect to Be Taken Seriously?

Plays over the closing credits of the "Fair Enough" episode of the U.S. "teen angst" cartoon Daria. This episode first aired on July 13, 1998.

9. Se A Vida É (That's the Way Life Is)

In what was likely an intentionally ironic act of foreshadowing, this song was playing in the background just before an unforgettable moment in the December 31, 1998 episoode of the popular, long-running U.K. soap opera EastEnders—unforgettable because it involved the sudden, unexpected death of one of the show's most popular characters, Tiffany Mitchell (portrayed by Martine McCutcheon), struck and killed by an automobile outside the Queen Vic Pub. (As testament to its status, EastEnders fans voted this the single episode they most wanted to watch again, resulting in its being reshown on the show's 15th anniversary in February 2000.) Also, the October 23, 2008 episode (titled "How I Got My Posh") of the U.K. comedy/drama series Beautiful People includes a scene set in a hair salon in which this song is playing on the radio. And the January 3, 2015 episode of the BBC1 medical drama Casualty featured the song in a scene set in a café.

10. Too Many People

Again playing over Daria's closing credits, this time the episode titled "Lane Miserables," which was originally broadcast on July 14, 1999. The producers of Daria must have liked the Pet Shop Boys.

11. I Wouldn't Normally Do This Kind of Thing

Not the Boys' original version but a cover by Robbie Williams, which plays in an episode of Friends ("The One with the Routine") that originally aired on December 16, 1999. It appears during a dance sequence in which Joey pursues his current love interest, Janine. Robbie's version also appears on the Friends Again soundtrack album as well as on his 1998 album Let Me Entertain You. One of my site visitors distinctly remembers, however, the Pet Shop Boys' own single version being used as background music during a go-kart segment that appeared during the 1994 season of MTV's popular The Real World series, set that year in San Francisco. I haven't yet been able to confirm this independently or find the precise date. Also in 1994, on January 7 and again on January 12, "Normally" played on the ol' cafe jukebox on the U.K. soap Coronation Street. IWNDTKOT was also one of two PSB songs (the other being "Can You Forgive Her?" as noted at #5 above) used in the BBC Two series I Love the 1990s—specifically the "1993 episode" I Love 1993—which first aired on September 8, 2001.

12. Shopping

The chorus alone has guaranteed its use on a number of TV shows, most of which have everything to do with the title but nothing to do with what the song is actually about. For one thing, it has proven extremely popular "bumper music" on home shopping shows. No further comment needed about that. These, however, are a little more interesting, if in most cases all too predictable:

• The earliest use that I'm aware of occurred in 1989 in an episode of the British automotive series Top Gear. Host Jeremy Clarkson is describing a bunch of Japanese "supermini cars." He takes one of them into a Tokyo drive-through shopping mart as "Shopping" plays in the background.
• It appears in an episode of the U.S. show Lizzie McGuire titled "Last Year's Model," first broadcast on September 28, 2001. In deeply clichéd (and misguided) fashion, it plays while Matt is—what else?—shopping.
• Much more intelligently, it's used during a sequence about the selling off of publicly owned companies in the aforementioned fourth episode of the BBC 2 documentary Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, which first aired on June 12, 2007.
• It could be heard in the second episode (June 22, 2009) of another documentary series, BBC4's The Secret Life of the Airport. Unfortunately, its usage there swung back to a much more facile, superficial context: duty-free airport shopping. I guess a lot of people either don't listen to the verse lyrics, don't understand them, or simply choose to ignore them.
• The fast-paced U.K. comedy program The Kevin Bishop Show used it (again very superficially) on July 30, 2009 in a sketch focusing on a rather flamboyant American sales clerk who gushes to a British couple about England and the royal family, getting his "facts" badly confused in the process.
• The first part of the BBC3 comic documentary The Noughties… Was That It?, which originally aired on November 4, 2009, played "Shopping" during a segment about Internet shopping.
• The April 11, 2010 episode of NBC TV's The Today Show had a segment on "Extreme Couponing" that featured "Shopping" during (yawn) a shopping trip.
• The January 5, 2012 episode of the BBC2 show Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is, in which people buy antiques and collectibles at auction in an effort to earn profit for their selected charities, reportedly also played "Shopping," although I have no information at this time about the specific context.
• Series 1 Episode 12 of Gadget Geeks, which first aired on April 2, 2012 on the U.K. subscription channel Sky 1, features a segment reviewing assorted e-book readers (such as Kindle), during which they played a brief segment of "Shopping."
• The March 2, 2013 episode of the BBC Breakfast news show used the song at length during a segment set in a shopping center (hence…) where shoppers were being treated to free squash lessons. (The sport, not the vegetable!)
• The long-running Australian TV travel show Getaway reportedly used "Shopping" in an episode involving you-know-what in London. (Unfortunately, I've so far been unable to track down the original air date of this episode.)
• It could be heard on the June 13, 2013 episode of the popular BBC show Homes Under the Hammer.
• Another BBC show, Bargain Hunt, used it in the background at one point during its July 30, 2013 episode.
• The November 30, 2015 edition of the BBC One show Tomorrow's Food played it at the start of a segment about technology that may be used in supermarkets of the future.
• The March 10, 2016 episode of the U.K. show Daily Politics used it during a segment concerning the possibility of extending Sunday legal sales hours in Britain.
• The June 2, 2016 edition of the BBC1 "magazine" program The One Show employed "Shopping" as background music during a segment about stores playing background music. That's somewhat meta, isn't it?
• The One Show used it again on February 23, 2017 in a segment about—you guessed it!—shopping in London.
• The U.K. TV show Zone of Champions, which airs comedy clips from around the world, used it as background music during one of its segments on its August 24, 2019 episode.
• A segment of the October 30, 2019 episode of the German TV comedy Mario Barth räumt auf ("Mario Barth Cleans Up") repeatedly used snippets of the track.
• Part 2 ("The Grand Illusion") of the four-part TVNZ documentary Revolution, which first aired in New Zealand in late 1996, includes a segment that focuses on a controversial series of free-market reforms, including the privatisation of state assets, which is set—far more aptly than usual—to about 30 seconds of "Shopping."
• First airing on April 16, 2024, Episode 6 of Series 5 of the BBC makeover show Interior Design Masters with Alan Carr features the contestants revamping two separate retail spaces. Somewhat predictably, “Shopping” plays during one cutaway between scenes.
  

13. Break 4 Love

This PSB/Peter Rauhofer collaboration plays a prominent role in the tense, overlapping closing scenes (continuing into the closing credits) of Episode 209 of the U.S. version of Queer As Folk, which first aired on March 10, 2002.

14. Music for Boys

Considering the relative obscurity of the song, this is one of the more surprising PSB tracks to be used on television. It can be heard in "The Beast of Royston Vasey," the fourth episode (first airing on February 1, 1999) of the BBC comedy series The League of Gentlemen, in which it serves as background music during a segment about a school theatre production on the subject of homosexuality. And on April 22, 2007, it could be heard in the episode titled "Tod in der Siedlung" (translated "Death on the Estate" or "Death in the Settlement") of the popular German crime drama Schimanski. The specific scene involves a teenage prostitute who, upon being taken back to her parents' home, runs to her room and immediately turns on loud music—that music being "Music for Boys," though heard only for several seconds.

15. A Different Point of View

This song was used during the fourth episode (originally airing October 8, 1995) of the relatively short-lived U.S. TV drama Central Park West. The following year, in 1996, the Chilean children's television show Sega Acción used it as opening and closing theme music. Two decades later, on August 2, 2016, a brief excerpt of about 30 seconds could be heard in Season 20, Episode 27 of the U.K. show Homes Under the Hammer during a segment concerning "different views" from a house. The same series used the song again in Season 22, Episode 32, first airing on September 6, 2018.

16. Always on My Mind

The Pet Shop Boys' hit version of this song can be heard in these TV shows and films:

