The 1990s

409 shows that began in the 1990s, and the 476 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 sequence

The Sopranos

1999–2007·HBO·Drama

Ninety seconds of a man driving home from the Lincoln Tunnel to North Caldwell. No cast montage, no highlights — just the commute, which turns out to be the whole show.

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

One Piece

1999–·Fuji TV·Animation

The longest-running opening rotation in television — more than twenty distinct sequences over a quarter of a century, each announcing a new arc.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Twin Peaks

1990–1991, 2017·ABC / Showtime·Drama

A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.

• Seasons 1–2
• Season 3

2 sequences

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

1999–·NBC·Crime

The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.

• Season 1
• Season 15

2 sequences

South Park

1997–·Comedy Central·Animation

A banjo, a cut-paper Colorado town and four boys at a bus stop — re-recorded and re-animated repeatedly across nearly thirty years while staying recognisably the same twenty-nine seconds.

• Season 1
• Season 15

1 sequence

Friends

1994–2004·NBC·Comedy

A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.

• Season 6

1 sequence

SpongeBob SquarePants

1999–·Nickelodeon·Animation

A sea shanty led by a painted pirate head, in call and response with children — one of the most universally known pieces of television music written this century.

• Season 1

2 sequences

ER

1994–2009·NBC·Drama

James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.

• Season 1
• Season 10

5 sequences

The X-Files

1993–2002, 2016–2018·Fox·Sci-Fi

One sequence held untouched for seven years, then rebuilt twice as the cast turned over. The card at the end is the real trick: it reads 'The Truth Is Out There' most weeks, and something else entirely more than twenty times.

• Seasons 1–7
• Season 8
• Season 9
• and 2 more

1 sequence

Sex and the City

1998–2004·HBO·Comedy

A tutu, a bus and a splash of dirty water — an opening whose entire joke is that New York does not care who you think you are.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Family Guy

1999–·Fox·Animation

A musical number performed by the family about how television used to have values — a sitcom opening from the 1970s, done straight and then undercut.

• Season 1
• Season 10

2 sequences

King of the Hill

1997–·Fox·Animation

Four men drinking beer in an alley, and a guitar riff. Thirty-one seconds that tell you the show has no interest in going anywhere.

• Season 1
• Season 14

7 sequences

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

1997–2003·The WB / UPN·Horror

An organ sting, a shot of the moon, and then Nerf Herder's surf-punk theme over black-and-white monster-movie footage that bursts into colour. The design never changed in seven years; the fifty seconds behind it were re-cut every one of them.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 4 more

2 sequences

Law & Order

1990–·NBC·Crime

The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.

• Season 1
• Season 20

1 sequence

Mr. Bean

1990–1995·ITV·Comedy

A man dropped from the sky in a spotlight while a choir sings about him in Latin, every week, for a character who never explains himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dawson's Creek

1998–2003·The WB·Drama

Paula Cole over a Massachusetts creek — a theme so tied to the show that its absence from the streaming release became a story in itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Neon Genesis Evangelion

1995–1996·TV Tokyo·Animation

Ninety seconds cut faster than the eye resolves, with whole frames of text and diagram flashed for one frame each. Yoko Takahashi's theme is bright, major-key J-pop laid over imagery that is doing nothing of the kind, and the mismatch is the point rather than an accident.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The West Wing

1999–2006·NBC·Drama

Oil portraits, flags and W.G. Snuffy Walden's brass — an opening that treats the executive branch as a cathedral, which is the show's entire register.

• Season 1
• Season 5

1 sequence

Everybody Loves Raymond

1996–2005·CBS·Comedy

A brass sting and a family photograph, in forty-eight seconds that promise nothing more complicated than what you are about to get.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Midsomer Murders

1997–·ITV·Crime

A theremin over English villages — the single most incongruous pairing of instrument and setting in television, and the reason the show is recognisable in four notes.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Futurama

1999–·Fox / Comedy Central / Hulu·Animation

Like The Simpsons, an opening built to differ every week — a new caption under the logo and a different scrap of old cartoon on the screen the ship flies past — wrapped around Christopher Tyng's theme and a crash into a billboard.

• Seasons 1–4
• Seasons 6–7

2 sequences

Pokémon

1997–·TV Tokyo·Animation

The longest-running video-game adaptation on television, and a theme song that outlasted every cast change.

• Season 1
• Season 5

1 sequence

Teletubbies

1997–2001·BBC Two·Comedy

A baby's face in the sun, four aerials and a narrator counting them in — over two minutes of titles for a programme aimed at people under three.

• Season 1

4 sequences

Stargate SG-1

1997–2007·Showtime / Sci-Fi Channel·Sci-Fi

The gate opening, every week, for ten years — David Arnold's film theme rearranged for television and a sequence that never stopped being about one piece of hardware.

• Season 1
• Season 6
• Season 9
• and 1 more

1 sequence

Beavis and Butt-Head

1993–·MTV·Animation

Two teenagers on a sofa, and a guitar riff played about as well as they would play it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

That '70s Show

1998–2006·Fox·Comedy

The cast singing 'In the Street' from the back of a Vista Cruiser, re-recorded and reshot every season — plus one-off Halloween and Christmas versions.

• Seasons 1–8

1 sequence

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

1993–1996·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

Japanese Super Sentai footage cut against American actors, and the biggest thing on children's television for three years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beverly Hills, 90210

1990–2000·Fox·Drama

Freeze-frames of a cast grinning at the camera over a synth-brass hook — the template every teen drama of the decade copied.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The King of Queens

1998–2007·CBS·Comedy

A delivery driver, his wife and her father in Rego Park, nine seasons long.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Batman: The Animated Series

1992–1995·Fox Kids·Animation

No dialogue, no narration, and the character's name never appears — a full orchestral score over a robbery, a rooftop and a silhouette, and the audience is trusted to work it out.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Home Improvement

1991–1999·ABC·Comedy

Power tools and a grunting brass riff, in the register of the fictional DIY programme the show is about.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Keeping Up Appearances

1990–1995·BBC One·Comedy

Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced Bouquet, and the relatives she would rather nobody met.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Daily Show

1996–·Comedy Central·Comedy

A news-graphics package rebuilt for each of its four hosts, and the programme that made the fake-news desk a form.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boy Meets World

1993–2000·ABC·Comedy

A cast montage rebuilt every season as its lead grew from eleven to eighteen, which few sitcoms have had to solve.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

1998–·ABC / The CW·Comedy

Improv games where the points don't matter, opened by a scramble of the cast in freeze-frame.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

1990–1996·NBC·Comedy

An entire origin story rapped over an animated title card — the longest opening of its era, cut down substantially after the first season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Xena: Warrior Princess

1995–2001·Syndication·Drama

A narrated mythological premise and a war cry, from the spinoff that comprehensively outgrew Hercules.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Star Trek: Voyager

1995–2001·UPN·Sci-Fi

The most purely beautiful of the Trek openings — Voyager skimming a comet, threading a nebula and sliding past a gas giant while Jerry Goldsmith writes the loneliest theme in the franchise. Nothing about it is in a hurry to get home.

• Seasons 1–3
• Seasons 4–7

2 sequences

Oz

1997–2003·HBO·Crime

HBO's first hour-long drama, and the opening that established what the network's title sequences would be for the next twenty years — narrated, tattooed, and entirely unwilling to reassure you.

• Season 1
• Season 4

1 sequence

The Nanny

1993–1999·CBS·Comedy

Cartoon animation narrating how a woman from Flushing ended up in a Manhattan townhouse — a premise delivered entirely in the titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Silent Witness

1996–·BBC One·Crime

Forensic pathology rendered as abstraction — a thirty-year-old series whose titles have been redesigned repeatedly while the eye at the centre of them stayed.

