The 1960s

99 shows that began in the 1960s, and the 117 title sequences they opened with.

Filed by first broadcast. A show that ran for thirty years appears once, under the decade it started in.

Doctor Who

1963–1989BBC OneSci-Fi

Rebuilt for almost every Doctor, and each rebuild invented its own technique — a camera filming its own monitor, light photographed through moving slots, and finally the first computer-generated titles on British television.

Seasons 1–3
Seasons 4–6
Seasons 7–10
and 7 more

2 sequences

Sesame Street

1969–PBS / HBOComedy

Children running through a New York street to a song asking how to get there — an opening that has been remade every decade for over fifty years.

Season 1
Seasons 24–25

2 sequences

Coronation Street

1960–ITVDrama

The longest-running television soap in the world, opening on rooftops and a cornet ever since 1960.

Season 1
Season 31

1 sequence

Days of Our Lives

1965–NBCDrama

"Like sands through the hourglass" — the same sentence, over the same hourglass, for sixty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Addams Family

1964–1966ABCComedy

Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

The Brady Bunch

1969–1974ABCComedy

A three-by-three grid of faces all looking at each other — a title sequence so structurally famous that the grid alone is the reference.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Flintstones

1960–1966ABCAnimation

The first animated series in American primetime, and the source of a theme that did not arrive until the third season — the first two opened on something else entirely.

Season 1

1 sequence

Bewitched

1964–1972ABCComedy

Animated witches and a swing arrangement — a live-action sitcom that opens as a cartoon, which was the only way to show the magic on a 1964 budget.

Season 1

1 sequence

Gilligan's Island

1964–1967CBSComedy

A theme song that narrates the entire premise, names every castaway, and was rewritten after the first season to stop leaving two of them out.

Season 3

2 sequences

Batman

1966–1968ABCCrime

Cartoon versions of the cast run at the camera and fight their way through the rogues' gallery, because the budget for that in live action did not exist and the animation is funnier anyway. Neal Hefti's twelve-bar riff has an eight-voice chorus whose entire lyric is the word Batman.

Seasons 1–2
Season 3

2 sequences

Star Trek

1966–1969NBCSci-Fi

The one that set the shape of every space-opera opening since: a ship crossing the frame, a captain narrating a mission statement, and a melody built to be hummed. Alexander Courage wrote it as a fanfare and a lounge tune at the same time.

Season 1
Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

The Andy Griffith Show

1960–1968CBSComedy

A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Beverly Hillbillies

1962–1971CBSComedy

"The Ballad of Jed Clampett" — a bluegrass number that reached number one on the country chart while the series was running.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Munsters

1964–1966CBSComedy

The rival monster sitcom, launched the same year, opening with a surf-rock instrumental and a family filing out of a house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hogan's Heroes

1965–1971CBSComedy

A prisoner-of-war camp run as a sabotage operation, opened by a march whistled rather than sung.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1964–1968NBCDrama

Sixties spy graphics and a brass chart, in the register every subsequent spy show either copied or reacted against.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Prisoner

1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

Thunder, a Lotus Seven driven hard past Parliament, a resignation letter slammed onto a desk, and then gas under the door of a man's own flat. Two minutes that explain the entire premise without a narrator, and end with the only line the show ever needed: I am not a number.

Season 1

2 sequences

The Dick Van Dyke Show

1961–1966CBSComedy

A man walking into his own living room and either tripping over the ottoman or stepping neatly around it — two versions shot, and the network alternated them.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood

1968–2001PBSComedy

Thirty-three years of the same arrival: the door, the cardigan, the shoes, the song.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Jetsons

1962–1963ABCAnimation

The same studio's future to answer its own past, with a theme that names the whole family in about fifteen seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hawaii Five-O

1968–1980CBSCrime

The wave, the zoom onto the hotel balcony, and one of the four or five most recognisable television themes ever recorded.

Season 1

1 sequence

Thunderbirds

1965–1966ITVSci-Fi

Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.