• The January 11, 1988 episode of the British soap Coronation Street includes this track emanating from a television set being watched by one of the characters.
• During the opening scenes of the third-season premier episode (titled "Family") of the U.S. crime drama Cold Case, originally broadcast on September 25, 2005.
• On April 28, 2007 in a BBC special titled The Return of 'Allo 'Allo featuring the original cast of that popular 1980s sitcom. A montage of clips focusing on Lt. Gruber—the recurring gay character (wouldn't you know?) played by Guy Siner—was accompanied by this track.
• In a scene set at a gay costume party benefit in the 2007 Adam Sandler comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.
• In a complete 180° twist, as the regular theme music of the Italian agricultural news show Agrisette.
• In the closing scene of the 2009 Spanish film El cónsul de Sodoma (The Consul of Sodom), a biography of the poet Jaime Gil de Biedma (1929-1990). The scene depicts the elderly poet watching a naked young man dance to the song.
• The August 22, 2011 episode of the UK soap EastEnders featured it playing in the background during a scene in which a pair of female characters pose as a couple in order to attend an '80s-themed lesbian/gay convention. (Now that's something this writer wouldn't mind attending himself! )
• I've learned that "Always on My Mind" has been used at some point in 2012 on the Argentine TV show Graduados, but I haven't yet determined precisely which episode.
• Episode 5 ("Truly, Bradley, Deeply"), Series 2 of the BBC show The Peter Principle, which first aired on February 28, 2000, played the PSB version of the song over its closing credits. (A different rendition by another artist—similar to the Elvis Presley version but not by him—occurs during a dream sequence of the same episode.)
• The February 6, 2015 episode of BBC's The One Show used it during a segment harkening back to the 1988 incident when anti-Section 28 protesters disrupted a live broadcast of the BBC evening news.
• The U.K. Channel 4 documentary The 80s: Ten Years That Changed Britain, which first aired on January 10, 2016, featured it during a section about Eddie "The Eagle" Edwards and his "heroic failure" placing last in ski jumping at the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics.
• Debuting on January 11, 2019, the first episode, "The Engagement Party," of Season 2 of the Netflix original sitcom Friends from College features a scene with one of the main characters, gay literary agent Max (played by Fred Savage), dancing with his fiancé Felix, to the PSB rendition of "Always on My Mind."
• The British sitcom Watching employed the song during a party scene in the Series 6 episode "Doctoring," which first aired on January 17, 1992.
• The May 3, 2020 episode of the Irish TV show Keys to My Life featured Irish actor/entertainer Rory Cowan reminiscing about his life, including his stint in the late 1980s as an EMI marketing manager, during which the Pet Shop Boys once paid him a visit at his Dublin apartment. As this segment of the program aired, AOMM played in the background.
• The 2019 Canadian film Matthias & Maxine briefly includes the PSB rendition of this song during a scene in which the character McAfee, while walking through the train station and literally bumping into Matthias, is listening to it on his headphones.
• Episode 7, first airing on October 18, 2020, of the Spanish biographical miniseries Veneno, about the life of the transgender singer, TV personality, and LGBT icon Cristina Ortiz Rodríguez, better known as "La Veneno," featured the PSB rendition during a scene in which she is signing copies of her autobiography. When the song starts, La Veneno recognizes it, jumps up and cries, "It's my song!" and runs to a nearby stage to dance as scenes replay for viewers showing her at different times of her life.
• AOMM was one of two PSB tracks (the other being "It's a Sin") playing in the background at an LGBT Pride event on the June 30, 2021 episode of the long-running U.K. soap Emmerdale.
• It played over the final scene and end-credits of the special December 20, 2021 Christmas episode ("We Wish You a Mandy Christmas") of Series 2 of the BBC2 comedy show Mandy.
• It served as background music during the closing scenes of Series 10, Episode 3 (first airing on October 27, 2022) of the U.K. documentary series Ambulance. This particular track was likely chosen because (1) it fit thematically with the final scene of the program, with an ambulanceman reflecting on how things had improved for gay men since he first met his boyfriend in the 1980s, and (2) the episode was set quite near where Neil was born and raised in the region of Newcastle upon Tyne.
• The PSB rendition of "Always on My Mind" serves as background music during a sequence that introduces athlete Cris Meier-Windes, one of the senior citizens that the 2023 documentary Unsyncable, about elderly synchronized swimmers, focuses on.
• It opens the fifth episode of British comedian and writer Alan Carr's semi-autobiographical TV sitcom Changing Ends, which is set in the 1980s. Titled "Sick as a Parrot," that episode debuted on June 1, 2023.
• The Italian religious television program A Sua Immagine (translated In His Image) aired on August 20, 2023 a report titled "La Montagna: Un Rifugio Per Lo Spirito" ("The Mountain: A Refuge for the Spirit") about cyclists in the Italian mountains, during which AOMM can be heard as background music.
• The 2023 U.K. romantic fantasy All of Us Strangers (as well as its trailer) prominently features "Always on My Mind," apropos to the way in which the story concerns a mystical "quasi-flashback" to the late eighties involving his late parents, who indeed are very often (if not literally always) on his mind. The particular scene focuses on a gathering around their Christmas tree, which is only fitting seeing as how that was the song at #1 in the U.K. during the 1987 holiday season.
• It was also one of several PSB songs that could be heard on the December 20, 2023 episode of the BBC series What We Were Watching, in this case during excerpts from the Boys' classic Performance concert.
• Season 3, Episode 6 (debuting September 15, 2024) of the UK/US TV series Industry uses "Always on My Mind " during a flashback in which one of its characters recalls helping another through her grief following her father's death.
• About two-thirds of the way through the 2024 film The Apprentice, PSB's AOMM can be heard playing as Donald Trump enters a party celebrating the opening of Trump Tower. (It's somewhat anachronistic seeing as how Trump Tower opened in 1983, several years before the Boys' hit version of the song.)

17. Suburbia

• An episode of the original U.K. Top Gear series from 2001 (I haven't been able to determine the original air date, but the episode focused on "saloon cars") featured two PSB songs, the first of which was "Suburbia."
• First airing on May 28, 2005, the second-season "Witches" episode of the British crime drama Murder in Suburbia featured a scene in which a school choir is singing this PSB classic.
• The old Pet Shop Boys Club newsletter (the rather primitive predecessor to Literally) stated in its February 1987 edition that "Suburbia" had also been used on at least three different occasions on the popular, long-running U.K. soap opera EastEnders.
• It was used in the BBC4 show Electric Dreams, the premise of which involves taking a "typical" suburban British family through a 30-day/30-year journey (1970-1999), in which each day represents a year and each episode represents a decade. Each day the family members can use only the technology that was available in the corresponding year. "Suburbia" played in second episode—which debuted on October 6, 2009, and which, aptly enough, focused on the 1980s—during a sequence in which the father used a Sinclair C5 to run errands around town. (The Sinclair C5 was an electric car—actually more like big electric tricycle—that appeared in 1985 and proved an unmitigated commercial disaster. The company apparently lost a bundle of money on it. Considering the C5's top speed of 15 mph and the serious safety concerns it raised, it's hardly surprising that few people actually wanted to own one.)
• Appropriately enough (considering the sound effects), "The Full Horror" mix of "Suburbia" was used to build up to the announcement of the winner on the December 26, 2012 airing of the U.K. ITV special That Dog Can Dance, in which guests and their dogs performed routines for a panel of judges.
• The July 4, 2013 edition of BBC One's Homes Under the Hammer made use of "Suburbia" as well.
• The popular, long-running Spanish TV show Cuéntame cómo pasó ("Tell Me How It Happened")—which deals with the recent history of Spain from the perspective of a fictional family—uses period music in every episode. The April 21, 2016 episode, set in the 1980s, played "Suburbia" over its closing credits.
• I guess we shouldn't be surprised that it would be chosen to play over the end-credits of the first episode (February 21, 2017) of the five-part BBC series Britain's Home Truths. While the series overall deals with (as the BBC website puts it) "the secrets of the places Britons choose to call home," the first episode focuses specifically on—you got it!—suburbia.
• The February 24, 2018 episode of the U.K. comedy game show Through the Keyhole (during which celebrity panelists try to guess the identities of famous homeowners based on a tour of those homes) featured the song playing during a segment based in the home of former soccer player John Barnes—who's also known for having performed the "guest rap" on New Order's 1990 World Cup song "World in Motion.
• In January 2023, U.K. Channel 5 aired Keeping Up Appearances: 30 Years of Laughs, a retrospective celebration of the classic comedy series Keeping Up Appearances, "Suburbia" played briefly during an introductory segment on (surprise, surprise!) suburban life. It's seems likely that this program, though perhaps in a slightly modified form, has re-aired under different titles, again using "Suburbia" in the same way.

18. It Always Comes as a Surprise

On January 2, 2007, BBC2 broadcast This Life + 10, a one-off sequel to This Life (described above in this list's entry for "Single"). This song plays in the background during a scene in which the gay character, Warren, is having a lengthy conversation—which soon turns into a political argument—with several of his heterosexual friends. Also, the November 13, 2015 episode of the U.K. morning show Homes Under the Hammer featured it as background music as commentary on a house under consideration that didn't require much work to make it marketable, which apparently makes it "a surprise."

19. One More Chance

The instrumental introduction of this song—looped, I believe, in order to extend its length without running into the vocal—is briefly used in a March 18, 1988 episode of the long-running BBC documentary series Arena that focuses on the work of the American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. (The particular scene in which it's heard deals with the New York gay bar scene of the late 1970s, which introduces a segment about some of Mapplethorpe's most controversial photos, often involving blatantly sado-masochistic and/or fetishistic subject matter.) A little less than a year later, "One More Chance" also served as background music during an illusion performed by the famous magician David Copperfield in his March 3, 1989 U.S. (CBS) television special The Magic of David Copperfield XI: The Explosive Encounter. The popular, long-running Dutch game/stunt show Te land, ter zee en in de lucht (On Land, at Sea, and in the Air) used it from time to time circa 1988 as background music for compilation clips of "stunt failures." And a 2003 U.K. Channel 4 TV documentary titled The 100 Greatest Movie Stars put "One More Chance" to work as background music during its segment on their pick for #62, Robert Downey, Jr. (The rankings were based on the results of a poll of British viewers.) Considering the ups and downs of that particular actor's career, it's an understandable choice.

20. "Comrades!"

Used several times in the fourth episode (titled "Revolution!" and originally broadcast June 12, 2007) of the BBC 2 documentary Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain, most notably during a sequence concerning Margaret Thatcher's fall from power as U.K. Prime Minister. (The site visitor who was kind enough to tell me about this documentary cites the intense irony of the use of this song—the opening track from the PSB score to a film classic associated with Russia's communist revolution—in an program that deals largely with the victory of capitalism over trade unions in Thatcherite Britain.) In addition, "Comrades!" could also be heard in the February 13, 2011 episode of the BBC1 series Countryfile in a segment about foot and mouth disease and its effect on British cattle farmers. (Obviously the ominous mood of this track comes in handy for such things. ) Another BBC1 series, Country Tracks, also used "Comrades!" on October 23, 2011, apparently in a bit about Britain's Sandhurst Military Academy.