• Season 21

2 sequences

Will & Grace

1998–2020·NBC·Comedy

Thirteen seconds and a piano vamp, from a sitcom confident enough not to explain itself.

• Season 1
• Season 9

1 sequence

Walker, Texas Ranger

1993–2001·CBS·Crime

Chuck Norris as a Ranger, with a theme song he sings himself from the third season on.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Freaks and Geeks

1999–2000·NBC·Comedy

School photographs taken one at a time, with each cast member visibly hating the process — Joan Jett over the least flattering portraits anyone would agree to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ally McBeal

1997–2002·Fox·Comedy

Vonda Shepard singing over a lawyer walking through Boston — a theme so tied to the show that the singer became a recurring character.

• Season 1

5 sequences

Babylon 5

1993–1998·Syndication / TNT·Sci-Fi

Five seasons, five openings, and each one changes who is allowed to speak. The monologue passes from the station's first commander to his successor to his second-in-command, then splinters across the whole cast, then stops being a monologue at all.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 2 more

1 sequence

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

1996–2003·ABC / The WB·Comedy

The Archie Comics witch as a TGIF sitcom, seven seasons across two networks.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Arthur

1996–2022·PBS·Animation

An aardvark in the third grade, in the longest-running animated children's series in American television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

7th Heaven

1996–2007·The WB·Drama

A minister, his wife and seven children, in the longest-running family drama in American television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Ren & Stimpy Show

1991–1996·Nickelodeon·Animation

Rubber-limbed animation and a jaunty theme, both of which are considerably more unhinged than a children's network should have permitted.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Northern Exposure

1990–1995·CBS·Comedy

A moose walking through an empty Alaskan town, which is the entire opening and remains one of television's best jokes about scale.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Barney & Friends

1992–2010·PBS·Comedy

A purple dinosaur who appears when children imagine him, and a closing song that became a schoolyard parody format.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Absolutely Fabulous

1992–2012·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Twenty-one seconds of Julie Driscoll's 'This Wheel's on Fire', re-recorded for the show by its own star.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Step by Step

1991–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

Two single parents merging their families, in the middle of the TGIF block.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wings

1990–1997·NBC·Comedy

A Nantucket airline run by two brothers, opened by Schubert.

• Season 1

1 sequence

JAG

1995–2005·NBC / CBS·Drama

Navy lawyers across ten seasons, and the series NCIS was spun out of.

• Season 9

2 sequences

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

1993–1999·Syndication·Sci-Fi

A title sequence that starts still and learns to move. The station hangs motionless in the early years; by the war it is surrounded by traffic, which is the whole arc of the show in ninety seconds.

• Seasons 1–3
• Seasons 4–7

1 sequence

Father Ted

1995–1998·Channel 4·Comedy

Three priests on a rock in the Atlantic, introduced by a whistle tune and some of the flattest scenery ever put in a title sequence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mad About You

1992–2019·NBC·Comedy

A married couple in New York, over a theme that was re-recorded repeatedly and once sung by the show's own stars.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ed, Edd n Eddy

1999–2009·Cartoon Network·Animation

Wobbling outlines and a scat vocal, drawn deliberately so that every line shakes — the last major American cartoon animated entirely by hand on paper.

• Season 1

1 sequence

X-Men: The Animated Series

1992–1997·Fox Kids·Animation

A guitar riff, a name card per character, and nothing else — the most efficient superhero roll-call ever animated, and the reason the 2024 revival copied it exactly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Heartbreak High

1994–1999·Ten / ABC (Australia)·Drama

A Sydney comprehensive, revived by Netflix thirty years later.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Courage the Cowardly Dog

1999–2002·Cartoon Network·Animation

Twenty-nine seconds establishing a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere and a dog who is right to be frightened.

• Season 1

5 sequences

Angel

1999–2004·The WB·Horror

The spinoff takes the parent show's structure and drops the jokes: Darling Violetta's 'Sanctuary' instead of surf-punk, city at night instead of monster movies. Like Buffy, the design holds for five years while the names in front of it keep moving.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 2 more

1 sequence

In Living Color

1990–1994·Fox·Comedy

Graffiti, dance and a Heavy D theme — a sketch show that opened at a volume network television had not previously permitted.

• Season 1

1 sequence

NYPD Blue

1993–2005·ABC·Crime

Mike Post's theme over a New York shot with the handheld looseness that got the show its reputation before anyone had seen an episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Felicity

1998–2002·The WB·Drama

J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves's college drama, opened by a montage that changed as often as its lead's haircut did.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spin City

1996–2002·ABC·Comedy

New York City Hall in twenty-two seconds, rebuilt partway through the run when the show changed its lead.

• Season 5

1 sequence

3rd Rock from the Sun

1996–2001·NBC·Comedy

Aliens observing suburban Ohio, opened with the brightness of a travel advertisement for a planet.

• Season 6

1 sequence

Heartbeat

1992–2010·ITV·Drama

A Yorkshire village policeman in the 1960s, opened by the Buddy Holly song the series is named for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frasier

1993–2004·NBC·Comedy

A skyline drawn in simple lines while a man sings about tossed salads and scrambled eggs, and declines to explain either.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dexter's Laboratory

1996–2003·Cartoon Network·Animation

Thirty seconds of a boy genius and the sister who ruins everything, in the flat graphic style that defined a decade of the network.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My So-Called Life

1994–1995·ABC·Drama

Snapshots and handwriting, in the register of a teenager's own notebook rather than a network's idea of one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Batman Beyond

1999–2001·The WB·Animation

The same animation house forty years on, trading the orchestral score for industrial percussion and a Gotham that has kept getting worse.

• Season 1

1 sequence

VeggieTales

1993–2015·Syndication·Animation

Bible stories told by vegetables, made on desktop computers in Chicago before any studio would have paid for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blue's Clues

1996–2006·Nickelodeon·Animation

A host talking directly to camera and waiting for an answer, which changed how American preschool television was made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hollyoaks

1995–·Channel 4·Drama

A Chester soap aimed at an audience twenty years younger than any other British serial's.

• Season 14

1 sequence

Daria

1997–2002·MTV·Animation

The cast doing ordinary things badly while the lead refuses to participate, over Splendora's 'You're Standing on My Neck'.

• Season 1

4 sequences

Farscape

1999–2003·Sci-Fi Channel·Sci-Fi

A Henson creature workshop pointed at space opera, and an opening that halves in ambition halfway through the run — the narrated version explaining the premise gives way to one that assumes you already know it.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 1 more

1 sequence

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

1990–2000·Nickelodeon / YTV·Horror

A campfire, a handful of powder thrown into it, and a children's anthology that frightened a generation on a Saturday teatime.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spider-Man: The Animated Series

1994–1998·Fox Kids·Animation

The Fox Kids Marvel block's other pillar, alongside X-Men, with a guitar theme that does the same job.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Wild Thornberrys

1998–2004·Nickelodeon·Animation

A wildlife-documentary family whose daughter can talk to the animals they are filming.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Have I Got News for You

1990–·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Newspaper mastheads and printing presses, rebuilt periodically across thirty-five years of British political humiliation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Touched by an Angel

1994–2003·CBS·Drama

Angels sent to intervene in ordinary American lives, nine seasons long.

• Season 1

1 sequence

All That

1994–2005·Nickelodeon·Comedy

A sketch show for children that launched Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes and Nick Cannon.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Vicar of Dibley

1994–2020·BBC One·Comedy

Dawn French as the first woman priest in a village that expected a man.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Hey Arnold!

