The 1950s
46 shows that began in the 1950s, and the 52 title sequences they opened with.
Filed by first broadcast. A show that ran for thirty years appears once, under the decade it started in.
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Superman
1952–1958SyndicationSci-Fi
"Faster than a speeding bullet" — the narration that defined the character for a generation before any film did.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBonanza
1959–1973NBCDrama
A burning map and four men riding out of it — one of the first title sequences designed to show off colour television, which is precisely why it looks like that.
- Season 1
1 sequenceI Love Lucy
1951–1957CBSComedy
A satin heart on a cigarette-brand backdrop — a title card that exists because the sponsor paid for it, and which outlived the sponsor by seventy years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Honeymooners
1955–1956CBSComedy
A moon over Brooklyn and an orchestra — the sitcom that most American sitcoms since are a variation on, in thirty-nine episodes.
- Season 1
2 sequencesBlue Peter
1958–BBC OneDocumentary
The world's longest-running children's programme, opening on a ship in full sail and a hornpipe.
- Season 45
- Season 64
1 sequencePerry Mason (1957)
1957–1966CBSCrime
'Park Avenue Beat' — a jazz chart with a walking bass, over a courtroom drama that ran for nine years on almost nothing else.
- Season 1
2 sequencesAs the World Turns
1956–2010CBSDrama
The turning globe that gave American daytime its most-copied image, over fifty-four years.
- Season 41
- Season 52
1 sequenceThe Bullwinkle Show
1959–1964ABC / NBCAnimation
Jay Ward's squirrel and moose, which began as Rocky and His Friends and was renamed for the character who talked more.
- Season 1
2 sequencesGuiding Light
1952–2009CBSDrama
Seventy-two years on radio and television between them — the longest-running story ever told in any medium.
- Season 44
- Season 51
1 sequenceRawhide
1959–1965CBSDrama
A cattle drive that never arrives, with Frankie Laine's theme and a young Clint Eastwood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rifleman
1958–1963ABCDrama
A widowed rancher and his son, opened by twelve rounds fired down a street in under ten seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWagon Train
1957–1965NBC / ABCDrama
A wagon company crossing to California, and the series Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek against.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet
1952–1966ABCComedy
A real family playing themselves for fourteen years, which is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHave Gun – Will Travel
1957–1963CBSDrama
A gunfighter who advertises in the newspaper, and one of the first westerns to open on a business card.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequenceFather Knows Best
1954–1960CBS / NBCComedy
The Anderson family of Springfield, and the series the phrase came from.
- Season 1
3 sequencesThe Twilight Zone
1959–1964CBSSci-Fi
Three different openings in five seasons, and the one everybody can hum arrived third. Rod Serling narrates the audience into another dimension over abstractions that were, for 1959, genuinely strange television.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Seasons 3–5
1 sequenceThe Lawrence Welk Show
1951–1982ABC / SyndicationDocumentary
Champagne music, bubbles in the titles, and thirty-one years of the same band leader counting in.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTo Tell the Truth
1956–CBSDocumentary
Three people claiming to be the same person, and the line that ends it — will the real one please stand up.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Danny Thomas Show
1953–1964ABC / CBSComedy
Eleven years of a nightclub comedian's home life, and the series The Andy Griffith Show was spun out of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRomper Room
1953–1994SyndicationComedy
A franchised preschool programme licensed to local stations, each with its own hostess and the same magic mirror.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Donna Reed Show
1958–1966ABCComedy
A sitcom its star produced herself, which is why the mother in it has a job the plot takes seriously.
- Season 8
1 sequenceSky King
1951–1962NBC / ABCDrama
An Arizona rancher who catches criminals from a twin-engined aeroplane, out of the radio serial.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Untouchables
1959–1963ABCCrime
Walter Winchell narrating over Prohibition Chicago at a clip that makes the whole thing sound like a news bulletin — which was the intention.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Huckleberry Hound Show
1958–1961SyndicationAnimation
The first animated series to win an Emmy, and the show Yogi Bear was a supporting segment in.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSea Hunt
1958–1961SyndicationDrama
Lloyd Bridges as a freelance diver, and the most successful syndicated series of its decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Phil Silvers Show
1955–1959CBSComedy
A military march for a sergeant running every racket on the base — the ancestor of every workplace comedy about a charming fraud.
- Season 1
1 sequencePanorama
1953–BBC OneDocumentary
The longest-running current affairs programme in the world, and a theme borrowed from Rachmaninoff.
- Season 30
1 sequenceTruth or Consequences
1950–1988CBS / NBC / SyndicationDocumentary
A radio stunt show that reached television in 1950 and persuaded a New Mexico town to rename itself after it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Quick Draw McGraw Show
1959–1962SyndicationAnimation
A horse sheriff who cannot shoot, with Snooper and Blabber and Augie Doggie filling out the half hour.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSearch for Tomorrow
1951–1986CBS / NBCDrama
Thirty-five years of American daytime, and the serial that was on air before most of the networks carrying it were.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOur Miss Brooks
1952–1956CBSComedy
Eve Arden as a high-school English teacher, in a radio transfer that ran on both media at once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIvor the Engine
1959–1977ITV / BBC OneAnimation
A Welsh locomotive who wants to sing in the choir, drawn in pencil and cut out by hand.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHighway Patrol
1955–1959SyndicationCrime
Broderick Crawford saying "Ten-four" into a car radio, which entered the language from here.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Cisco Kid
1950–1956SyndicationDrama
The first television series filmed in colour, three years before anyone in America could receive it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHancock's Half Hour
1956–1961BBCComedy
Galton and Simpson's radio series moved to television, and the point at which British sitcom stopped being a variety turn.
- Season 1
1 sequencePlayhouse 90
1956–1960CBSDrama
Ninety minutes of live original drama every week, and the anthology from which Rod Serling, John Frankenheimer and most of the era's writers emerged.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlfred Hitchcock Presents
1955–1962CBSCrime
Nine strokes of a pen, and then the man himself walks in from the right and stands inside his own outline. A director who had spent thirty years staying behind the camera made his silhouette the most recognisable thing on American television.
- Seasons 1–7
1 sequenceThe Sky at Night
1957–BBC One / BBC FourDocumentary
The longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history, opening on Sibelius' At the Castle Gate.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe George Burns and Gracie Allen Show
1950–1958CBSComedy
A sitcom in which the husband watches the rest of the episode on a television in his study and comments on it — thirty years before anyone called that postmodern.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNoggin the Nog
1959–1965BBC OneAnimation
Norse sagas drawn from the Lewis chessmen, narrated in the register of a bedtime story about a war.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMr Squiggle
1959–1999ABC (Australia)Comedy
A marionette from the moon with a pencil for a nose, turning children's scribbles into drawings for forty years.
- Season 1
2 sequencesGrandstand
1958–2007BBC OneDocumentary
Five hours of live sport on a Saturday afternoon, held together by a man at a desk and the teleprinter behind him.
- Season 23
- Season 33
1 sequenceThe Colgate Comedy Hour
1950–1955NBCComedy
A live variety hour with a different star each week, made to take the audience off Ed Sullivan.
- Season 4
1 sequenceDragnet
1951–1959, 1967–1970NBCCrime
Four notes, a badge, and "the story you are about to see is true" — the opening that set the shape of the American police procedural.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHockey Night in Canada
1952–CBC / SportsnetDocumentary
A theme so embedded that when the CBC lost the rights to it in 2008 the story led the national news.
- Season 70
1 sequenceOne Step Beyond
1959–1961ABCHorror
An anthology that claimed every story was true, a year before The Twilight Zone said the opposite.
- Season 1