21. It's a Sin

Quite a few, not surprisingly for such a hugely popular song—though what is surprising is the large gaps between its earlier uses:

• The August 31, 1987 episode of the perennial British soap opera Coronation Street features "It's a Sin" during a scene in which the sound system for an upcoming party is being tested. (The song continues in the background until one of the characters asks another to "switch that row off.")
• It plays during a party scene in the January 17, 1992 episode (titled "Doctoring") of the British sitcom Watching.
• In the 2003 film Party Monster, it reportedly can be heard in the background during a hallucination scene when James (Seth Green) overdoses after Michael (Macaulay Culkin) tells him about killing Angel (Wilson Cruz).
• It's one of two PSB songs appearing in the 2005 Italian film Melissa P.
• The July 4, 2007 episode of the hit show Big Brother (U.K. edition) featured "It's a Sin" being played in its entirety during the housemates' "Sinful Party." The cast seemed to be having a great time dancing to it.
• The March 13, 2008 edition of the BBC1 political news show This Week used "It's a Sin" during a segment about the Vatican having recently announced a list of "modern sins," including such things as damaging the environment, experimenting on humans, and excessive wealth.
• The 2009 film Bronson includes a scene in a mental institution set to "It's a Sin." In the words of the film's protagonist, the "loonies" dance to the song. In light of the fact that the film is based on the true story of Charlie Bronson, notoriously known as "Britain’s most violent prisoner," that particular choice of music seems entirely appropriate. Incidentally, director Nicolas Winding Refn seriously considered asking the Boys to write and record a complete original soundtrack for the film, even going so far as to meet with them to discuss the possibility. But Chris and Neil found themselves much too busy at the time to take on the project. Besides, according to Refn, it turned out he "couldn't afford" the Boys.
• An orchestral cover of "It's a Sin"—possibly the 1987 rendition by the London Symphony Orchestra, although I'm not at all sure about that—was used as background music during a sequence of the September 29, 2009 BBC4 show Charlie Brooker's Gameswipe during which the host is describing (and the screen is depicting) some extremely violent video games.
• A May 10, 2010 special episode of the long-running British soap opera Coronation Street was devoted to the actress Maggie Jones, who portrayed the character of Blanche Hunt on the show from 1974 until just before her death in December 2009. "It's a Sin" played briefly during a sequence that dealt with Blanche's suspicions that her son-in-law Ken might be gay.
• On March 14, 2012, BBC2 aired a special current-affairs documentary titled Rights Gone Wrong? that dealt with conflicts arising out of competing moral perspectives on "human rights" in Britain—that is, instances in which one person's or group's rights apparently conflict with those of another person or group. Whose rights take precedence? Can "human rights" go too far? A very brief segment of "It's a Sin" could be heard roughly 21 minutes into this troubling program, which was presented by Scottish journalist Andrew Neil (who, incidentally, once listed "Being Boring" among his Desert Island Discs).
• The April 30, 2012 episode of the U.K. Channel 5 TV show 10 Things I Hate About… focused on the year 1987, so it's appropriate that they picked "It's a Sin," one of the big hits of that year, to play during a segment about a libel case brought by politician/writer Jeffrey Archer against the Daily Star newspaper after it had published allegations about his supposed financial dealings with a prostitute. It certainly kills two birds with one stone, in a matter of speaking.
• "It's a Sin" could be heard in the first episode (which debuted May 31, 2012) of the three-part Sky Atlantic documentary God Save the Queens, which celebrates popular gay performers in Britain in the years since the ascension of Elizabeth II to the throne, focusing on how they have helped change public attitudes toward homosexuality.
• The September 14, 2013 edition of the Sky1 TV show Now That's History! used this song as background music at one point—a timely choice given that the show focused on news stories of 1987.
• The October 30, 2013 episode of The Only Way Is Essex—a popular U.K. "scripted reality" soap opera—features a Halloween "Sin Party" at a dance club where guests dress up as one of the seven deadly sins. Appropriately enough, "It's a Sin" is playing just as the party starts.
• First airing on December 31, 1987, the third episode (titled "Cold Blood") of the third series of the British crime drama Taggart featured the song during a scene set at a fairground.
• As it had twice before, Coronation Street played "It's a Sin" during its January 26, 2015 episode, this time during a scene in which the character David Platt is trying to reach his estranged wife by leaving a message on her cell phone. And then, less than two weeks later (on February 6, to be precise), it could be heard once again playing in the background on a jukebox. Curious latter-day recurrences for a song that was, at that point, more than a quarter-century old, don't you think?
• On February 22, 2015, "Sin" accompanied a scene in which a couple were disposing of a stolen television set in the second episode of a three-part BBC adaptation of J.K. Rowling's 2012 novel The Casual Vacancy.
• Appropriately enough, the song also features in a 2014 film comedy set in 1987—appropriately (again) titled 1987.
• "Sin" could be heard in a scene set in a club in the German TV movie Der Fall Barschel, which first aired on February 6, 2016. The film—a fictionalized portrayal of true-life events surrounding the resignation and death of German state governor Uwe Barschel and the subsequent investigation—is set in 1987 at a time shortly after the song hit #1 in Germany.
• An orchestral rendition of "It's a Sin" was repeatedly used during the presentations each day of the stage winners of the May 2016 Giro d'Italia bicycle competition. (It could be heard not only on the Eurosport network but on other broadcast outlets as well, indicating that the choice of music was made not by TV personnel but rather by the folks in charge of the competition itself.)
• The July 20, 2016 edition of BBC's The One Show featured the song during a segment looking back at the (now-classic) 1985 British film My Beautiful Laundrette. OK, so the year was a little off.
• "Hva mener du om drikking?" ("What's your opinion of drinking?"), the third episode of season four of the hugely popular Norwegian teen-drama series Skam (which translates as "Shame"), first airing on April 28, 2017, featured "It's a Sin" as its closing song.
• A highlights show on the Tour de France Stage 1 trials that aired on July 1, 2017 on Britain's ITV4 network used a segment as background music just after the opening titles.
• The two-part BBC documentary Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain included portions of no fewer than five PSB songs, this being one of them. "It's a Sin," in fact, figured in both episodes, airing on July 27 and August 3, 2017, respectively.
• The February 17, 2018 episode of the U.K. comedy game show Through the Keyhole employed the song during a segment based in the home of TV/radio presenter Jamie Theakston.
• On April 19, 2018, the light-hearted British political/current affairs TV show This Week played "It's a Sin" during a segment focusing on matters of morality in the current political climate in the United States, the United Kingdom, and certain Commonwealth nations.
• The January 14, 2019 episode of the U.K. soap opera Hollyoaks plays an excerpt of the song right near the beginning.
• The BBC Two show Back in Time for School featured it (along with a great many other songs from the 1980s) on its February 14, 2019 episode.
• The 2019 film Blinded by the Light, set in 1987 in the U.K. town of Luton, concerns Javed, the teen son of Pakistani immigrants, who becomes enamored of the music of Bruce Springsteen. The soundtrack is understandably dominated by Springsteen's music, but other songs of the period are also used, among them PSB's "It's a Sin," which is heard right off the bat! In fact, script co-writer Sarfraz Manzoor described to an interviewer the importance of "It's a Sin" in particular: "If you listen to the lyrics it's basically about someone who is not able to do what they want and that's exactly what Javed is like! I thought, we've got to try and start the film with it because it would first get everyone into 1987 and also tell them what the theme of the film is."
• The November 21, 2019 episode of the popular U.S. sitcom Young Sheldon, titled "The Sin of Greed and a Chimichanga From Chi-Chi's," featured a sizable chunk of "It's a Sin" as the soundtrack for a segment in which Sheldon's very religious mom strives to rid her home of such evil influences as television, music, magazines, and other things that, from her perspective, encourage wicked behavior.
• Ordinarily (as I state in my preliminary notes above) "bumper music" wouldn't count here, but I'm making an exception for the U.S. NBC television broadcast of its Sunday Night Football game on November 22, 2020 between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Kansas City Chiefs, during which a bit of "It's a Sin" indeed served at one point as bumper music. As one of my site visitors has suggested, perhaps this choice was inspired by Las Vegas's nickname as "Sin City." But PSB and U.S. football—as the saying goes, whodathunkit?
• Writer/producer Russell T. Davies's 2021 U.K. miniseries It's a Sin, set in the 1980s during the peak of the AIDS crisis, obviously takes its title from the song. But the song itself appears only once, and rather briefly at that. In Episode 4, one of the main characters, Ritchie Tozer (played by Years & Years frontman Olly Alexander), plays the song on the jukebox in his local pub. (This same scene had been used in some of the TV commercials that had promoted the series in advance.)
• It accompanied the opening montage of football (soccer) goals on the February 3, 2021 edition of the U.K. sports program Match of the Day.
• The February 23, 2021 episode of the BBC1 regional news show South Today (covering central southern England) included a segment on Margaret Thatcher's infamous 1988 speech at a Conservative Party conference in which she promoted anti-gay Section 28 legislation. During this segment, the program producers played "It's a Sin" in the background, with the volume increasing as Neil sings the words “It’s a sin." It then continues in the background as the reporter describes how things have improved for LGBTQ youth in the U.K. in the years since.
• The April 4, 2021 edition of U.K. reality/game show The Circle used a substantial portion of "It's a Sin" as well.
• "Sin" was one of two PSB tracks (the other being "Always on My Mind") playing in the background at an LGBT Pride event on the June 30, 2021 episode of the long-running U.K. soap Emmerdale.
• A cover of "Sin" by Korn frontman Jonathan Davis appears on the soundtrack for the 2021 Amazon Prime streaming series Paradise City. Presumably this means that his rendition can be heard in the series itself, although I don't yet know that for sure or, if so, in what context.
• The classic PSB rendition plays at the start of the third episode ("Lazarus," first airing on July 11, 2022) of the three-part BBC documentary series AIDS: The Unheard Tapes.
• The BBC show Homes Under the Hammer, which has shown a penchant for using PSB tracks, employed "It's a Sin" during Episode 11 of Season 26, which first aired on April 4, 2023.
• "It's a Sin" could be heard very prominently (and with a strong thematic connection as one of the characters does something she perhaps ought not be doing) on the July 24, 2023 episode of the BBC Scotland series River City.
• The 2010 cover of "It's a Sin" by the Canadian band Metric could be heard in the 2023 Netflix Spanish slasher/horror film El club de los lectores criminales (Killer Book Club), serving as background music during a scene about 23 minutes into the film showing its various protagonists going on with their daily lives after playing a prank on their professor that unintentionally caused his death.
• The BBC documentary arts program Imagine... Russell T Davies: The Doctor and Me, which aired on December 18, 2023, played bits of the song on several occasions when the aforementioned 2021 series It's a Sin was mentioned.

