The 2010s

770 shows that began in the 2010s, and the 823 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

Stranger Things

2016–·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Red letters assembling out of the dark in ITC Benguiat, glowing at the edges like a paperback cover left in the sun. An argument that a title sequence can be nothing but type and still do all the work.

• Seasons 1–4

2 sequences

Euphoria

2019–·HBO·Drama

Bodies, water and neon shot at the point where a party stops being fun, over Labrinth. Beautiful in a way that is deliberately hard to enjoy.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

The Boys

2019–·Prime Video·Drama

Superhero iconography rendered as corporate branding and then defaced — the show's whole argument, done in graphics.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Night Manager

2016–2025·BBC One / AMC·Drama

Le Carré's arms dealer and the hotelier sent in after him, opened by weapons assembling out of luxury.

• Season 2

2 sequences

Game of Thrones

2011–2019·HBO·Drama

A map that rebuilds itself each week. The clockwork cities shown change with the locations the episode visits, which makes it the rare title sequence carrying actual information.

• Season 1
• Season 8

1 sequence

3%

2016–2020·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Netflix's first Brazilian original: a selection process that lets three in a hundred cross to the other side.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Peaky Blinders

2013–2022·BBC Two / BBC One·Crime

Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand' over Birmingham furnaces and a man walking away from a fire — a period drama scored entirely out of period.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Yellowstone

2018–2024·Paramount Network·Drama

Montana filmed as a land claim — cattle, mountains and fence line, with the ranch's brand doing the title card.

• Season 1

1 sequence

For All Mankind

2019–·Apple TV+·Sci-Fi

Archive footage of the space race, doctored — real newsreel edited so that the alternate history it depicts appears to have actually been filmed.

• Season 1

3 sequences

The Witcher

2019–·Netflix·Drama

Monsters, coins and continents cut into a woodblock-print style, with the medallion turning at the centre of it.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

1 sequence

The Handmaid's Tale

2017–2025·Hulu·Drama

Red cloaks and white wings shot from above, arranged into the geometry of a system rather than a group of people.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Outlander

2014–·Starz·Drama

'The Skye Boat Song' rewritten for a woman instead of a prince, over standing stones and Highland weather — and re-recorded in a new style each season to match wherever the story has been dragged.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Taskmaster

2015–·Dave / Channel 4·Comedy

A bust of the host's head and a fanfare, in the register of a much grander programme than the one that follows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Rookie

2018–·ABC·Crime

Los Angeles patrol work, opened with the network-procedural confidence the format has run on since Hill Street Blues.

• Season 1

3 sequences

Homeland

2011–2020·Showtime·Drama

Jazz, archive news audio and a child in a lion mask — a fever dream assembled from half a century of American foreign policy, recut every season with that year's crisis in it.

• Season 1
• Season 6
• Season 8

1 sequence

The Walking Dead

2010–2022·AMC·Horror

Rust, decay and abandoned objects, cut to a string figure that never resolves — a sequence about entropy rather than the dead.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Better Call Saul

2015–2022·AMC·Crime

A title card that gets worse every year on purpose: tracking errors, colour bleed and tape damage accumulating season by season, so the picture degrades at roughly the rate its subject does.

• Seasons 1–6

11 sequences

American Horror Story

2011–·FX·Horror

An anthology, so there is no returning sequence to protect: Kyle Cooper builds a new one from scratch every season and the only thing carried across is the lettering. The sixth season is absent below because it went further still and threw the titles out altogether.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 8 more

1 sequence

Downton Abbey

2010–2015·ITV·Drama

A dog's back, a bell board and a house — thirty-one seconds establishing an entire social order without showing a single face.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fargo

2014–·FX·Crime

Snow, and the claim that this is a true story, which it is not — an anthology that opens every season by lying to you in a title card.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Morning Show

2019–·Apple TV+·Drama

Broadcast graphics assembling and collapsing — the machinery of a network morning programme, shown as the thing that eats the people in front of it.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

Shameless

2011–2021·Showtime·Comedy

A bathroom door opening on each member of the family in turn — an entire household characterised through one room.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Family Man

2019–·Prime Video·Drama

A middle-class Mumbai father who is also a National Investigation Agency officer, and cannot tell his family either job is real.