1996–2004·Nickelodeon·Animation

A jazz theme over a city block, for a children's cartoon that treated urban childhood with unusual seriousness.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cardcaptor Sakura

1998–2000·NHK·Animation

CLAMP's magical girl, with a new costume every episode and three separate openings across the run.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Æon Flux

1991–1995·MTV·Animation

Peter Chung's assassin, drawn in a style nothing else on television had, and killed off at the end of most early episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Berserk

1997–1998·Nippon TV·Animation

'Tell Me Why' — an English-language pop song with almost no relationship to the series it introduces, which has become part of the show's reputation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Maxx

1995·MTV·Animation

Sam Kieth's comic animated almost panel for panel, about a homeless man who is a superhero in another world.

• Season 1

1 sequence

NewsRadio

1995–1999·NBC·Comedy

Thirty seconds of a radio newsroom and a horn riff, from a workplace sitcom that never quite got the audience it deserved.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pinky and the Brain

1995–1998·The WB·Animation

A theme that explains the premise as a call and response, ending on the same question every week and never answering it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

MADtv

1995–2016·Fox·Comedy

Mad magazine turned into a sketch show, with Alfred E. Neuman in the titles and a cast that changed almost every year.

• Season 9

1 sequence

Recess

1997–2001·ABC·Animation

A brass march over a school playground treated as a sovereign state, which is exactly how the series plays it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rocko's Modern Life

1993–1996·Nickelodeon·Animation

An Australian wallaby in O-Town, written for children with as much as possible smuggled past them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

1993–1998·CBS·Drama

A Boston doctor practising in 1860s Colorado Springs.

• Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

Johnny Bravo

1997–2004·Cartoon Network·Animation

A pompadour, a bass riff and a character who has never once been correct about anything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gargoyles

1994–1997·Disney·Animation

A thousand years of stone, narrated with the gravity of a Shakespearean prologue — which given how much of the cast came from Star Trek, it very nearly is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

1995–1999·Syndication·Drama

A narrated mythological premise delivered with total conviction over New Zealand hillsides.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Just Shoot Me!

1997–2003·NBC·Comedy

A fashion magazine staffed by people who should not be near one. The titles start as a full sequence and end as a logo.

• Season 1
• Seasons 3–5

1 sequence

Dharma & Greg

1997–2002·ABC·Comedy

A free spirit and a lawyer who marry on their first date.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sailor Moon

1992–1997·TV Asahi·Animation

The series that built the magical-girl template, opened by "Moonlight Densetsu" across five separate runs.

• Season 4

1 sequence

The League of Gentlemen

1999–2017·BBC Two·Horror

Royston Vasey, a local shop, and a radio series that arrived on television already knowing exactly what it looked like.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Diagnosis: Murder

1993–2001·CBS·Crime

Dick Van Dyke as a doctor who solves murders, spun off from Jake and the Fatman.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doug

1991–1999·Nickelodeon / ABC·Animation

A mouth-percussion theme over a boy walking to school — an opening performed almost entirely with a human voice.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Space Ghost Coast to Coast

1994–2008·Cartoon Network / Adult Swim·Comedy

A 1960s Hanna-Barbera superhero repurposed as a chat-show host, and the programme every Adult Swim series descends from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Great Teacher Onizuka

1999–2000·Fuji TV·Animation

A former biker gang leader who becomes a teacher for the wrong reasons and stays for the right ones.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Martin

1992–1997·Fox·Comedy

Detroit, a hip-hop bed and a lead who plays most of the supporting cast himself.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

One Foot in the Grave

1990–2000·BBC One·Comedy

Victor Meldrew, forcibly retired at sixty and furious about everything since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Real World

1992–2019·MTV·Documentary

"This is the true story of seven strangers" — the narration that invented the reality format, and the one every parody since has copied.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Digimon Adventure

1999–2000·Fuji TV·Animation

Seven children pulled into a digital world, opened by "Butter-Fly" — a song that has outlived every reboot.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sliders

1995–2000·Fox / Sci-Fi Channel·Sci-Fi

A wormhole opening in a San Francisco street, and four people falling into it — the same shot every week for a show about never seeing the same world twice.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Nash Bridges

1996–2001·CBS·Crime

Don Johnson in San Francisco with a yellow Barracuda, after Miami Vice.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Slam Dunk

1993–1996·TV Asahi·Animation

A delinquent who joins the basketball team to impress a girl and stays for the game.

• Season 1

8 sequences

Charmed

1998–2006·The WB·Horror

Love Spit Love's cover of 'How Soon Is Now?' over the Book of Shadows and three sisters, re-cut every season. It goes further than that, though: the credits were rebuilt whenever the cast of an episode changed, so a season carries several versions rather than one — eight of them in the second year alone.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 5 more

1 sequence

Millennium

1996–1999·Fox·Horror

Chris Carter's other series, opened with the same Mark Snow unease as The X-Files and none of its wit — thirty-four seconds that promise a much worse world.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Superman: The Animated Series

1996–2000·The WB·Animation

The companion to Batman: The Animated Series, and the same trick — a full orchestral score over a sequence that names nothing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Living Single

1993–1998·Fox·Comedy

Queen Latifah performing the theme over Brooklyn — a sitcom opening sung by one of its own stars.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Roswell

1999–2002·The WB / UPN·Sci-Fi

Dido over a New Mexico desert, for a series that treats an alien conspiracy as primarily a problem of adolescence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wishbone

1995–1998·PBS·Drama

A Jack Russell terrier imagining himself into classic literature, one novel per episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

seaQuest DSV

1993–1996·NBC·Sci-Fi

A submarine, an orchestral fanfare and a narrated mission statement — Spielberg's answer to Star Trek, set downwards.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Queer as Folk (UK)

1999–2000·Channel 4·Drama

Russell T Davies on Manchester's Canal Street, remade later in America and never bettered.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Amanda Show

1999–2002·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Amanda Bynes given her own sketch show out of All That, at seventeen.

• Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

Kenan & Kel

1996–2000·Nickelodeon·Comedy

The All That double act given their own series, and "Who loves orange soda?"

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Pete & Pete

1993–1996·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Two brothers with the same name in a suburb tuned slightly wrong, scored by Polaris.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Outer Limits (1995)

1995–2002·Showtime / Sci-Fi Channel·Sci-Fi

The revival, which keeps the control-voice conceit and rebuilds the imagery around nineties computer graphics.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Home Movies

1999–2004·UPN / Adult Swim·Animation

Nineteen seconds, squiggle-drawn, from the series that established the improvised-dialogue style its creator would later bring to Bob's Burgers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Show with Bob and David

1995–1998·HBO·Comedy

The American sketch show that took Monty Python's structure — sketches flowing into one another rather than ending — and put it on cable.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Larry Sanders Show

1992–1998·HBO·Comedy

A talk-show opening for a talk show that does not exist, performed with total conviction by a band and an announcer who are also characters.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tiny Toon Adventures

1990–1995·Syndication / Fox Kids·Animation

A patter song naming the entire cast, which the series' successor Animaniacs would take further still.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rocket Power

1999–2004·Nickelodeon·Animation

Four children in a California beach town who do every extreme sport in sequence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Third Watch

1999–2005·NBC·Drama

Police, paramedics and firefighters on the same New York shift, from the ER producers.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Rugrats

1991–2004·Nickelodeon·Animation

Mark Mothersbaugh scoring a baby's-eye view of a living room — the theme is closer to a Devo B-side than to children's television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Moesha

1996–2001·UPN·Comedy

Brandy Norwood as a Los Angeles teenager, and UPN's first real hit.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dateline NBC

1992–·NBC·Documentary

NBC's newsmagazine, which outlasted every other network attempt at the form by turning into a true-crime hour.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Picket Fences

1992–1996·CBS·Drama

Small-town Wisconsin filmed as pastoral before every episode demonstrates it is anything but.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

1994–1997·Nickelodeon·Animation

Monsters at school under a city dump, learning to frighten people as a trade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Big Comfy Couch

1992–2006·YTV·Comedy

A clown and her doll on a couch, with a clock-stretch exercise that gave the programme its shape.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Time Team