22. Being Boring

• The same 2001 "saloon car" episode of the original U.K. Top Gear series (the original air date unknown at this time) previously mentioned in relation to "Suburbia" also briefly featured a snippet of "Being Boring."
• It's one of two Pet Shop Boys songs used in the 2005 erotic Italian film drama Melissa P (the other being "It's a Sin," as noted above).
• It was heard at one point in the Brazilian teledrama Meu Bem Meu Mal ("My Good, My Bad") during the early 1990s.
• The 2014 U.S. film White Bird in a Blizzard employs the song as background music during a scene in which the teenage protagonist finds herself spending time uncomfortably with her father and his new girlfriend.
• The May 2, 2015 edition of the British TV football (soccer) program Match of the Day used "Being Boring" as background music for a segment on the Premier League's Chelsea Football Club, which at the time was doing extremely well despite common accusations of playing in a "boring" manner.
• It's also one of five PSB songs heard in the two-part BBC documentary Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain; in this case it was Episode 1, first airing on July 27, 2017.
• The television documentary Damien Hirst by Harry Hill, in which comedian Harry Hill reviews the career of conceptual artist Damien Hirst, first aired on April 18, 2017 as an episode of the Sky Arts documentary series Passions. It employs "Being Boring" as background music during a segment in which Hill covers the year 1990, describing various "boring" things that occurred that year.
• It played over the closing credits of the 1993 BBC2 documentary The Thatcher Years.

23. It Couldn't Happen Here

Hurricanes are by no means unheard of in Britain, but they're certainly a rarity. So it's perhaps not surprising that in 1997, when the BBC ran The Great Storm—a tenth-anniversary documentary on what was technically not a hurricane but a hurricane-like system that struck southern England and northern France on October 15-16, 1987, doing massive damage and claiming at least 19 lives—they included this song at one point as background music. Much more closely related to its original intent, however, was how it was used in the two-part BBC documentary Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain, specifically Episode 2, first airing on August 3, 2017.

24. I'm with Stupid

The TV movie Clapham Junction, which first aired on U.K. Channel 4 on July 22, 2007 as one of a series of special programs in its 40 Years Out series (commemorating the fortieth anniversary of the decriminalization of homosexual acts in Britain), includes a disturbing segment that makes use of this song. One of the main characters, portrayed by Paul Nicholls, is picked up by a guy at a London gay club and goes back to his apartment. His host puts on some music and they start talking. The man starts to make a pass at Nicholls's character, who says he that likes the track playing ("I'm with Stupid") and asks him to turn it up. As he does so, Nicholls approaches from behind and strikes him with a glass ashtray. The dazed, bloodied man pleads with Nicholls, asking why he did that, to which Nicholls replies, "'Cause I hate the fucking Pet Shop Boys!" (or words to that effect; I've read differing reports). He then proceeds to beat the guy up, forces the contents of the ashtray down his throat, and urinates on him. Not a pretty scene. Neil and Chris were absolutely livid when they learned that their music had been used in this way—and who can blame them? After they made their intense displeasure clear to the appropriate authorities, both "I'm with Stupid" and the reference to the Pet Shop Boys themselves were deleted from subsequent reruns of the program.

25. Birthday Boy

The August 26, 2007 episode of the ongoing BBC documentary project Child of Our Time, which follows the lives of 25 children from all over the United Kingdom born in the year 2000, included a brief portion of this song.

26. Integral

The same episode of Child of Our Time noted just above for "Birthday Boy" featured this PSB track as well, playing during a segment in which children were asked whether various "cartoon stereotypes" (such as person with green hair, a very slow runner, and so on) should be included or excluded from the group.

27. I Want a Dog

The February 11, 2008 broadcast of the NBC morning news show Today included a bit of the Introspective mix of this song during a report on employers reading their employees' email. (It obviously wasn't chosen for its theme but probably for its sound.) Considering that less than two weeks later the same program used "Opportunities" (see above), it makes you suspect that someone who makes decisions about their on-air music must be a PSB fan. A brief segment of the Introspective version can also be heard during a party scene in the 1995 French film Nelly et Monsieur Arnaud (English: Nelly and Mr. Arnaud). And it figures as well in a scene set in a gay club in the 2023 film All of Us Strangers.

28. I Don't Know What You Want But I Can't Give It Any More

Part of this song plays near the conclusion of the 1999 Italian film comedy Vacanze Di Natale 2000.

29. Flamboyant

An April 2004 episode (exact date unknown) of the BBC show Football Focus apparently played this song during a concluding montage of "flamboyant" goals being scored. The June 9, 2008 episode of the BBC2 show Mary Queen of Shops—a sort of "fashion store makeover" program starring fashionista Mary Portas—also included "Flamboyant." I haven't seen the show myself, but I imagine it was incredibly appropriate. And the "Michael Mayer Kompakt Remix" of the song was used on the soundtrack of the 2008 ski film Turbo.

30. What Have I Done to Deserve This?

• The September 7, 1987 showing of the U.K. soap Coronation Street includes this song during a scene set in a dance club, and it could be heard again (this time playing in the background in a pub) in the March 22, 1998 episode of the same program.
• It's also heard in the second episode (February 18, 2005) of the short-lived U.K. Channel 4 sitcom Nathan Barley, though I'm afraid I don't know anything more about the context in which it's used.
• It was one of three PSB songs used on June 26, 2009 episode of the BBC's Homes Under the Hammer.
• The September 14, 2013 edition of the Sky1 TV show Now That's History! (focusing on news stories of 1987) played it in the background at one point.
• It was one of two PSB tracks used on the February 23, 2016 episode of the U.K. TV show Back in Time for the Weekend, in which a family tries to live as folks did in some previous decade.
• The second episode (first airing on August 11, 2016) of the three-part BBC series The 80s with Dominic Sandbrook employed "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" during a segment concerning the Thatcher government's efforts to educate the British public about AIDS.
• The light-hearted BBC current affairs commentary program This Week used it on March 21, 2019 as background music during a segment on the ongoing controversy over Britain's anticipated exit from the Eurpean Union ("Brexit").
• The opening bars of the song were used at the start of Series 3, Episode 6, airing on March 22, 2021, of the U.K. reality/game show The Circle.
• It was one of three PSB songs part of which could be heard in the 1993 BBC2 documentary The Thatcher Years; it played over a brief segment describing her being elected to a third term as Prime Minister.
• This song was featured in the opening scenes of Series 2, Episode 5 (April 27, 2023), titled "Lost at Sea," of the U.K. Channel 4 comedy/crime drama The Curse.
• A couple of characters briefly sing-speak the title line "What have I, what have I, what have I done to deserve this?" in the second episode ("Can't Get There from Here," first airing October 6, 2019) of the short-lived U.S. animated series Bless the Harts.
• It features in Episode 3, "By Homer, It's a Winner's Wreath," of the 2024 Netflix comedy The Decameron, based on the classic 14th-century short story collection by Boccaccio. "What Have I Done to Deserve This?" is heard in a scene when the guests and servants at the villa are playing games to amuse themselves.

31. Somewhere

The Pet Shop Boys' hit rendition of this standard can be heard almost in its entirety in the final episode (titled "How I Got My Globe") of the aforementioned U.K. series Beautiful People, which aired on November 6, 2008. It plays as the two young central characters, Simon and Kylie, are exploring London for the first time. The October 18, 2011 episode of the UK show Shameless ("The Maguire Motto") also used it.

32. London

A brief excerpt from one of the "Felix da Housecat" mixes of this PSB song could be heard in the original version of the documentary-style telefilm about parkour Jump London, which first aired on U.K. television in 2003. The excerpt is so brief, in fact, that if you sneezed a couple times in a row at the wrong moment, you'd probably miss it. So it's perhaps no great loss that it was deleted from the film's DVD release. "London" could also reportedly be heard playing in the background on the radio during a scene in a 2003 episode of the U.K. soap EastEnders.

33. Euroboy

In 2003, the publisher of the U.K. gay soft-porn magazine Euroboy released a direct-to-video film titled Euroboy Tender Young Lust. Like the parent magazine (so to speak), the film was softcore, but adults-only nevertheless. Quite surprisingly—or not, depending on your perspective—this Pet Shop Boys song was used in the film. The video cover even states "Music by Pet Shop Boys," and the Boys are thanked in the credits.

34. The Noise

Although it can be considered a "song" in only the loosest sense, Chris and Neil created this somewhat experimental instrumental piece in 1996 for a short-lived Saturday morning U.K. television music magazine with the same title.

35. Domino Dancing

• It could be heard playing on a café jukebox in both the October 19 and 31, 1988 episodes of the U.K. soap Coronation Street.
• It was also used in the Brazilian teledrama O Salvador da Pátria (Saviour of the Native Land) during its run in 1989.
• Before long it was used again, this time as background music for a report on a football (soccer) team on the August 18, 1989 edition of the U.K. sports show Saint and Greavsie. But then it seemed to vanish from television until it finally resurfaced—once more in Brazil—
• In the November 18, 2011 episode of that country's gay-themed TV comedy series Macho Man, when it served as background music for a scene set in a hairdressing salon.
• It was also used in the May 26, 2014 edition of BBC One's evening magazine program The One Show, during which it served as background music during a segment on a giant domino toppling event in Coventry.
• Also in 2014—in what is surely one of most curious uses of a PSB song in film—avant-garde artist Anahita Razmi, a German director of Iranian descent, produced a film just over six-and-a-half hours in length titled Domino Dancing, which documents a real-life surreptitious dance marathon held earlier that year in a private living room in Tehran (where such activities are legally forbidden), in which the participants danced to a continuous loop of the song's chorus, gradually dropping out one-by-one from exhaustion. That's certainly apt given the song's recurring "Watch them all fall down" line, isn't it?
• "Watch them all fall down" was undoubtedly also the inspiration for its brief use about three minutes into Tyson Fury - An Original Bored Film Documentary about the British professional boxer, which first streamed online on March 22, 2019.
• The July 19, 2002 episode (titled "Un trabajo involuntario" ["An Involuntary Job"], the final episode of the first season) of the Argentinian TV series Los Simuladores (The Pretenders) very briefly included "Domino Dancing" in a scene near the end in which the four main characters are on an airplane; we hear a snippet of the music each is listening to, which serves to contrast their personalities and tastes, and one of them is the PSB song.