• Season 3

3 sequences

Dark

2017–2020·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Faces split and mirrored against themselves, reflected into a second image that is never quite the same person — a show about the same people at four ages, saying so before a word is spoken.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

3 sequences

Succession

2018–2023·HBO·Drama

Home video of rich children, degraded and half-legible, cut against helicopter shots of towers they will inherit. Nicholas Britell's piano stumbles deliberately, like something played badly on purpose.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

4 sequences

Young Sheldon

2017–2024·CBS·Comedy

The Big Bang Theory prequel, narrated by the adult Sheldon it never shows. Its titles are one family portrait in the West Texas hills, reshot every couple of seasons as the children outgrow the last version of it.

• Seasons 1–2
• Seasons 3–4
• Seasons 5–6
• and 1 more

1 sequence

The Man in the High Castle

2015–2019·Prime Video·Sci-Fi

Dick's occupied America, opened by newsreel light thrown across a map that has the wrong flags on it.

• Season 1

4 sequences

True Detective

2014–·HBO·Crime

Double-exposure portraits where the landscape is projected onto the people. Every season is reshot from scratch, so the titles change as completely as the cast does.

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

1 sequence

Black Mirror

2011–·Channel 4 / Netflix·Sci-Fi

A screen cracking, and that is the whole thing. Eighteen seconds of glitch and a fracture spreading across black glass — an anthology refusing to introduce anything, because each episode is a different show.

• Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Suits

2011–2019·USA Network·Drama

Tailoring, cufflinks and Manhattan glass over Ima Robot's 'Greenback Boogie' — a law firm sold entirely on wardrobe.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chernobyl

2019·HBO·Drama

No montage and no metaphor — the camera simply moves through the plant's corridors and control rooms while Hildur Guðnadóttir's score, built from recordings made inside a power station, does the rest.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rick and Morty

2013–·Adult Swim·Animation

A montage of adventures that mostly never happened, re-cut every season out of clips from episodes that do not exist.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Schitt's Creek

2015–2020·CBC·Comedy

A motel sign and a town crest, in the register of a place that has never once considered how its name reads.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Good Doctor

2017–2024·ABC·Drama

An autistic surgical resident, adapted from the Korean series of the same name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Person of Interest

2011–2016·CBS·Sci-Fi

Surveillance footage narrated by the machine watching it — an opening delivered from the point of view of the software, years before that was a common idea.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Blacklist

2013–2023·NBC·Crime

Nine seconds and a card. A ten-season network procedural that never once made you wait to get into an episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Animal Kingdom

2016–2022·TNT·Crime

The Australian film remade in Southern California, following the same criminal family.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Ozark

2017–2022·Netflix·Crime

Five glyphs inside the letter O — a boat, a gun, a cross, a bird, a body of water — chosen for the episode they introduce. The title card is a table of contents.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Mindhunter

2017–2019·Netflix·Crime

Reel-to-reel tape, evidence photographs and audio equipment intercut so tightly that the interview and the crime become one process. Clinical, and much nastier for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Crown

2016–2023·Netflix·Drama

Molten gold pouring, cooling and assembling itself into a crown, over Hans Zimmer. No faces and no footage — the object outlasts everyone who wears it, which is the show's entire argument.

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Jack Ryan

2018–2023·Prime Video·Drama

Satellite imagery, intercepted signals and maps — an analyst's view of the world rather than a field agent's.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Bluey

2018–·ABC Kids / Disney+·Animation

A blue heeler puppy and her family, animated in Brisbane, whose titles introduce the whole household in under half a minute.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

The Americans

2013–2018·FX·Drama

Soviet and American iconography intercut until they mirror each other exactly — the show's entire thesis in twenty-six seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Righteous Gemstones

2019–2025·HBO·Comedy

Eleven seconds of gold-plated megachurch branding, delivered with exactly the sincerity the family would want.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Expanse