1994–2014·Channel 4·Documentary

Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

CatDog

1998–2005·Nickelodeon·Animation

A cat and a dog sharing one body, and a theme song that spends its whole length asking how.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Touch of Frost

1992–2010·ITV·Crime

David Jason as a Denton detective who is right and insubordinate in roughly equal measure.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

1998–·ITV·Documentary

Keith and Matthew Strachan's music, which unusually runs continuously under the questions rather than only over the titles — one of the few game shows scored like a thriller.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Goosebumps

1995–1998·Fox Kids / YTV·Horror

A briefcase blowing open in a wind that follows a dog down a street — thirty seconds of genuine dread aimed at nine-year-olds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cowboy Bebop

1998–1999·TV Tokyo / WOWOW·Animation

A jazz record given ninety seconds of animation. Silhouettes and hard-edged colour panels cut on the beat of a big band, borrowing the grammar of 1960s film titles so completely that the show it opens looks like a rediscovery rather than a debut.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Lexx

1997–2002·Citytv / Sci-Fi Channel·Sci-Fi

A living insect-shaped ship the size of a planet, introduced with the seriousness of an opera and the budget of a regional theatre. Rebuilt every season, and stranger each time.

• Season 2
• Season 3
• Season 4

1 sequence

Spaced

1999–2001·Channel 4·Comedy

Freeze-frames and film-reference visual gags, cut at the speed the show quotes at — which is constant.

• Season 2

1 sequence

As Time Goes By

1992–2005·BBC One·Comedy

Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer meeting again thirty-eight years after they lost touch.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Beatles Anthology

1995·ABC·Documentary

The band's own account of itself, assembled with the three surviving members.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Judging Amy

1999–2005·CBS·Drama

A family court judge and her social worker mother, built from the creator's own mother's career.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Secret World of Alex Mack

1994–1998·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

A girl doused in a chemical spill who can turn into a puddle of silver.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Hope

1994–2000·CBS·Drama

The medical drama that premiered the same week as ER and spent six years being the other one.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Beck

1997–·TV4 (Sweden)·Crime

Martin Beck, adapted from the Sjöwall and Wahlöö novels that invented Nordic crime fiction, and still running after thirty years.

• Season 27

1 sequence

Clarissa Explains It All

1991–1994·Nickelodeon·Comedy

The first Nickelodeon live-action series built around a girl, addressed straight to camera.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bill Nye the Science Guy

1993–1998·PBS / Syndication·Documentary

Science for children at the speed of a music video, with a theme that shouts the presenter's name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

La Femme Nikita

1997–2001·USA Network·Drama

Cold blue corridors and electronic music, for a series that treated its agency as an antagonist from the first frame.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Goodnight Sweetheart

1993–1999·BBC One·Comedy

A man who finds a London alley that leads back to 1940 and keeps a wife in each decade.

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Robot Wars

1998–2018·BBC Two·Documentary

Twenty-one seconds of sparks and industrial metal, for a programme in which people destroyed their own hardware for sport.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Blue Heelers

1994–2006·Seven Network·Crime

A country police station in the fictional town of Mount Thomas, twelve seasons long.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Bottom

1991–1995·BBC Two·Comedy

Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in a Hammersmith flat, hitting each other.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Powerpuff Girls

1998–2005·Cartoon Network·Animation

Narrated origin, sugar, spice and everything nice — a premise delivered in one sentence over sixties-modern graphic design.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strangers with Candy

1999–2000·Comedy Central·Comedy

An after-school special inverted: a forty-six-year-old ex-convict returning to high school as a freshman.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Freakazoid!

1995–1997·The WB·Animation

A superhero theme performed at a volume and speed that make the joke before the show has started.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Holby City

1999–2022·BBC One·Drama

The Casualty spin-off that moved upstairs to the surgical wards and outlasted most of what was around it.

• Season 12

2 sequences

Todd McFarlane's Spawn

1997–1999·HBO·Animation

The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

The Ben Stiller Show

1992–1993·Fox·Comedy

Thirteen episodes, cancelled, then given an Emmy — the writers' room that produced most of the next decade's American comedy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cracker

1993–2006·ITV·Crime

Nineteen seconds, and no attempt to make its criminal psychologist look like someone you would want to meet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Angry Beavers

1997–2001·Nickelodeon·Animation

Two beaver brothers who have left home and are managing it badly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dream On

1990–1996·HBO·Comedy

A man whose inner life is old black-and-white television clips, which the titles establish before a word is said.

• Season 1

1 sequence

I'm Alan Partridge

1997–2002·BBC Two·Comedy

A theme with all the brass of a chat show its subject is no longer allowed to host, over a Travel Tavern car park.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shortland Street

1992–·TVNZ 2·Drama

New Zealand's nightly hospital serial, running since 1992 and re-cut its titles roughly once a decade.

• Seasons 10–13

1 sequence

Animaniacs

1993–1998·Fox Kids / The WB·Animation

A patter song with a different closing rhyme every week, sung by three cartoon characters at a tempo no live performer would attempt.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brum

1991–2002·BBC One·Comedy

A small yellow car loose in a city, told without dialogue — a preschool series that is closer to silent film than to television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brass Eye

1997–2001·Channel 4·Comedy

The Day Today's successor, with a new themed opening built for each episode's subject — crime, drugs, science, sex.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Big Bad Beetleborgs

1996–1998·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

Three children granted the powers of their favourite comic by a phasm they let out of a haunted house.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

The Real Adventures of Jonny Quest

1996–1999·Cartoon Network·Animation

The 1964 Hanna-Barbera series rebuilt for the nineties, with early CG sequences inside it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Celebrity Deathmatch

1998–2007·MTV·Animation

Claymation celebrities fighting to the death in a wrestling ring, with commentary played completely straight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Early Edition

1996–2000·CBS·Drama

A man who receives tomorrow's newspaper today, delivered by a cat.

• Season 1

1 sequence

I Am Weasel

1997–2000·Cartoon Network·Animation

The Cow and Chicken spin-off, with a theme that is mostly the title said repeatedly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bobby's World

1990–1998·Fox Kids·Animation

Howie Mandel's stand-up child character animated, with Mandel voicing both the boy and his father.

• Season 1

1 sequence

NBA on NBC

1990–2002·NBC·Documentary

Roundball Rock, written by John Tesh and hummed into an answering machine because he had no way to record it — the most fondly remembered sports theme in America.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The PJs

1999–2001·Fox / The WB·Animation

Eddie Murphy's stop-motion housing-project comedy, animated in foam rather than drawn.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Silk Stalkings

1991–1999·CBS / USA Network·Crime

Palm Beach sex-crimes detectives, and the show that effectively invented USA Network's original programming.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Space: Above and Beyond

1995–1996·Fox·Sci-Fi

Marines fighting an interstellar war, written by two X-Files producers and cancelled after the one season they had planned five of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Parkers

1999–2004·UPN·Comedy

The Moesha spin-off, with a mother and daughter enrolled at the same community college.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Earth: Final Conflict

1997–2002·Syndication·Sci-Fi

Developed from Gene Roddenberry's notes after his death, and it shows in the titles: benign-looking aliens, civic architecture and a great deal of blue, all arranged to look like a press release rather than an invasion.

• Season 1
• Season 3
• Season 5

1 sequence

American Gothic (1995)

1995–1996·CBS·Horror

A South Carolina sheriff who is something worse than corrupt, created by Shaun Cassidy and produced by Sam Raimi.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Salute Your Shorts

1991–1992·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Camp Anawanna, and a theme song the campers sing badly on purpose.

• Season 1

1 sequence

KaBlam!