36. Love etc.

This song quickly proved itself extremely popular for use in TV shows. Examples so far include:

• The British soap opera EastEnders has long used PSB as incidental background music, often playing on a jukebox. (Several examples are listed above.) The tradition continued when "Love etc." could be heard on the June 9, 2009 episode and again on September 28, 2009. (It was the opening scene of the latter episode, which featured two gay characters. As one of my site visitors has observed, it "seems that in a scene with two gay characters there has to be a song featuring a gay singer.")
• "Love etc." has also played on more than one occasion (June 15 and 16, 2009, at least—perhaps others as well) on the popular German soap Verbotene Liebe ("Forbidden Love").
• It was used in the British TV special When Diets Go Wrong, an at times disturbing look at the horrible personal disasters that can occasionally occur as a result of attempts to lose weight, which originally aired on BBC3 on June 11, 2009. I don't yet know, however, the context in which it was used.
• The "Beautiful Dub" mix of the song served as sporadic background music for the September 26, 2009 ITV1 special When Piers Met Sir Cliff, in which host Piers Morgan interviews Cliff Richard at the latter's palatial mansion in Barbados. (Considering the song's subject matter, could there be some subtle commentary there?)
• The February 16, 2010 episode of the controversial British "dramedy" Shameless played the song during a party scene set in the local pub.
• The second episode of the three-part BBC2 documentary series History of Now: The Story of the Noughties, titled "All Together Now?" first aired on January 7, 2010 and included both the album/single version of "Love etc." (played over the end credits) and its "Beautiful Dub."
• The July 18, 2011 episode of the U.S. NBC morning program The Today Show employed "Love etc." as the music accompanying a segment titled "Obsessed in America: Why Are We Fascinated with Breasts?" No joke.
• The October 23, 2011 episode of the BBC1 show Countryfile also used "Love etc." during a segment encouraging viewers to submit pictures for the 2012 Countryfile calendar.
• A brief excerpt of the song was used in the May 2, 2016 episode of of the German TV game show Wer weiss denn sowas? (roughly translated as "Who knows stuff like that?").

37. New York City Boy

Episode 36 of the popular Colombian show Yo soy Betty, la fea ("I'm Betty, the Ugly One"), a telenovela that ran from 1999 to 2001—and which was subsequently spun off into more than a dozen versions in other languages, such as the U.S. hit Ugly Betty—featured a flamboyantly gay character singing a very brief excerpt (the title line) of this PSB hit. Not being fluent in Spanish, however, I'm not quite sure of the context.

38. Numb

Famously used as the background music for a montage run on a BBC Match of the Day broadcast in early July 2006 dealing with England's elimination from the World Cup competition (soccer to my fellow Americans, but football to much of the rest of the world). Although "Numb" was already under consideration by the Boys and their record company as a potential single, this montage proved so popular that it may well have provided the final nudge, resulting in it becoming the third single from Fundamental. Also, the July 19, 2015 episode of the BBC program Countryfile made use of an instrumental passage of this track (as well as two others, "Breathing Space" and "Invisible," as noted below).

39. Did You See Me Coming?

Served as background music during a "montage-ish" sequence on an early June 2009 episode of the Brazilian "reality show" A Fazenda ("The Farm"). The instrumental mix was also one of several PSB tracks that were used in Autumn 2011 episodes of the U.K. television show Countryfile as background music to display photo submissions for its 2012 calendar competition. And that same instrumental could be heard at one point in the background of the February 24, 2012 episode of the British children's show Incredible Edibles, a program that's apparently devoted to demonstrating to kids just how unusual, bizarre, and/or outright disgusting items that pass for food can be. Of course, that's all a matter of taste, isn't it?

40. Rent

• In January 2001, the third episode of the fifth series of the U.K. political comedy show The Mark Thomas Comedy Product played "Rent" over the closing credits. Appropriately enough, the episode—titled "Michael Meacher" after the then-current Minister of State for the Environment—took said politician to task for alleged hypocrisy for his socialist critique of owners of multiple properties when he was himself apparently a very much landlord.
• It's also used in the 2009 Romanian film Cea mai fericita fata din lume ("The Happiest Girl in the World"), in which it can be heard in a scene near the beginning playing on a car radio.
• "Rent" found its way into the May 14, 2012 episode of the Argentine TV comedy Graduados.
• It played over the end-credits of the March 9, 2016 episode of the U.K. sitcom Raised by Wolves—appropriately enough seeing as how that particular episode concerned a landlady evicting her tenants.
• It could be heard in the background of a scene during the September 28, 2020 edition of the long-running U.K. soap opera EastEnders.
• The U.K. ITV television documentary Billion Pound Bond Street, which first aired on June 10, 2021, concerns (according to its press release) "London’s most exclusive shopping street for 300 years. The glamorous half mile between Oxford Street and Piccadilly boasts more luxury brands and more royal warrants than any other in Britain." In one scene, two people are discussing the sky-high rent on the street, during which "Rent" is briefly playing in the background.
• The 2023 film Saltburn has a dinner-party karaoke scene in which one of the characters induces another to sing the Pet Shop Boys' "Rent," an apparent attempt to humiliate him by suggesting he is parasitically sponging off their wealthy family ("I love you, you pay my rent").

41. You Only Tell Me You Love Me When You're Drunk

Used in the second episode (titled "Zellers letzter Auftrag," meaning "Zeller's Last Order") of the eighth season of the popular German police drama Siska, which originally aired on March 4, 2005. It's playing in the background on a radio or stereo in a scene in which the title character, Siska, and another police officer visit a computer shop to interrogate a worker there suspected of murder.

42. King of Rome

A telenovela from Brazil, Viver a Vida ("To Live the Life"), makes recurring use of this PSB track as something akin to the "romantic theme music" of one of the couples who are at the heart of the story. One (but not the only) example occurs in Part 4, which first aired on September 23, 2009. I can't help but wonder whether the song's own theme and mood suggests a possible tragic outcome to their story.

43. Liberation

The "Liberation" music video—specially recreated to emphasize its three-dimensional quality—was featured in the 2000 film CyberWorld, a compilation of 3D animation that also includes the famous 1995 "Homer³" segment from The Simpsons, an excerpt from the movie Antz, and various other examples of three-dimensional animated rendering on the computer. By virtue of that same video, a short excerpt of "Liberation" was also used in the TV special The Greatest Ever 3D Moments, which first aired on U.K. Channel 4 on November 21, 2009, and during which the onscreen commentators talked about it briefly.

44. Beautiful People

This song was used in the December 23, 2009 episode of the BBC1 "school drama" Waterloo Road. It played in the background during a scene set in a hallway involving two separate conversations between pairs of teachers. There didn't seem to be any "thematic connection," so to speak, unless it was simply to suggest that these particular teachers are "beautiful." (Or is that they, like the narrator of the song, merely want to be "beautiful"?) Then again, I've always regarded teaching as quite a lovely profession—though as a former teacher I may be a bit biased. Also, the instrumental mix was also one of various PSB tracks used in Autumn 2011 episodes of the U.K. TV show Countryfile as background music while showing photo submissions for its 2012 calendar competition.

45. Absolutely Fabulous

Maybe it doesn't really count, but a modified version of the Pet Shop Boys' "Absolutely Fabulous" video was featured in an "Ab Fab" TV special titled Absolutely Fabulous Moments, which was originally broadcast on July 24, 1994. (I'm not sure on which network it first ran, although I believe it has been shown on both BBC America and Comedy Central.) Other special programs about Ab Fab in the years since have used segments of the PSB track in various ways. If, however, you don't wish to count these instances, then several other more recent television occurrences surely do qualify. In the U.K. Channel 4 documentary Growing Up Gay, first broadcast in 2002, it could be heard briefly playing in "real life" during an interview segment a little more than three minutes into the program. "Absolutely Fabulous" also featured in the July 27, 2003 episode of Futurama, which was aptly titled "Obsolutely Fabulous," thereby making it very close to the "title song." Both the February 22, 2009 episode of the U.K. cooking competition show Celebrity Come Dine with Me and the premier episode of the seventh series/season of the U.K. edition of Celebrity Big Brother, which aired on January 3, 2010, used "Absolutely Fabulous" for background music at certain points. Later in 2010 (on August 29), BBC4 first broadcast the documentary Blackpool on Film, in which the ''Rollo Our Tribe Tongue-in-Cheek Remix'' of "Absolutely Fabulous" could be heard during a sequence that focused on the famed "Blackpool Illuminations"—which are, after all, pretty fabulous. The April 29, 2013 edition (Series 17, Episode 14) of the BBC program Homes Under the Hammer also briefly employed a remix of this track. The November 22, 2018 episode of the U.K. news show Good Morning Britain played "Absolutely Fabulous" in the background during a clip of actor John Barrowman's exploits as an ongoing contestant on the TV show I'm a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! on which his repeated use of the exclamation "Fabulous!" has become something of a catchphrase. And a special edition of the U.K. The Apprentice, subtitled Best Bits: Celebrity Specials, first airing on October 8, 2020, briefly featured the track during a segment in which Trinny Woodall tells Cheryl Cole to exercise in order to fend off exhaustion.