2015–2022·Syfy / Amazon Prime Video·Sci-Fi

Orbital mechanics as graphic design — stations, ships and the Belt drawn as engineering schematics rather than spectacle.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Great British Bake Off

2010–·BBC Two / Channel 4·Documentary

Bunting, a tent and a xylophone — twenty seconds of deliberate gentleness, and one of the most effective pieces of format branding on British television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr Inbetween

2018–2021·FX·Crime

An Australian hitman's domestic life, opened in twelve seconds because the series has no interest in ceremony.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Death in Paradise

2011–·BBC One·Crime

Caribbean colour and a calypso theme, for a murder series that has never once let its setting look threatening.

• Season 1

4 sequences

Westworld

2016–2022·HBO·Sci-Fi

Things being manufactured, filmed as though it were tender: a horse and rider printed strand by strand, hands assembled out of white thread, a player piano working the theme out by itself. Rebuilt every season as the show's idea of what is being made changes.

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

1 sequence

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

2017–2023·Prime Video·Comedy

Fifties Manhattan as a fashion plate — silhouettes, hemlines and neon, moving at the speed the dialogue does.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spartacus

2010–2013·Starz·Drama

Starz's gladiator series, and one of the last major shows to use blood as a graphic element in its titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Fire

2012–·NBC·Drama

The first of Dick Wolf's Chicago series, and the one the other two were built out from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shetland

2013–·BBC One·Crime

North Atlantic weather over islands where everyone already knows everyone, which is the constraint the series runs on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

What We Do in the Shadows

2019–2024·FX·Comedy

Gothic engraving and Norma Tanega's 'You're Dead' — a vampire mockumentary whose titles are the only part of it played completely straight.

• Season 1

3 sequences

The Leftovers

2014–2017·HBO·Drama

The rare show that threw out a perfectly good title sequence and replaced it with its opposite. One season of grief painted as a Renaissance ceiling, then a complete reversal into snapshots and a country song.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3

1 sequence

Banshee

2013–2016·Cinemax·Crime

Amish country and violence intercut at the same speed, from the network's short-lived attempt at prestige action.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sex Education

2019–2023·Netflix·Comedy

Twenty seconds of hand-drawn scrawl and pop, pitched exactly at the notebook margins the show is set among.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Call the Midwife

2012–·BBC One·Drama

Poplar's district nurses through the fifties and sixties, opened the same way for well over a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Money Heist

2017–2021·Netflix·Crime

Red jumpsuits, Dalí masks and the Royal Mint rendered as a heist diagram, with 'Bella Ciao' turned from a partisan song into a brand.

• Seasons 3–5

2 sequences

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

2013–2021·Fox / NBC·Comedy

Precinct signage and a horn line in twenty-one seconds — a cop show opening with no sirens in it.

• Seasons 1–5
• Seasons 6–8

1 sequence

Big Little Lies

2017–2019·HBO·Drama

The school run, filmed like a threat. Mothers driving the coast road to Monterey with children in the back seat, over Michael Kiwanuka's 'Cold Little Heart'.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lucifer

2016–2021·Fox / Netflix·Drama

Eleven seconds and a card, from a procedural that would rather get to the case.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Primal

2019–2024·Adult Swim / Max·Animation

Twenty seconds of charcoal and blood, with no dialogue anywhere in it — which is also true of most of the series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sherlock

2010–2017·BBC One·Crime

London shot as data — maps, magnification and chemical traces, cut to a violin figure that never quite settles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

This Is Us

2016–2022·NBC·Drama

A family photograph and a card, over in nine seconds — restraint from a show that is otherwise not remotely restrained.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Good Place

2016–2020·NBC·Comedy

Pastel clouds, cartoon signage and a chime — an afterlife rendered as municipal branding, which is the joke the whole series is built on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Terror

2018–2019·AMC·Horror

The Franklin expedition frozen into the ice, with something on it that is not the cold.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Once Upon a Time

2011–2018·ABC·Drama

A card hidden inside the episode's own imagery — the title appears somewhere in the opening scene rather than over a sequence, in a different place every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Last Kingdom