1996–2000·Nickelodeon·Animation

An animated anthology framed as a comic book being read, with the hosts drawn on the page.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Yu Yu Hakusho

1992–1995·Fuji TV·Animation

A delinquent who dies saving a child and is given a job in the afterlife rather than a rest.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spider-Man

1994–1998·Fox Kids·Animation

The nineties adaptation, with a guitar theme that a generation can still produce on request.

• Season 1

1 sequence

VR Troopers

1994–1996·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The Power Rangers formula applied to virtual reality, using footage from three different Japanese series at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Arli$$

1996–2002·HBO·Comedy

A sports agent played by Robert Wuhl, running seven seasons on almost no critical goodwill.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ghostwriter

1992–1995·PBS·Drama

A ghost that communicates only in written words, and a group of Brooklyn children who solve cases with it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Come Outside

1993–1997·BBC Two·Documentary

Auntie Mabel and her dog Pippin flying a spotted aeroplane to find out where one ordinary thing comes from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Relic Hunter

1999–2002·Syndication·Drama

Tia Carrere as a professor recovering antiquities, in the syndication boom that followed Xena.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rosie and Jim

1990–2000·ITV·Comedy

Two rag dolls on a narrowboat who come alive when the adult is not looking.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?

1994–1999·Fox Kids·Animation

The geography game animated, with Rita Moreno as the thief and a jazz score to chase her with.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Providence

1999–2002·NBC·Drama

A plastic surgeon returning to Rhode Island, advised by her dead mother.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Day Today

1994·BBC Two·Comedy

News-graphics bombast pushed just past the point of sense — a parody so accurate that actual bulletins caught up with it within a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mighty Max

1993–1994·Syndication·Animation

A toy line turned into a series with Tim Curry and Richard Moll in it, and a body count.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life with Louie

1995–1998·Fox Kids·Animation

Louie Anderson's Wisconsin childhood animated, with his own father as the character the show turns on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Walking with Dinosaurs

1999·BBC One·Documentary

A natural history series about animals nobody has filmed, shot as though somebody had.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Profiler

1996–2000·NBC·Crime

Crime-scene imagery rendered as a mind reconstructing it — the visual grammar every profiler series has used since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Forever Knight

1992–1996·CBS / Syndication·Horror

A vampire working homicide nights in Toronto, introduced with narration explaining the arrangement every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grand Designs

1999–·Channel 4·Documentary

One self-build per episode, opening on drawings that assemble themselves into the house you are about to watch fail to be finished on time.

• Season 20

1 sequence

Smack the Pony

1999–2003·Channel 4·Comedy

A sketch show written and performed by women, at a point when British television had decided that was a format rather than a fact.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Eek! The Cat

1992–1997·Fox Kids·Animation

A purple cat whose motto is that it never hurts to help, in a series built entirely on disproving it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pacific Blue

1996–2000·USA Network·Crime

Bicycle police in Santa Monica, pitched by its own network as Baywatch on bikes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Goodness Gracious Me

1998–2001·BBC Two·Comedy

A radio sketch show that transferred to television and gave British comedy going for an English one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Drop the Dead Donkey

1990–1998·Channel 4·Comedy

A television newsroom recorded days before broadcast so that real headlines could be written in.

• Season 5

1 sequence

The Brittas Empire

1991–1997·BBC One·Comedy

A leisure centre run by the least suitable manager in British comedy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bibleman

1995–2010·TBN·Sci-Fi

A superhero with a lightsaber and scripture, made straight to video and then broadcast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Worst Witch

1998–2001·ITV·Sci-Fi

Jill Murphy's boarding school for witches, filmed a year before the first Harry Potter book was published in America.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Sentinel

1996–1999·UPN·Sci-Fi

A detective whose five senses were permanently heightened by eighteen months alone in the jungle.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murder One

1995–1997·ABC·Crime

Steven Bochco's experiment in giving a single trial an entire season, and the courtroom-portrait titles that went with it.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Histeria!

1998–2000·Kids' WB·Animation

History taught as an Animaniacs-style variety show, made to satisfy an educational broadcasting requirement.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Crusade

1999·TNT·Sci-Fi

The Babylon 5 sequel, cancelled after thirteen episodes before any of them aired in order.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Space Cases

1996–1997·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

Children lost on an alien ship, co-created by Peter David and Bill Mumy of Lost in Space.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nowhere Man

1995–1996·UPN·Sci-Fi

A photojournalist whose entire identity is erased between courses of a dinner, over one photograph.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tots TV

1993–1998·ITV·Comedy

Three rag dolls with a bag, one of whom only speaks French, from the studio that went on to make Teletubbies.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Seven Days

1998–2001·UPN·Sci-Fi

A government project that can send one man back exactly seven days, once, to undo a disaster.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Total Recall 2070

1999·Showtime / Space·Sci-Fi

A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Port Charles

1997–2003·ABC·Drama

The General Hospital spin-off that later restructured itself into thirteen-week arcs with an ending each — the closest American daytime came to a limited series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Sylvester & Tweety Mysteries

1995–2000·Kids' WB·Animation

The chase reframed as a detective series, with Granny solving cases and the cat still not catching the bird.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge

1994–1995·BBC Two·Comedy

The radio chat show moved to television, opening on a title sequence that is itself the character's idea of a good one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Poltergeist: The Legacy

1996–1999·Showtime / Sci-Fi Channel·Horror

A secret society investigating the supernatural from a San Francisco island house.

• Season 1

1 sequence

SeaChange

1998–2019·ABC (Australia)·Comedy

A city lawyer moving to a coastal town, and the series that put the phrase into Australian English.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bob the Builder

1999–2011·BBC One·Animation

Stop-motion construction with a call and response the programme never varies, and a number one Christmas single.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Road Rovers

1996–1997·Kids' WB·Animation

Domestic dogs from six countries turned into a superhero team by a scientist who does not explain much.

• Season 1

1 sequence

BeastMaster

1999–2002·Syndication·Drama

The 1982 film continued as a series, made in Australia.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brooklyn Bridge

1991–1993·CBS·Comedy

Gary David Goldberg's memory of a 1950s Jewish family in Bensonhurst.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Men Behaving Badly

1992–1998·ITV / BBC One·Comedy

Two flatmates and the phrase the British press attached to a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Da Vinci's Inquest

1998–2005·CBC·Crime

A Vancouver coroner written from the real one, who later became the city's mayor.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Big Train

1998–2002·BBC Two·Comedy

Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews' sketch show, which opens on nothing explaining itself and never does.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Demon Headmaster

1996–1998·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A headmaster who hypnotises through his spectacles, from the Gillian Cross books, and the most frightening thing CBBC put out in the 1990s.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Critic

1994–1995·ABC / Fox·Animation

Al Jean and Mike Reiss's film critic, made between their Simpsons runs and cancelled by two networks.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Party of Five

1994–2000·Fox·Drama

Five siblings and a house, over BoDeans — an opening that establishes an absence rather than a cast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

G vs E

1999–2000·USA Network·Horror

Two agents of the Corps recruiting the dead to fight people who have sold their souls, shot to look like a 1970s exploitation print.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brimstone

1998–1999·Fox·Horror

A damned detective sent back from hell to recapture a hundred and thirteen escaped souls, cancelled after thirteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Trigun

1998·TV Tokyo·Animation

A desert western scored like a spy thriller, with a gunman who refuses to kill anyone.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sooty & Co

1993–1998·ITV·Comedy

The Sooty puppets moved to a shop, in the ITV series Matthew Corbett handed over at the end of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Royal Canadian Air Farce

1993–2008·CBC·Comedy

A radio sketch troupe of twenty years' standing moved to television, and kept there for fifteen more.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Passions

1999–2008·NBC·Drama

A daytime serial that ran witchcraft, a living doll and an orangutan nurse alongside the usual, and was the last new one American network daytime commissioned.