Season 1

1 sequence

Lost in Space

1965–1968CBSSci-Fi

John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.

Season 1

1 sequence

I Dream of Jeannie

1965–1970NBCComedy

A full animated origin story every week — the bottle, the beach, the astronaut — told in sixty seconds so the episode never has to.

Season 1

1 sequence

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

1969–1970CBSAnimation

A theme that asks the title as a question, over a van and five characters who have been drawn the same way for fifty-five years.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962–1992NBCComedy

A curtain, a rainbow arch and an announcer saying the two words — thirty years of the same entrance.

Season 18

1 sequence

Speed Racer

1967–1968SyndicationAnimation

Mach GoGoGo dubbed into English at speed, and the anime that got there before anyone called it that.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Carol Burnett Show

1967–1978CBSComedy

Twenty-three seconds and a Bob Mackie gown, from the variety show that taught American television how a sketch ensemble should work.

Season 1

1 sequence

H.R. Pufnstuf

1969–1970NBCComedy

Sid and Marty Krofft's first series, and the reason a generation associates foam costumes with a talking flute.

Season 1

1 sequence

My Three Sons

1960–1972ABC / CBSComedy

Fred MacMurray raising three boys, opening on animated feet in a row that everyone remembers before the theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Dad's Army

1968–1977BBC OneComedy

The Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, opened by animated arrows advancing and retreating across a map of Europe.

Season 1

2 sequences

Top of the Pops

1964–2006BBC OneDocumentary

Forty-two years of the chart, and a Phil Lynott instrumental called Yellow Pearl for a theme.

Season 1
Seasons 18–20

1 sequence

Wacky Races

1968–1969CBSAnimation

Eleven cars introduced one at a time by a narrator, which is a title sequence that is also the entire premise.

Season 1

1 sequence

Petticoat Junction

1963–1970CBSComedy

The Shady Rest Hotel, sharing a universe with Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies.

Season 1

1 sequence

Monty Python's Flying Circus

1969–1974BBC OneComedy

Terry Gilliam's cut-out animation and a Sousa march — a title sequence that behaves like a sketch, because it is one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Green Acres

1965–1971CBSComedy

A duet in which husband and wife argue about the move the series is built on, sung directly to camera.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In

1967–1973NBCComedy

Psychedelic panels opening onto one-liners, cut faster than anything else on 1960s television and directly responsible for the pacing of sketch comedy since.

Season 3

1 sequence

The Wild Wild West

1965–1969CBSDrama

An animated frontier vignette that pauses on four panels of a comic strip — a western opening built like a title card for a serial.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour

1968–1970NBCComedy

Four costumed animals in a rock band, wrapped around cartoons and serials, with a theme that has outlived all of it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Virginian

1962–1971NBCDrama

The first ninety-minute western on American television, and the third longest-running of them all.

Season 1

2 sequences

One Life to Live

1968–2012ABCDrama

Llanview, and the first American daytime serial written around class and ethnicity rather than around a hospital.

Season 21
Season 44

1 sequence

Hee Haw

1969–1993CBS / SyndicationComedy

Country music and cornfield jokes, cancelled by CBS in the rural purge and then outliving it in syndication by twenty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Outer Limits

1963–1965ABCSci-Fi

The control-voice narration that takes over your television set — a premise so effective that the sequence is better remembered than most of the episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Steptoe and Son

1962–1974BBC OneComedy

Two rag-and-bone men who cannot leave each other, and the series Sanford and Son was remade from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Top Cat

1961–1962ABCAnimation

Hanna-Barbera doing Sgt. Bilko with alley cats, in the primetime slot the studio kept trying to hold.

Season 1

1 sequence

Another World

1964–1999NBCDrama

The first American serial to run an hour, and the first to spin off another serial from itself.