46. A Red Letter Day

On December 27, 1998, the fifth season of the U.K. TV series The Car's the Star featured the song twice—first, near the beginning of the program, playing the instrumental "marching" section before the Russian choir joins in, and then later a lengthier segment that includes some of Neil's singing—in an episode focusing (appropriately enough) on the Russian automobile manufacturer Lada. More than a decade later, the three-part BBC4 documentary titled Crude Britannia: The Story of North Sea Oil ( the title pretty much says what it's all about) uses "A Red Letter Day" during a sequence in its third episode (which first aired on July 2, 2009) concerning the Labour Party regaining power in 1997 and the widespread optimism that followed in its wake. Also, each episode of the three-part 2003 BBC documentary series Headhunting the Homeless, concerning the plight of the U.K.'s homeless population, opened and closed with segments of one of the brilliant Trouser Enthusiasts remixes of this song—probably the Congo Dongo Dubstramental, but possibly the very similar Autoerotic Decapitation Mix.

47. Go West

• The Boys' hit rendition was used in the August 30, 2010 first episode of the fifth series of the popular U.K. "reality show" Coach Trip. The show deals with groups of strangers, traveling in pairs, who travel together by bus to various destinations. From time to time they vote on the couple whom they would least like to accompany them any longer, with two-time "winners" getting the boot. The last pair left win the game. Considering the show's travel theme, "Go West" seems a more than appropriate choice of music.
• Going back quite a few years, the November 15, 1993 episode of Coronation Street featured it on the old cafe jukebox.
• The December 9, 1994 edition of the BBC sketch comedy show Harry Enfield and Chums also made use of it in one of those situations, always good for a laugh or two, in which a naive "straight" guy goes into a gay bar without realizing it's a gay bar. In this case, he doesn't even realize when he's being hit upon and, after getting drunk, ends up going home and sleeping with another guy.
• It could be heard on the June 26, 2009, March 12, 2013, and September 1, 2017 editions of the popular BBC One morning auction/home-improvement show Homes Under the Hammer, which has a long reputation for playing songs thematically linked to the houses and/or persons onscreen at the time.
• The April 26, 2014 episode of BBC's Holiday Hit Squad used it to accompany a segment about vacationing in the English county of Cornwall—part of what the British call the "West Country," thereby explaining the choice of song.
• On September 23, 2014 BBC2's Newsnight concluded with a rather tongue-in-cheek mix of PSB's "Go West" with excerpts from Labour Party leader Ed Miliband's speech earlier that day in which he employed the word "together" no fewer than 44 times, more often even than it's used in the song itself.
• The PSB version is used as background music during this opening and closing scenes of the film Mountains May Depart, Chinese director Jia Zhangke's entry in the 2015 Cannes International Film Festival. The director explained that he chose the song for such a prominent role because the film, set during an extended period beginning in 1999, begins at a time when discos were becoming extremely popular in China. As he put it, "'Go West' was my favorite song and it left a deep impression on me. Because whenever they played this song, all the young people in the disco, it didn't matter whether you know each other or not, would line up and start dancing together."
• The U.K. Channel 4 show George Clarke's Amazing Spaces (which deals with unusual small-scale building projects) used it on its November 5, 2015 episode. At the culimination of an ongoing feature about building a floating beach hut, the PSB rendition of "Go West" served as background music for its maiden voyage around a marina.
• It could be heard in Episode 2 (first airing on August 3, 2017) of the two-part BBC documentary Prejudice and Pride: The People's History of LGBTQ Britain.
• On the June 5, 2018 edition of the U.K. TV quiz show Richard Osman' s House of Games, an excerpt of the PSB version of "Go West" serves as a clue for a question on the subject of spoonerisms, the other clue being the sentence "Slow down visitor!" (The answer was "Whoa, guest!")
• Another U.K. game show appearance on January 4, 2019: on The Big Fat Quiz of Everything, a portion of "Go West" was played for a question asking what links it with two other songs ("Seven Nation Army" and "Bread of Heaven"). The answer was that they are all used as chants by football (soccer) fans.
• On April 12, 2021, the long-running U.K. soap EastEnders used "Go West" during a scene set in a gay bar, The Prince Albert, during a conversation between two characters, Kathy and Karen. EastEnders played it again only about six weeks later, on May 27, 2021, in the Queen Vic pub as Kathy was talking to Mila. And it could be heard yet again on the January 31, 2023 episode.
• The PSB version could also be heard during the final episode (10 of 10) of Series 7 of The Great British Sewing Bee on BBC1, first airing on June 16, 2021.
• It also served as background music during the opening montage of Freedom: 50 Years of Pride, a celebration of the modern LGBTQ+ movement that first aired on U.K. Channel 4 on July 2, 2022.
• A brief excerpt of the PSB version of "Go West" was played on the March 2, 2024 edition of the BBC1 game show The Wheel while spinning to find the celebrity who would help answer a question on explorers.
  

48. It Doesn't Often Snow at Christmas

It took more than a decade of Christmases for PSB's 1997 stab at a holiday standard to make it onto a non-musical TV show. But it could finally be heard on a December 10, 2010 episode of the perennial U.K. sudser EastEnders. It can be heard playing in the background on the jukebox in a pub scene in which two characters have a decidedly non-Christmasy conversation. One of my site visitors has astutely suggested that the song serves "to amplify and echo the lack of Christmas spirit in this scene." Almost exactly a year later—on December 8, 2011, to be precise—EastEnders once again used the song in another pub scene. Roughly a decade later, on December 20, 2021, it could be heard again on EastEnders playing on the kitchen radio for a little over a minute as characters looked at old family photos and then knocked over the Christmas tree. And EastEnders featured it yet again on the December 27, 2022 and December 6, 2023 episodes. The show's producers are clearly quite fond of it. One of my site visitors also recalls it being played some years ago during a scene of the German soap opera Unter uns ("Between Us") in which characters are decorating their home for the Christmas season, but he doesn't recall precisely when, and we haven't been able to figure it out.

49. This Used to Be the Future

On April 11, 2011, BBC4 aired a TV documentary titled The Great Estate: The Rise and Fall of the Council House, concerning the era of state housing for the U.K. working classes. This program used in its title sequence an instrumental loop taken from this PSB song and a brief segment of Neil's vocal. It was surely chosen for the lyrics' expression of frustrated utopian idealism, which meshed quite nicely with the theme of the documentary. This song was also used at the very end (continuing over the closing credits) of the final episode (February 27, 2014) of the three-part BBC Four architectural documentary The Brits Who Built the Modern World.

50. Where the Streets Have No Name (I Can't Take My Eyes Off You)

The PSB cover version could be heard in the background during a scene in the August 18, 2011 episode of Coronation Street, the U.K.'s longest-running soap opera. It's also used during the closing credits of the March 2, 2015 edition of the Irish sitcom Moone Boy; in fact, it's essentially the title song of the episode, which is dubbed "Where the Streets Do Have Names" (my emphasis). And it was also one of several PSB songs that could be heard on the December 20, 2023 episode of the BBC series What We Were Watching, in this case during excerpts from the Boys' classic Performance concert.

51. A Man Could Get Arrested

Used as the background music for a segment on swearing at policemen on the November 24, 2011 episode of the popular BBC political news show This Week. (Apparently it's no longer an arrestable offence in the U.K. to swear at a policeman.) Incidentally, the host of This Week is journalist Andrew Neil, who happened to choose "Being Boring" as one of his Desert Island Discs when he appeared on that program several years ago.

52. Was That What It Was?

This track was used in the second episode of the 1987 U.K. TV miniseries The Beiderbecke Tapes, playing well in the background for about two full minutes as dance music in a bar as two characters have a rather tense conversation. Then it quite abruptly and curiously changes mid-song to "I'm Your Man" by Wham!

53. Heart

• On both April 27 and May 23, 1988, this song could be heard playing in a cafe jukebox on episodes of the U.K. soap opera Coronation Street. Incredibly (considering that it was a #1 hit in the U.K.), the next instance of "Heart" on a non-musical film or TV show didn't occur for nearly a quarter-century, when the January 18, 2012 episode of the BBC show Daily Politics played it during a retrospective montage of political film footage from, sure enough, 1988.
• That was quickly followed up with another occurrence, on the January 27, 2012 episode of the U.K. soap EastEnders, playing in the background at the neighborhood pub (where PSB music is clearly a perennial favorite). But it sounded as though it was the "live" rendition from the Pandemonium CD.
• "Heart" is also one of several PSB songs that have been used on the Argentine TV comedy Graduados; it could be heard during a reunion party scene on the December 19, 2012 episode.
• The March 29, 2013 edition of Piers Morgan's Life Stories used the song's Dance Mix as background music during a segment that summarized the career of Swedish actress Britt Ekland, the focus of that evening's show.
• A BBC live broadcast on May 1, 2017 of the world snooker (billiards) championship finals made use of "Heart" during a montage of scenes from previous finals matches.
• On November 25, 2019, the BBC Quiz show Only Connect offered a snippet of "Heart" as part of a question asking what it had in common with "Gold" by Spandau Ballet and "Magic" by Pilot. (Answer: they are all names of U.K. radio stations.)
• At about 30:25 into the May 5, 2024 episode of German documentary series Terra X History, titled "Mythos Disco - Nachtleben in Ost und West" ("The Disco Myth - Nightlife in East and West"), a fairly lengthy excerpt (about 45 seconds) of "Heart" surfaced as backing music. (This segment deals with the 1980s East German "dance scene.")
• The September 19, 2024 edition of the U.K. "reality show" My Mum, Your Dad employed "Heart" as background music for several minutes of dialogue early in the episode.

54. Nothing Has Been Proved

Dusty Springfield's hit version of this Tennant-Lowe song—which was composed for and could be heard over the end credits of the 1989 film Scandal—was reportedly also used in early 2002 during a second-series episode of the U.K. sketch comedy Big Train. I haven't yet been able to determine the precise date of its initial airing, but it was during a segment parodying Christine Keeler, a key figure in the Profumo Affair, which was of course the subject of the song to begin with. Also, an episode of the U.K. edition of Antiques Roadshow, possibly first airing in 2014 (the date is uncertain at this time), featured someone who brought in some Profumo Affair memorabilia for evaluation, followed by a video montage set to this song (again Dusty's rendition).