• Season 1

1 sequence

EZ Streets

1996–1997·CBS·Crime

Paul Haggis's crime drama, cancelled in nine episodes and cited ever since as an ancestor of the prestige era.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cow and Chicken

1997–1999·Cartoon Network·Animation

A cow and a chicken with human parents whose faces are never shown above the waist.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

1993–1994·Fox·Sci-Fi

A bounty hunter in 1893 chasing a device from the future, cancelled after one season and quoted ever since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alex Haley's Queen

1993·CBS·Drama

Haley's last book filmed as three nights on CBS, following his own paternal grandmother.

• Season 1

1 sequence

All Saints

1998–2009·Seven Network·Drama

An emergency ward in Sydney, running twelve years and outlasting most of its cast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Angela Anaconda

1999–2001·Teletoon·Animation

Photographs of real faces cut out and animated over drawn backgrounds, which is as unsettling as it sounds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Animals of Farthing Wood

1993–1995·BBC One·Animation

Animals leaving a destroyed wood for a nature reserve, and a children's series that killed off its cast as it went.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Animorphs

1998–2000·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

Children who can turn into any animal they touch, from the books that sold sixty million copies.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Any Day Now

1998–2002·Lifetime·Drama

Two friends in Birmingham, told in the present and in 1963 at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Art Attack

1990–2007·ITV·Documentary

Neil Buchanan making things out of household rubbish, and the big art laid out on the floor at the end.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bad Girls

1999–2006·ITV·Drama

A women's prison wing written by two of Prisoner Cell Block H's admirers, and ITV's answer to it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Ballykissangel

1996–2001·BBC One·Drama

An English priest posted to a village in Wicklow, and the BBC's most watched Sunday drama of the late nineties.

• Season 1
• Season 6

1 sequence

Bananas in Pyjamas

1992–2001·ABC (Australia)·Comedy

Two bananas, three teddy bears and a rat, made by the ABC and sold to eighty countries.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beakman's World

1992–1998·TLC / CBS·Documentary

Science explained by a man in a green coat and a person in a rat suit, which is more rigorous than it sounds.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Bear in the Big Blue House

1997–2006·Playhouse Disney·Comedy

A seven-foot bear who greets the camera by smelling it, and a moon in the window who sings the goodbye song.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Beast Wars: Transformers

1996–1999·Syndication / YTV·Animation

Transformers rebuilt in computer graphics on a fraction of the budget, which is why everybody is an animal.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

1 sequence

Becker

1998–2004·CBS·Comedy

A Bronx doctor with no patience for his patients, and a diner where nobody is much happier.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blossom

1990–1995·NBC·Comedy

A teenager narrating her own life to camera in a house otherwise entirely male, opening on a dance she performs herself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boston Common

1996–1997·NBC·Comedy

A Virginian who follows a woman to Boston and takes a job at the university she attends.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bradys

1990·CBS·Drama

The Brady children as adults, played as an hour-long drama, which lasted six weeks.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Busy World of Richard Scarry

1994–1996·Showtime·Animation

Busytown animated faithfully enough that the books' cutaway drawings survive intact.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Caillou

1997–2011·Teletoon / PBS·Animation

A four-year-old with no hair and very little patience, adapted from Quebec picture books.

• Season 1

2 sequences

California Dreams

1992–1996·NBC·Comedy

A Californian high school band, made by the Saved by the Bell producers for the same Saturday morning block.

• Season 1
• Seasons 3–5

2 sequences

Caroline in the City

1995–1999·NBC·Comedy

A Manhattan cartoonist drawing a strip about her own life, and the colourist who is in love with her.

• Season 1
• Season 3

2 sequences

Clueless

1996–1999·ABC / UPN·Comedy

The film continued at Bronson Alcott High, with most of the cast replaced and Dionne kept.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

The Commish

1991–1996·ABC·Crime

A police commissioner who solves things by talking, in a series built against the action shows around it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cousin Skeeter

1998–2002·Nickelodeon·Comedy

A boy and the puppet cousin who moves in with him, which nobody in the series treats as unusual.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Crocodile Hunter

1996–2004·Animal Planet·Documentary

Steve Irwin handling animals at arm's length or closer, for eight years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Crystal Maze

1990–·Channel 4·Documentary

Four themed zones and a warehouse in Essex, opened with an orchestral fanfare grander than any game show has earned before or since.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Cybill

1995–1998·CBS·Comedy

An actress whose career never quite happened, written closely around the one its star actually had.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Darling Buds of May

1991–1993·ITV·Comedy

H. E. Bates's Kent farming family, and the series that made Catherine Zeta-Jones a household name inside a fortnight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dave's World

1993–1997·CBS·Comedy

Dave Barry's columns turned into a sitcom, with the household drawn rather than filmed in the titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Detention

1999–2000·Kids' WB·Animation

Nine children in permanent after-school detention, animated in a flat 1950s style that nothing else on the block used.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dinosaurs

1991–1994·ABC·Comedy

A Henson animatronic sitcom about a working family in the Mesozoic, which finished by freezing the world over.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dragon Tales

1999–2005·PBS Kids / CBC·Animation

Two children who reach a dragon world by reciting a rhyme over a scale they find in a toy box.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Drew Carey Show

1995–2004·ABC·Comedy

A Cleveland department-store personnel manager, opened for two seasons by a cartoon of his own face.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Due South

1994–1999·CTV·Crime

A Mountie seconded to Chicago, playing the politeness entirely straight against the city around him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Earth 2

1994–1995·NBC·Sci-Fi

Colonists on a planet that turns out to be alive, cancelled on a cliffhanger after twenty-one episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Earthworm Jim

1995–1996·The WB·Animation

The game adapted with its own voice cast and most of its absurdity intact.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Eerie, Indiana

1991–1993·NBC·Horror

A boy who works out that his new town is the centre of every strange thing in America.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ellen

1994–1998·ABC·Comedy

A Los Angeles bookshop owner, in the sitcom whose fourth season changed what American television would say out loud.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Family Affairs

1997–2005·Channel 5·Drama

The soap Channel 5 launched with, and the one that had to build an audience from nothing five nights a week.

• Season 3

1 sequence

The Famous Jett Jackson

1998–2001·Disney Channel·Comedy

A teenage action star who moves his own production to his grandmother's town in North Carolina.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ferris Bueller

1990–1991·NBC·Comedy

The film adapted for television without its star, and remembered mostly for opening with a joke about that.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fired Up

1997–1998·NBC·Comedy

Two women sacked from a public relations firm who start their own out of a spare room.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Forensic Files

1996–2011·TLC / Court TV / truTV·Documentary

Real cases retold through the laboratory work that closed them, and the programme that made luminol a household word.

• Season 1

1 sequence

From the Earth to the Moon

1998·HBO·Drama

Tom Hanks's twelve-part Apollo history, opened by archive footage cut to Michael Kamen's march.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frontline

1994–1997·ABC (Australia)·Comedy

A current affairs programme satirised from inside its own newsroom, and the model most workplace mockumentaries since have followed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Game On

1995–1998·BBC Two·Comedy

Three flatmates and an agoraphobic landlord, recast in the middle and carried on regardless.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Get a Life

1990–1992·Fox·Comedy

A thirty-year-old paperboy still living at home, in a sitcom that got stranger every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gladiators

1992–2000·ITV·Documentary

Contenders ready, gladiators ready — a Saturday-night format built entirely out of its own catchphrases.

• Seasons 1–8

1 sequence

The Golden Palace

1992–1993·CBS·Comedy

The Golden Girls minus one, running a Miami hotel for a single season before CBS stopped.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grace & Favour

1992–1993·BBC One·Comedy

The Are You Being Served? staff inheriting a country manor, with most of the original cast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grace Under Fire

1993–1998·ABC·Comedy

Brett Butler as a single mother working at an oil refinery, in a sitcom built on her stand-up.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hang Time

1995–2000·NBC·Comedy

A girl on a boys' high school basketball team, made for the Saturday morning block.