Season 26

1 sequence

The Big Valley

1965–1969ABCDrama

Barbara Stanwyck running a Stockton ranch, in the western that gave a woman the top billing.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

The Magic Roundabout

1965–1977BBC OneAnimation

A French stop-motion series that Eric Thompson re-narrated in English without translating the scripts, inventing different characters over the same pictures.

Season 1

1 sequence

University Challenge

1962–ITV / BBC TwoDocumentary

College Boy by Derek New, and a split screen that has stacked two teams on top of each other since 1962.

Season 1

1 sequence

Night Gallery

1969–1973NBCHorror

Rod Serling walking through a gallery of paintings, each one introducing that week's story — a title sequence rebuilt around new artwork every episode.

Season 1

1 sequence

Till Death Us Do Part

1965–1975BBC OneComedy

Alf Garnett shouting at his family, and the series All in the Family was remade from.

Season 1

1 sequence

The High Chaparral

1967–1971NBCDrama

An Arizona cattle ranch and the Mexican family it marries into, from the producer of Bonanza.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Invaders

1967–1968ABCSci-Fi

A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Monkees

1966–1968NBCComedy

A band assembled for a television series that then became an actual band, with the titles as their first single.

Season 1

1 sequence

Underdog

1964–1967NBC / CBSAnimation

A superhero who rhymes, and one of the last title sequences built around its sponsor's product.

Season 1

1 sequence

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

Anderson's darkest supermarionation series, opened by two rings of light moving across a wall.

Season 1

1 sequence

F Troop

1965–1967ABCComedy

A frontier cavalry post run badly, opened by a sung account of how badly.

Season 1

1 sequence

McHale's Navy

1962–1966ABCComedy

A PT boat crew running a black market in the South Pacific.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Time Tunnel

1966–1967ABCSci-Fi

Two scientists thrown through history, opened by a spiral that became the show's whole identity.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crossroads

1964–1988ATV Midlands / CentralDrama

A Midlands motel, taped so fast that the sets famously wobbled, and watched by fifteen million people anyway.

Season 7

1 sequence

Danger Man

1960–1968ITVDrama

Patrick McGoohan as John Drake, the series he left to make The Prisoner.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Clangers

1969–1974BBC OneAnimation

Knitted creatures on a small planet who speak in swanee whistles, narrated as though it were a nature programme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Car 54, Where Are You?

1961–1963NBCComedy

Two Bronx patrolmen, with a theme that lists everything going wrong in New York and then asks where the car is.

Season 1

1 sequence

Astro Boy

1963–1966Fuji TVAnimation

Tezuka's Mighty Atom, the first Japanese television animation series, and the start of the whole industry.

Season 1

1 sequence

Land of the Giants

1968–1970ABCSci-Fi

Irwin Allen's last 1960s series, about a suborbital flight stranded on a world of giants.

Season 2

1 sequence

Mr. Dressup

1967–1996CBCComedy

A tickle trunk, two puppets and twenty-nine years of the same man drawing on a pad — Canada's answer to Mister Rogers, made by a man who worked on it.

Season 19

1 sequence

The F.B.I.

1965–1974ABCCrime

Nine seasons made with the Bureau's cooperation and its approval of every script, from the Quinn Martin production line.

Season 1

1 sequence

Marcus Welby, M.D.

1969–1976ABCDrama

A family doctor in Santa Monica, and the first ABC series to finish a season as the most-watched programme in America.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Yogi Bear Show

1961–1962SyndicationAnimation

The supporting character given his own half hour, and a pic-a-nic basket that outlasted the studio.

Season 1

1 sequence

Stingray

1964–1965ITVSci-Fi

"Stand by for action!" — the first British series filmed entirely in colour, and it opens by saying so.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mission: Impossible

1966–1973CBSDrama

A lit fuse crossing the screen while clips from the episode ahead flash past it — a title sequence recut every week from the show it introduces.