55. Do I Have To?

A most surprising song to grace a TV show. It could be heard in the background in a scene set in a posh restaurant in the February 17, 1988 episode of the venerable U.K. soap Coronation Street.

56. Memory of the Future

It's not just twentieth-century PSB songs that have found their way onto Coronation Street. Its March 1, 2013 episode featured this latter-day single (though, interestingly, the album version, not the single mix) playing prominently in the background at the Rover's Return pub for more than two minutes. And another British soap opera, Emmerdale, used the song in its February 17, 2014 episode, playing in the background during a scene in which several characters are discussing HIV—hopefully a coincidence and not some sort of purposeful suggestion of linking PSB with HIV.

57. Breathing Space

The March 17, 2013 episode of the BBC Two show Toughest Place to Be a… dealt with the topic, "Toughest Place to Be a Farmer." The place designated as being the toughest to be a farmer was the Samburu district of north-central Kenya, home of the Samburu, who traditionally earn their living as keepers and herders of dairy cattle. "Breathing Space" was used at one point in this episode: a most appropriate selection if one indeed regards the open country of north-central Kenya as offering lots of breathing space. The instrumental version of the song could also be heard on the August 4, 2013 edition of the BBC One program Countryfile, focusing on the scenic Wye Valley bordering England and Wales; again, an apt choice of music. Countryfile used it again—along with two other PSB instrumental segments ("Invisible" and "Numb")—in its July 19, 2015 episode, this time dealing with Northumberland.

58. Invisible

The Brazilian telenovela Flor do Caribe ("Flower of the Caribbean") featured this song on its March 20, 2013 episode as background music during scenes set on tropical beaches. (It was probably chosen more for its sound than its meaning.) And as noted just above, the BBC show Countryfile used a portion of the instrumental version on its July 19, 2015 edition; in fact, the May 2, 2021 episode of Countryfile used a brief instrumental segment as well.

59. Pandemonium

Since at least early May 2013, the Israeli television show Keshet's Morning has used this PSB song as its opening theme music. (The show was later renamed Friday Morning with Galit and Yoav when it went to just one day a week, but it still continued to use "Pandemonium.") And the August 23, 2020 episode of the German TV show Der Trödeltrupp (The Junk Troop), in which people try to convert their household junk into cash, briefly used an instrumental segment as background music.

60. Electricity

Played briefly in the background during a segment about electricity and the U.K. electric power industry on the March 25, 2013 episode of the BBC One daily newsmagazine The One Show. I suppose the fact that the song really doesn't have anything to do with electricity in that sense didn't bother the producers. By the same token, the November 6, 2014 edition of the U.K. consumer rights program Watchdog featured a segment on an electrician allegedly doing substandard work, during which several songs with an "electrical" theme could be heard faintly in the background, PSB's "Electricity" among them.

61. Transparent

This track could be heard playing in the background during a report on the July 11, 2013 edition of the BBC 2 news show Newsnight about the Caucasus-region nation of Georgia moving from corruption toward greater "transparency."

62. Bolshy

In one of the quickest-ever uses of a PSB song on "non-musical" television, an instrumental portion of this Electric track could be heard on the July 29, 2013 episode of the U.K. version of Big Brother, just two weeks after the album's release.

63. Axis

Not quite as quick (considering that it actually debuted online more than two months ahead of Electric), "Axis" was employed as background music during a July 25, 2013 BBC2 special covering the RHS Tatton Show—a large horticultural exhibition with show gardens. It could also be heard in the background during a report on the U.K. health service on the November 12, 2013 edition of BBC2's Newsnight. And it was used during an episode of the BBC show Gardener's World on March 25, 2016. (That makes two out of three uses in relation to gardening—intriguing.)

64. Everything Means Something

The instrumental version of this song was used on the August 4, 2013 episode of the BBC One show Countryfile—the same episode that also included another Elysium track, "Breathing Space," as noted above (#57).

65. Before

Played in the background (probably from a radio) during a domestic scene in the September 25, 1996 episode of Coronation Street. Honorable mention – In an unusual "special case" coming from the July 9, 1996 episode of another classic U.K. soap, EastEnders, the song itself wasn't heard but an advertising poster for the single was prominently displayed on a brick wall near the home of two of the characters, where some nasty graffiti ("AIDS SCUM") had been scrawled.

66. The View from Your Balcony

Used in the October 24, 2013, November 15, 2018, and February 12, 2019 editions of the BBC program Homes Under the Hammer, each of which has been rerun on later dates. Not surprisingly, each of these scenes involved views from balconies.

67. Love Is a Bourgeois Construct

A brief instrumental segment could be heard in the first episode of the BBC Four architectural documentary The Brits Who Built the Modern World, which first aired on February 13, 2014.

68. Paninaro

One of several PSB tracks instrumental segments of which were used in the second episode, first airing on February 20, 2014, of the BBC Four documentary The Brits Who Built the Modern World. "Paninaro" was also used for several years as the theme music of a Portuguese educational television program titled Universidade Aberta (Open University). Since he didn't own a copy of the recording at the time, one of my site visitors in Portugal used to get out of bed early every Saturday morning just to hear it! Now that's dedication! "Paninaro" can also be heard in the 2015 film documentary The Queen of Ireland, which tells the story of drag artist Panti Bliss, already known to PSB fans for having inspired and served as the centerpiece, so to speak, of the 2014 track "Oppressive (The Best Gay Possible)" (which is also heard in the documentary, along with one other PSB song; see #86-87 below). And it played behind a highlights clip of goals scored over the past week in U.K. soccer matches on Sky One's Soccer AM program in the U.K. and Ireland on April 10, 2021.

69. I'm Not Scared

The original Eighth Wonder rendition of this song was featured in the 1989 film Lethal Weapon 2, in which singer Patsy Kensit also has a role as a secretary being romanced by Mel Gibson's character. (It did not appear, however, on the movie's soundtrack album.) In addition, an instrumental portion of the PSB version provided some background music during the second episode (February 20, 2014) of the BBC Four documentary The Brits Who Built the Modern World. And it was once again the Eighth Wonder version that made an appearance as background music on the July 4, 2019 edition of the British TV show Homes Under the Hammer (which has a long tradition of using PSB songs).

70. Thursday

It could be heard playing in the background for nearly two minutes during a scene set in a café in the June 6, 2014 episode of the long-running British soap opera Emmerdale. (As an interesting sidenote, one of the actors in this scene was John Middleton, who attended school with Neil Tennant. Apparently they remain friends to this day.) The January 18, 2015 episode of the HBO series Looking used a portion of the song (mainly the rap segment by Example) during its closing credits. The February 15, 2016 edition of the U.K. series Wanted Down Under Revisited used the instrumental mix of the song during the final segment that provides an update on the people who served as the focus of the corresponding original episode of Wanted Down Under. The instrumental mix could also be heard on the November 27, 2023 episode (Series 21, Episode 26) of the BBC Two show Strictly Come Dancing: It Takes Two.

71. To Speak Is a Sin

The 2006 German film Montag Kommen die Fenster ("The Windows Will Arrive on Monday" or "Windows on Monday") features this song in a bar scene during which couples dance to its melancholy strains.

72. Jealousy

A dramatic orchestral instrumental segment from the climax of this track was used as the opening theme music in 1994 for the Swedish talk/comedy show Gardell får hemligt besök (translated "Gardell Gets a Secret Visit") hosted by openly gay Swedish comedian Jonas Gardell.

73. Home and Dry

It would appear that the very first use of this song on a non-musical TV show occurred on June 26, 2009, when it was one of three PSB songs used on that morning's episode of the BBC's Homes Under the Hammer (rerun a number of times since then). It could also be heard on the December 16, 2014 (and final) episode of the BBC1 drama The Missing, where it plays faintly in the background while the characters Emily and Tony are having a conversation following a wedding reception. Homes Under the Hammer employed it again on its March 8, 2016 edition during a segment on renovations to alleviate a problem with excessive dampness. (A nice musical pun there.)

74. Silver Age

An instrumental segment of this track could be heard toward the end of the very first episode (airing January 6, 2015, on the subject of "Beautiful Buildings") of the U.K. ITV1 television documentary program The Wonder of Britain.

75. One in a Million

The popular South Korean sketch-comedy show Gag Concert has used a brief bit of the instrumental introductory portion of this PSB track as its opening theme music since its inception in 1999.

76. The Pop Kids

On February 24, 2016—even before it was released in physical format, but shortly after its digital debut—this song was used as background music on Finnish television during the weekly goals highlights of the Champions' League football (soccer) game Arsenal vs. Barcelona. It could also briefly be heard in the background during a scene set in a cafe on the July 18, 2016 episode of the British soap opera Emmerdale, and the August 25, 2016 edition of that same show featured it in its opening scene. And the 2016 German comedy film Männertag (trans. "Men's Day") offers a number of rock/pop songs both old and new, including "The Pop Kids," which can be heard quite early on, during its first five minutes or so.

77. Minimal

Used in the August 4, 2015 episode of the U.K. soap opera EastEnders—I'm afraid I don't know the context. It was also used in the same show's January 20, 2017 episode at the point when the character Lee Carter walks into the Queen Vic pub, and again on October 2, 2020 in a scene set in the gay bar "The Albert." In addition, "Minimal" could be heard during the July 12, 2016 edition of the popular British show Homes Under the Hammer (which frequently uses PSB tracks) during a segment about a home needing only minimal repairs before going up for auction.

78. For Freedom

The 2014 documentary To Russia with Love—which concerns the moral challenge faced by gay and lesbian Olympic athletes as they tried to decide whether to boycott the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi to protest Russia's anti-gay laws—plays this excerpt from the Tennant-Lowe Battleship Potemkin score during its concluding segment.