• Season 2

2 sequences

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

1992–1997·ABC·Comedy

A retired basketball player teaching gym in Oakland and sharing a house with two women he went to school with.

• Season 1
• Seasons 4–5

1 sequence

Harry Enfield & Chums

1990–1992·BBC Two·Comedy

Enfield's characters given a series each week, and most of British catchphrase comedy for a decade after.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Herman's Head

1991–1994·Fox·Comedy

A man's four personified impulses arguing inside his skull while the plot happens outside it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

1996–1998·BBC One·Crime

A Lancashire pensioner who opens a detective agency because nobody will give her a job.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Highlander: The Series

1992–1998·Syndication·Sci-Fi

Queen's 'Princes of the Universe' over swordplay and lightning, and a narration explaining immortality every week for six years.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Hope & Gloria

1995–1996·NBC·Comedy

A talk show producer and a hairdresser sharing a Pittsburgh apartment building.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Hornblower

1998–2003·ITV·Drama

Forester's naval officer, made not as a series but as eight television films spread over five years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Hughleys

1998–2000·ABC·Comedy

A family moving to a white suburb and the father who cannot stop noticing it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Iron Chef

1993–1999·Fuji TV·Documentary

A cookery contest staged as a martial-arts tournament, presided over by a man in a gold cape.

• Season 1

1 sequence

It (1990)

1990·ABC·Horror

Two nights on ABC, and the reason a generation of viewers will not stand near a storm drain.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Jamie Foxx Show

1996–2001·The WB·Comedy

A hotel in Los Angeles run by relatives, and the nephew who wants to act instead.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jay Jay the Jet Plane

1998–2005·PBS Kids·Animation

Talking aeroplanes at a small airfield, made first on video and later for television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jeeves and Wooster

1990–1993·ITV·Comedy

Wodehouse played by Fry and Laurie, who had spent the previous decade writing sketches together.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jesse

1998–2000·NBC·Comedy

A single mother working in her father's Buffalo bar while training as a nurse.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The John Larroquette Show

1993–1996·NBC·Comedy

A recovering alcoholic managing a bus terminal at night, in a sitcom NBC steadily made lighter against its writers' wishes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Journey of Allen Strange

1997–2000·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

An alien stranded on Earth and taken in by the family who find him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Judge Judy

1996–2021·Syndication·Documentary

Small claims heard by a former family court judge who lets almost nobody finish a sentence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kevin Spencer

1999–2005·The Comedy Network·Animation

A Canadian animated series about a chain-smoking sociopath and his parents, drawn as crudely as it is written.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Kindred: The Embraced

1996·Fox·Horror

Vampire clans running San Francisco as organised crime, cancelled after eight episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kipper

1997–2000·ITV·Animation

Mick Inkpen's dog animated at the pace of the picture books, which is to say slowly and on purpose.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lamb Chop's Play-Along

1992–1995·PBS·Comedy

Shari Lewis and her puppets, and the song that does not end.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

1993–2009·NBC·Comedy

An unknown writer handed the 12.30 slot, and sixteen years to grow into it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Late Show with David Letterman

1993–2015·CBS·Comedy

Letterman moved to CBS and to a theatre on Broadway, which the titles put on screen every night for twenty-two years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Legends of the Hidden Temple

1993–1995·Nickelodeon·Documentary

A children's game show staged inside a temple, presided over by a talking stone head.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Little Bear

1995–2001·CBC / Nick Jr.·Animation

Maurice Sendak's drawings animated in no hurry whatever, and about the quietest programme Nick Jr. ever ran.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

1993–1997·ABC·Sci-Fi

Superman rewritten as a workplace romance, on the principle that Clark is the real man and the cape is the costume.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends

1998–2000·BBC Two·Documentary

Theroux embedding himself with American subcultures and letting the awkwardness do the work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Madeline

1993–2007·The Family Channel·Animation

Bemelmans' twelve little girls in two straight lines, animated in the style of the books.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Magic School Bus

1994–1997·PBS·Animation

A science teacher who shrinks her class and drives them through the lesson, with Lily Tomlin at the wheel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Malcolm & Eddie

1996–2000·UPN·Comedy

Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Eddie Griffin sharing a Kansas City bar, four years after The Cosby Show ended.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Martial Law

1998–2000·CBS·Crime

Sammo Hung as a Chinese detective in Los Angeles, doing his own stunts at forty-six.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Masked Rider

1995–1996·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

Kamen Rider adapted for American television as a family sitcom with a monster in it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Melrose Place

1992–1999·Fox·Drama

The same freeze-frame grammar as its parent show, moved to an apartment complex and given a considerably nastier theme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mighty Morphin Alien Rangers

1996·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

Ten episodes bridging two seasons, with the regular cast turned into children and rangers from another planet standing in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Minor Adjustments

1995·NBC·Comedy

A child psychologist who is markedly better with other people's children than with his own.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mortal Kombat: Conquest

1998–1999·Syndication·Sci-Fi

The games' tournament set six hundred years earlier, made for syndication and cancelled on a cliffhanger.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mummies Alive!

1997·Syndication·Animation

Four Egyptian mummies revived in San Francisco to guard the reincarnation of a pharaoh's son.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog

1998–1999·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

Irish myth given the Power Rangers treatment, shot in Ireland with armour instead of spandex.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nanalan'

1998–2004·CBC·Animation

A puppet toddler spends the day at her grandmother's, filmed at grass height.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Never Mind the Buzzcocks

1996–2015·BBC Two·Comedy

A music panel game whose identity parade round outlasted most of the acts standing in it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The New Addams Family

1998–1999·YTV / Fox Family·Comedy

The 1964 scripts remade almost line for line in Vancouver, thirty-four years afterwards.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nickelodeon Guts

1992–1995·Nickelodeon·Documentary

Children competing on wires and ramps, and climbing a fake mountain that shed foam.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ninja Turtles: The Next Mutation

1997–1998·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The live-action Turtles made by the Power Rangers producers, and the one that added a fifth.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Noel's House Party

1991–1999·BBC One·Comedy

Saturday night from a fictional house in Crinkley Bottom, and the programme that dropped celebrities into gunge on purpose.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Norm Show

1999–2001·ABC·Comedy

Norm Macdonald as a hockey player struck off and sentenced to social work.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Oggy and the Cockroaches

1998–·France 3·Animation

A French cartoon with almost no dialogue in it, which is the reason it sold to nearly every country there is.

• Season 1
• Season 6

1 sequence

Oh, Doctor Beeching!

1995–1997·BBC One·Comedy

A branch-line station waiting to be closed by the Beeching cuts, from the writers of Hi-de-Hi!

• Season 1

1 sequence

Parker Lewis Can't Lose

1990–1993·Fox·Comedy

Ferris Bueller as a weekly series, shot on wide lenses with a narrator who never once stops talking.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pie in the Sky

1994–1997·BBC One·Crime

A detective who would rather run his restaurant, and is not allowed to retire from either.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Popular

1999–2001·The WB·Drama

A high school seen from both sides of its social order, from the man who later made Glee.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers in Space

1998·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The season written as an ending, which rated well enough that the franchise carried on for decades.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

1999·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The first season to break the format and start again with a wholly separate cast and setting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Turbo

1997·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The season that started with a feature film and handed four of the five suits to a new cast mid-run.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Zeo

1996·Fox Kids·Sci-Fi

The season straight after Mighty Morphin, remade from Chouriki Sentai Ohranger.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Practice

1997–2004·ABC·Drama

Boston law offices in grey and brown, from the producer who would spin this off into Boston Legal and lighten it considerably.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Pretender

1996–2000·NBC·Drama

A man raised in a laboratory who can become any professional he reads about, running from the people who made him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pride and Prejudice

1995·BBC One·Drama

Carl Davis's theme over needlework and a country lane — the adaptation against which every subsequent Austen has been measured.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Prime Suspect

1991–2006·ITV·Crime

Stephen Warbeck's theme over London at night — spare, cold, and entirely without the reassurance the genre usually offers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Queen's Nose

1995–2003·BBC One·Comedy

A fifty pence piece that grants wishes, from the Dick King-Smith book.