Season 2

1 sequence

I Spy

1965–1968NBCDrama

Two agents under cover as a tennis player and his trainer, and the first American drama to cast a Black actor as a lead.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Herculoids

1967–1969CBSAnimation

Alex Toth designs on an alien planet, in the run of Hanna-Barbera action shows that got them banned from Saturday mornings for violence.

Season 1

1 sequence

Davey and Goliath

1960–1975SyndicationAnimation

A boy and his talking dog, stop-motion, funded by the Lutheran church and animated by the Gumby studio.

Season 1

1 sequence

Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)

1969–1970ITVCrime

A private investigator and his dead partner, who only he can see, in a white suit.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000ABC / CBSAnimation

The prime-time repackaging of the Warner shorts, with an original curtain-raiser animated for television.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trumpton

1967BBC OneAnimation

The Camberwick Green sequel, opening on a town clock and a fire brigade roll-call people still recite.

Season 1

1 sequence

Dark Shadows

1966–1971ABCHorror

Waves against a cliff and a theremin-adjacent wail, broadcast live on weekday afternoons — a gothic soap that ran over twelve hundred episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tomorrow's World

1965–2003BBC OneDocumentary

Live demonstrations of things that did not work yet, opening on graphics that promised they would.

Season 29

1 sequence

The Archie Show

1968–1969CBSAnimation

The cartoon whose fictional band had a real number one single, which is a thing that has happened once.

Season 1

1 sequence

Department S

1969–1970ITVDrama

An Interpol unit for cases nobody else can explain, which gave Jason King his own spin-off.

Season 1

1 sequence

Camberwick Green

1966BBC OneAnimation

A musical box that opens to reveal whichever character the episode is about — a title sequence that is also the casting.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales

1963–1966CBSAnimation

A zoo penguin with a walrus and a professor who explains how things work, which made it educational enough to keep.

Season 1

1 sequence

George of the Jungle

1967ABCAnimation

Jay Ward's Tarzan parody, and a theme that warns you about the tree before he hits it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jackanory

1965–1996BBC OneDrama

One actor, one chair, one book read aloud for fifteen minutes — the least televisual idea the BBC ever ran for thirty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Roger Ramjet

1965–1969SyndicationAnimation

A five-minute cartoon about a pilot who takes a pill for twenty seconds of super strength, drawn as cheaply as that sounds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ready Steady Go!

1963–1966ITVDocumentary

"The weekend starts here" — the British pop programme that put the Beatles, the Stones and Motown on the same stage.

Season 1

1 sequence

Get Smart

1965–1970NBC / CBSComedy

A man walking through a corridor of doors that each slam behind him, ending in a phone box that drops him into headquarters. The joke is the length of it.

Season 3

1 sequence

Adam-12

1968–1975NBCCrime

One patrol car, one shift, from the Dragnet producer.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Morecambe & Wise Show

1968–1983BBC Two / ThamesComedy

Bring Me Sunshine and a skip off stage, in front of the largest audience British television has ever had.

Season 2

1 sequence

World of Sport

1965–1985ITVDocumentary

ITV's answer to Grandstand, which is remembered now almost entirely for the wrestling at four o'clock.

Season 20

1 sequence

Kimba the White Lion

1965–1967Fuji TVAnimation

Tezuka's Jungle Emperor, the first colour Japanese animated series, and a question Disney has been asked about ever since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sportsnight

1968–1997BBC OneDocumentary

The midweek sports programme, and the strand most of British sports broadcasting learned its trade on.

Season 26

2 sequences

Match of the Day

1964–BBC OneDocumentary

Barry Stoller's theme, unchanged since 1970, over whatever graphics the decade happens to allow.

Season 7
Season 62

1 sequence

60 Minutes

1968–CBSDocumentary

A stopwatch and a ticking sound, and nothing else — the shortest argument any programme has made for its own title.

Season 23

1 sequence

ABC's Wide World of Sports

1961–1998ABCDocumentary

"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" — a narration so well known that the ski-jumper who supplied the agony became famous for falling over.