79. Say It to Me

The U.K. soap opera Emmerdale has employed this song on no fewer than four separate occasions:

• in the background during a scene in the November 24, 2016 episode, possibly offering subtle commentary since the scene in question involved the difficulty two characters were apparently having communicating clearly with each other;
• on January 6, 2017 in a cafe scene;
• on the January 16, 2017 episode—a prolonged appearance nearly two minutes in length connecting two different scenes, during the second of which, it could be interpreted as commenting on the events at hand, in which one character is being less than honest and forthright with another, who knows it full well;
• yet again on March 6, 2017, another cafe scene.

80. Give It a Go

Used in the December 6, 2016 edition of the U.K. TV show Homes Under the Hammer (which has often made use of PSB tracks).

81. Building a Wall

Once again, it was Homes Under the Hammer that made use of this song—a pretty obvious choice, considering the subject of home construction and the word "wall"—in its May 11, 2017 episode.

82. Pazzo!

The Irish dramatic series Riviera, which airs in Ireland and the U.K. on the Sky Altantic network, features this track briefly in its fourth episode, which first aired on July 6, 2017. The relevant scene, with "Pazzo!" playing in the background, involves a plainclothes policeman entering a club—a front for prostitution—to rescue a woman apparently being held there against her will.

83. All Over the World

The instrumental version of this song was one of two Pet Shop Boys tracks—the other being "Go West"—that could be heard in the September 1, 2017 edition of the U.K. TV show Homes Under the Hammer, the producers of which clearly appear to love their PSB music.

84. In Private

Dusty Springfield's original version of this song—written, of course, by the Pet Shop Boys—could be heard for about a minute in the background of a bar scene in the September 5, 1991 episode of the U.K. crime docudrama series Crimewatch File.

85. Winner

The German TV show Kaum zu glauben! ("Hard to Believe!" in which a panel tries to guess the unusual "secrets" of guests) played this song on its September 16, 2018 episode during a segment about Kai Markus, a 45-year-old man who ran all the way from Hamburg to China. He actually broke both of his feet shortly before reaching his finish line but, with the help of friends, completed his "run" in a wheelchair.

86. Oppressive (The Best Gay Possible)

Appears in the 2015 film documentary The Queen of Ireland concerning drag artist Panti Bliss—more than appropriate considering the Boys built this track around a monologue by Panti herself.

87. We Came from Outer Space

Also used (along with "Paninaro," as noted in # 68 above) in the aforementioned documentary The Queen of Ireland.

88. Boy Strange

Played over the closing credits of the BBC documentary The Man Who Used HIV as a Weapon, which first aired March 19, 2019 (although it was available on the BBC iPlayer several days beforehand, on March 15).

89. Love Comes Quickly

It seems incredible, but the only use of this song that I know of on a "non-musical" TV show is one occurrence that I didn't learn of until more than 30 years after the fact. It was in the sixth episode, titled "Repenting," of the British sitcom Watching, first airing on August 6, 1987. It can be heard playing on a jukebox, apparently having been specifically selected by one of the main characters. Decades later, "Love Comes Quickly" would also be used as background music at one point during the June 24, 2021 premier episode of the Irish television documentary series Our Town, which focuses on the lives of a diverse group of young people in the coastal town of Bray.

90. Only the Wind

This PSB song could be heard playing very quietly in the background during one scene of Episode 4 ("Stranger in the House"), Series 2, originally broadcast on January 30, 1994, of the U.K. detective drama A Touch of Frost.

91. Dreamland

The first-ever appearance of this song on a non-musical TV program occurred on October 19, 2019, during the final episode of the second season/series of the U.K. reality show The Circle, when it was employed as background music while host Emma Willis walked onto the set. Then, on December 27, 2019, it was briefly used during a transition between two scenes of the long-running German daily soap opera Unter uns ("Between Us"). And it played during a scene set in a New York City dance club in Episode 8, "Boys' Trip," of the U.S. streaming series Love, Victor, which first ran on June 17, 2020.

92. That's My Impression

This, one of the earliest PSB songs, doesn't seem to have been used in a "non-musical" television show until more than thirty years after its release. It finally did so on January 7, 2020, when it could be heard roughly three-quarters of the way through Series 23, Episode 61 of the BBC program Homes Under the Hammer.

93. So Sorry, I Said

Liza Minnelli's version of this song plays over the end credits of the 1990 French/U.S. film Mr. Frost.

94. Monkey Business
95. Will-o-the-wisp
96. Happy People

Brief instrumental segments of all three of these Hotspot tracks could be heard in the June 13, 2020 edition of the German television show Galileo: Big Pictures, each episode of which provides a "ranking list," usually the "Top 50" of one thing or another, nearly always involving photographs of particular note. This specific episode dealt with "The Pictures of Our Life": photos that have presumably had the greatest, most widespread public impact.

97. It's Alright

The instrumental opening of the single version of the PSB cover of this song was used in the September 24, 1992 edition of the U.K. true-life crime-solving show Crimewatch File, the title of the specific episode being "Crimewatch File: A Chapter of Revelations." The factual crime covered during the relevant segment involved the murder of a gay man, and the music was used to introduce a scene suggesting gay urban nightlife of the 1980s.

98. Two Divided by Zero

The 2017 horror film Sleep No More, which is set in 1986 among a group of college students, appropriately includes a number of 'eighties songs, including this Please album opener. About 40 minutes into the movie, one of the characters is listening to it on his Walkman while walking on campus. (Other artists represented on the soundtrack include Duran Duran, Bananarama, and After the Fire.)

99. Later Tonight

About nine minutes into the 2018 German film In My Room, the main character, Armin, brings a girl home from a club and asks her if she would like to listen to any music. When she doesn't answer, he chooses "Later Tonight" from his laptop computer. Only about the first 80 seconds of the song plays, during which the girl decides against spending the night with Armin and leaves. Then, much later, it plays again over the end credits.

100. Burning the Heather

The first ten seconds or so of this track is briefly used as background music near the end of the German television news documentary Wir machen weiter – trotz Corona! ("We Carry On – Despite Corona!"), which first aired on February 18, 2021, concerning how ordinary people are struggling with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on their lives.

101. Young Offender

The January 8, 1995 episode, "Ein enhrenwertes Haus" (translated "An Honorable House") of the popular, long-running German police procedural drama Tatort ("Crime Scene") included a scene in which this song is heard playing in an apartment where a teenage girl lives with her family. She's a likely suspect in the murder of an older man with whom, as it turns out, she was a sexual relationship. Therefore the choice of this particular song was surely no accident, undoubtedly meant as a "clue" to that relationship for the benefit of more attentive, knowledgeable members of the viewing audience.

102. Losing My Mind

It's hardly even worth mentioning, but just for the sake of completion, I should note that an extremely brief snippet—no more than two or three seconds—of the PSB-produced rendition of this track by Liza Minnelli could be heard during a profile of her on the January 16, 2022 edition of CBS Sunday Morning. Aside from a simultaneous fleeting depiction of the Results cover in a montage of Liza's various releases, there was no actual mention of the song, the album, or the Pet Shop Boys.

103. Hallo Spaceboy

Although it's at root a David Bowie song, the single version is also a full-fledged PSB collaboration, which qualfies it for this list by virtue of its occurrence during the first few minutes of the 2022 Bowie biopic Moonage Daydream.

104. Was It Worth It?

Incredibly, the first use of this PSB number on a non-musical TV show, at least that I'm aware of, didn't occur until the October 12, 2022 edition of the U.K. program Homes Under the Hammer—more than 30 years after the song's original release—on which occasion the 12" Mix could be heard as background music.

105. Fluorescent

Season 5, Episode 2 (first airing on August 6, 2018) of the German television "reality show" Armes Deutschland – Stempeln oder Abrackern? (translated literally as Poor Germany – Stamping or Toiling Away? but more colloquially as Poor Germany – Living on Welfare or Working Like a Dog?) contains a scene titled "Willi und Carola lassen ihren Dreck zurück" ("Willi and Carola leave their garbage behind") that, about 19 seconds into it, plays an instrumental segment of the Pet Shop Boys' "Fluorescent" as background music (rather inexplicably as far as I can tell) for 15 seconds or so.

106. Dancing Star

While the Critérium du Dauphiné cycling race is taking place in France, hour-long highlights are aired on ITV4 each evening (ITV Cycling). At the start of the June 8, 2024 Stage 7 highlights episode, there was a recap of Stage 6, during which instrumental segments of "Dancing Star" were used as background music. They used it again on July 4 during the Tour de France Stage 5 recap and on other dates/recaps thereafter (there's no need to enumerate them).

107. Feel

The October 16, 2024 edition of BBC1's The One Show offered a short bit of this song during one of its features, but I know nothing more about its context at this time. "Feel" could also be heard on the October 29, 2024 episode of EastEnders during a conversation between Kat and Bianca at the Prince Albert gay bar.

108. I Started a Joke

The PSB rendition of this classic Bee Gees song plays at the beginning of "Red Lines," the second episode (first airing on October 18, 2024) of the second season of the Amazon Prime series The Devil's Hour.

In addition:

I also distinctly remember a Pet Shop Boys song being played over the closing credits of an episode of the U.S. public television "gay features" show In the Life sometime around 2003-2004, give or take a year. But, for the life of me, I can't remember which song it was or find any information as to when precisely it aired. (Something tells me that it may have been "New York City Boy," but I wouldn't bet the mortgage on it.)

---

All text on this website aside from direct quotations (such as of lyrics and of other nonoriginal content) is copyright © 2001-2024 by Wayne Studer. All Rights Reserved. All lyrics and images are copyright © their respective dates by their respective owners. Brief quotations and small, low-resolution images are used for identification and critical commentary, thereby constituting Fair Use under U.S. copyright law. Billboard chart data are copyright © their respective dates by Billboard Media, LLC.