• Season 1

1 sequence

ReBoot

1994–2001·YTV·Animation

The first television series animated entirely by computer, and set inside one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Red Green Show

1991–2006·CHCH-TV / CBC·Comedy

A lodge of middle-aged Canadian men and the duct tape with which they solve everything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Redwall

1999–2002·Teletoon·Animation

Brian Jacques' abbey mice animated in Canada, with the villains drawn considerably better than the heroes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Renegade

1992–1997·Syndication / USA Network·Crime

A framed policeman on a motorcycle, made for syndication by the people who made The A-Team.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Road to Avonlea

1990–1996·CBC·Drama

Montgomery's Prince Edward Island stories, made by the CBC with Disney paying half the bill.

• Season 1
• Season 5

1 sequence

Roc

1991–1994·Fox·Comedy

A Baltimore refuse collector and his family, and a season shot live to air on purpose.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rolie Polie Olie

1998–2004·CBC / Playhouse Disney·Animation

A world of robots built entirely out of spheres and cylinders, computer-animated in Toronto.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Royal Family

1991–1992·CBS·Comedy

Redd Foxx and Della Reese as a couple whose children move back in, and the series Foxx died making.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Samurai Pizza Cats

1990–1991·TV Tokyo·Animation

Kyatto Ninden Teyandee rewritten wholesale in English by writers working without translated scripts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Saved by the Bell: The College Years

1993–1994·NBC·Comedy

The Bayside cast moved to a university for one season, in prime time rather than Saturday morning.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Saved by the Bell: The New Class

1993–2000·NBC·Comedy

Bayside kept and the pupils replaced, for seven seasons rather more than anyone had expected.

• Season 1
• Seasons 6–7

1 sequence

Sharpe

1993–2008·ITV·Drama

A rifleman commissioned out of the ranks in the Peninsular War, filmed for its first runs in Crimea.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Shining (1997)

1997·ABC·Horror

King's own remake for television, made largely because he disliked what Kubrick had done with the book.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Single Guy

1995–1997·NBC·Comedy

A novelist whose friends are all married, scheduled by NBC between Friends and Seinfeld and never forgiven for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sister, Sister

1994–1999·ABC / The WB·Comedy

Twins separated at birth and reunited in a shopping mall, played by twins.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sisters

1991–1996·NBC·Drama

Four sisters in Illinois, in a network drama that let all four of them be difficult.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Skysurfer Strike Force

1995–1996·Syndication·Animation

Five pilots on energy surfboards, from the syndication block that ran opposite the Saban shows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Smart Guy

1997–1999·The WB·Comedy

A ten-year-old skipped ahead to high school, and the two older siblings who have to sit next to him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

So Weird

1999–2001·Disney Channel·Sci-Fi

A girl touring with her mother's band and investigating what she finds on the road, made darker than the channel usually allowed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Soldier Soldier

1991–1997·ITV·Drama

A fictional infantry regiment and the families attached to it, which made two of its cast into pop stars.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Something So Right

1996–1997·NBC·Comedy

A remarried couple with children from three previous marriages between them.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Steve Harvey Show

1996–2002·The WB·Comedy

A funk musician turned high school teacher, in the sitcom that carried The WB's Monday nights for six years.

• Season 1
• Seasons 4–6

1 sequence

Suddenly Susan

1996–2000·NBC·Comedy

A columnist who leaves her fiancé at the altar and then has to write about it every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sunset Beach

1997–1999·NBC·Drama

Aaron Spelling's daytime serial, which NBC ran for three years and then replaced with Passions.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Super Mario World

1991·NBC·Animation

The last of the Mario cartoons, made for one autumn after the game of the same name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Superhuman Samurai Syber-Squad

1994–1995·Syndication·Sci-Fi

A garage band's keyboard player digitised into a computer to fight what lives there, adapted from Denkou Choujin Gridman.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sweet Valley High

1994–1997·Syndication / UPN·Drama

The paperback series about twin sisters, adapted for television with real twins.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills

1994–1995·USA Network·Sci-Fi

Four teenagers given powers by an alien tattoo, in a title that explains the whole programme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Theodore Tugboat

1993–2001·CBC·Animation

Model tugboats in Halifax harbour, narrated for years by Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas.

• Season 1

1 sequence

This Life

1996–2007·BBC Two·Drama

Five law graduates sharing a house in Southwark, shot handheld and stopped after two series while it was still growing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Total Request Live

1998–2008·MTV·Documentary

MTV's daily video countdown, broadcast from a studio above Times Square with the crowd outside kept in shot.

• Season 5

1 sequence

The Tribe

1999–2003·Channel 5·Drama

A virus kills every adult and the children left over form tribes, made in New Zealand for a British channel.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Two Guys and a Girl

1998–2001·ABC·Comedy

A Boston pizza place the series was named after for two seasons and then quietly dropped from the title.

• Season 1
• Seasons 3–4

1 sequence

Unhappily Ever After

1995–1999·The WB·Comedy

Married… with Children's writers doing it again, with a talking stuffed rabbit only the father can hear.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Union Square

1997–1998·NBC·Comedy

A New York diner and the people in it, taken off after fifteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Upper Hand

1990–1996·ITV·Comedy

Who's the Boss? remade for ITV, and one of the few American formats that worked coming the other way.

• Season 1

1 sequence

V.I.P.

1998–2002·Syndication·Crime

Pamela Anderson fronting a celebrity protection agency she is unqualified to run, played for the joke.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Veronica's Closet

1997–2000·NBC·Comedy

A lingerie magnate whose marriage collapses in public, in one of NBC's Thursday night bets after Seinfeld.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

Viper

1994–1999·NBC / Syndication·Crime

A car that converts into an armoured attack vehicle, cancelled by NBC and revived for syndication.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Vision of Escaflowne

1996·TV Tokyo·Animation

A schoolgirl pulled into a war between a hidden planet and an empire, scored throughout for full orchestra.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Wayans Bros.

1995–1999·The WB·Comedy

Two brothers running a Harlem newsstand, made by the family whose name is over the door.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

WCW Monday Nitro

1995–2001·TNT·Documentary

The programme that made Monday nights a ratings war, and lost it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Weird Science

1994–1998·USA Network·Comedy

The film turned into a series, with the computer-made woman staying on as a regular.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

1991–1995·PBS·Documentary

A geography quiz whose house band sang the answers, and which taught a generation of children where Ouagadougou is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Where the Heart Is

1997–2006·ITV·Drama

District nurses in a Yorkshire town, which ran nine years on almost no incident.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Wiggles

1998–·ABC (Australia)·Comedy

Four early-childhood teachers from Sydney who worked out that a children's band could tour like a rock one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Working

1997–1999·NBC·Comedy

A graduate's first office job, narrated by him straight to camera.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wycliffe

1993–1998·ITV·Crime

A detective superintendent working Cornwall, filmed largely on the coast it is set on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Yo soy Betty, la fea

1999–2001·RCN (Colombia)·Comedy

The most adapted television format in history — remade in more than twenty countries, including as Ugly Betty, which this catalogue also holds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

1992–1996·ABC·Drama

Indiana Jones tutored by the twentieth century itself, each episode setting him down beside somebody who was really there.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Zoboomafoo

1999–2001·PBS Kids / CBC·Documentary

The Kratt brothers and a leaping lemur, teaching natural history to an audience too young to read.

• Season 1