2015–2022·BBC America / Netflix·Drama

Earth, ash and iron assembling into a map of a divided England, with the borders shifting as the seasons go on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Broadchurch

2013–2017·ITV·Crime

Dorset cliffs and a beach, filmed as beautifully as a tourist board would want and used for the opposite purpose.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vikings

2013–2020·History·Drama

Bodies sinking through water over Fever Ray's 'If I Had a Heart' — a history-channel drama with a title sequence better than its remit.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Orville

2017–2022·Fox / Hulu·Sci-Fi

A ship passing the camera to a full orchestral fanfare, played entirely straight — a comedy whose titles are a sincere love letter to the ones this catalogue opens with.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bosch

2014–2021·Prime Video·Crime

Los Angeles at night from a helicopter, over Caught A Ghost's 'Can't Let Go' — a city filmed the way the detective sees it, from above and at a distance.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Daredevil

2015–2018·Netflix·Crime

Blood-red liquid pouring upward into the shapes of New York — the courthouse, the church, the skyline — then the scales of justice and a man who cannot see any of it.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

The Punisher

2017–2019·Netflix·Crime

A skull assembling out of gun smoke and muzzle flash, with the ordnance doing the drawing. Blunter than its siblings, deliberately.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Castle Rock

2018–2019·Hulu·Horror

A Maine town assembled out of forty years of Stephen King, with a main title that keeps rebuilding the same house.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scandal

2012–2018·ABC·Drama

Shonda Rhimes's Washington fixer series, and the show that made the phrase 'it's handled' a network brand.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Big C

2010–2013·Showtime·Comedy

Laura Linney given a terminal diagnosis and deciding to stop being polite about anything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Robot

2015–2019·USA Network·Drama

There is no title sequence. There is a card, and the card is the whole design — which makes this the rare show whose opening is defined by what it refuses to do.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Chicago P.D.

2014–·NBC·Crime

The second of Dick Wolf's Chicago series, and the one the crossovers usually run through.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fleabag

2016–2019·BBC Three / Prime Video·Comedy

Phoebe Waller-Bridge's series, which opens by looking directly at you and skips the formality of a title sequence entirely.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cobra Kai

2018–2025·YouTube Red / Netflix·Drama

The Karate Kid continued forty years on, with a title card that has been restaged in several different styles across the run.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Attack on Titan

2013–2023·NHK General TV / MBS·Animation

A new opening for almost every cour, each one restating the series' situation as it currently stands — which over four seasons means the titles document a war changing sides.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blue Bloods

2010–2024·CBS·Crime

Three generations of one New York police family, fourteen seasons long.

• Seasons 10–12

1 sequence

Bob's Burgers

2011–·Fox·Animation

Three running gags in nineteen seconds — the burger of the day, the shop next door, and the pest-control van — all three rewritten for every single episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Killing Eve

2018–2022·BBC America / BBC One·Crime

Hand-drawn ink over a chase across Europe, in the register of a fashion illustration rather than a thriller.

• Season 1

1 sequence

House of Cards

2013–2018·Netflix·Drama

Washington in time-lapse, shot at dusk and left to run — monuments, traffic and cloud moving over a city where nothing visibly happens. Jeff Beal's theme does the menace.

• Seasons 1–6

2 sequences

Star Trek: Discovery

2017–2024·Paramount+·Sci-Fi

A complete break from every Trek opening before it — no ship, no narration, just schematic drafting-table renderings of Starfleet hardware assembling and dissolving in empty space, with a pair of hands reaching through it all.

• Seasons 1–2
• Seasons 3–5

1 sequence

Orange Is the New Black

2013–2019·Netflix·Drama

Extreme close-ups of real formerly incarcerated women's faces — eyes, mouths, tattoos — cut to Regina Spektor. Not one of them is a cast member, which is the point.

• Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Delhi Crime

2019–·Netflix·Crime

Delhi at night from a moving vehicle, with none of the stylisation the subject would normally attract.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Billions

2016–2023·Showtime·Drama

Manhattan money photographed like weather — glass, helicopters and trading floors, with no people in any of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

S.W.A.T. (2017)

2017–2025·CBS·Crime

The reboot, which ran eight seasons to the original's two and rebuilt the theme rather than dropping it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Adventure Time

2010–2018·Cartoon Network·Animation

Twenty-five seconds of a candy world that turns out to be a post-apocalyptic one, sung by a boy and a dog who have not noticed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Letterkenny

2016–2023·Crave·Comedy

A cold open, a card, and back out — a rural Ontario comedy that spends as little time on formalities as its characters would.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Justified

2010–2015·FX·Crime

Kentucky hills and hip-hop — Gangstagrass over holler country, which should not work and entirely does.

• Season 6

1 sequence

The Flash

2014–2023·The CW·Sci-Fi

The same narrated formula as Arrow, delivered faster — which is at least appropriate.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Barry

2018–2023·HBO·Comedy

A plain card and a held shot, gone in under half a minute. The show's whole comic method — refusing to signal what kind of scene you are in — starts with its titles refusing to signal anything at all.

• Season 2

5 sequences

Silicon Valley

2014–2019·HBO·Comedy

An animated Bay Area skyline of tech-company headquarters, rebuilt every season to match who was winning that year. The joke only works because it kept being updated — logos appear, get acquired, and vanish between seasons.

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

1 sequence

Falling Skies

2011–2015·TNT·Sci-Fi

A resistance militia in occupied Boston, produced by Steven Spielberg, opened in eleven seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Affair

2014–2019·Showtime·Drama

Fiona Apple's 'Container' over water and doubled imagery — two accounts of the same events, said in pictures before the show says it in structure.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Strain

2014–2017·FX·Horror

Guillermo del Toro's vampire plague, opened by a sequence of things going wrong at cellular scale.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Why Women Kill

2019–2021·CBS All Access / Paramount+·Drama

Marc Cherry's anthology, three eras in the same house in the first season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The 100

2014–2020·The CW·Sci-Fi

A card and a sting for most of its run, expanding into a full sequence only at the end.

• Season 7

1 sequence

Critical Role

2015–·Twitch / YouTube·Comedy

A tabletop campaign broadcast live, which by its second campaign had a fully animated title sequence of its own.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Sinner

2017–2021·USA Network·Crime

An anthology that begins with the crime and spends the season on why.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Goliath

2016–2021·Prime Video·Drama

Billy Bob Thornton as a lawyer working out of a Santa Monica bar.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Love, Death + Robots

2019–·Netflix·Animation

Three icons — a heart, a skull, a robot — recombined every episode to declare which of the three that instalment is going to be. The shortest possible statement of an anthology's rules.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power

2014–2020·Starz·Crime

A New York club owner running a drug network behind it, and the franchise Starz built out of him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Narcos

2015–2017·Netflix·Crime

Archive photographs, surveillance stills and evidence shots of the real Medellín cartel, cut to Rodrigo Amarante's 'Tuyo' — a bolero written to sound like something Escobar's father would have played.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Chicago Med

2015–·NBC·Drama

The third Chicago series, sharing a city and a crossover schedule with the other two.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Legion

2017–2019·FX·Sci-Fi

Noah Hawley's series about a man who cannot trust his own perception, with title design to match.

• Season 1

1 sequence

New Girl

2011–2018·Fox·Comedy

Zooey Deschanel and three flatmates, with a theme the cast sings themselves.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Victoria

2016–2019·ITV·Drama

The young queen's first years, opened by a jewelled monogram assembling itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

BoJack Horseman

2014–2020·Netflix·Animation

A man drifting through his own life on his back while Los Angeles slides past above him, ending in a pool. Six seasons of the same slow fall, with the crowd around him quietly changing.

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Riverdale

2017–2023·The CW·Drama

Archie comics restaged as neon-lit noir, with the town's diner shot like a crime scene.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Orphan Black

2013–2017·Space / BBC America·Sci-Fi

One face fracturing into many, which is both the premise and a fair description of what Tatiana Maslany was asked to do every week.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Umbrella Academy

2019–2024·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Comic-panel graphics and a brass sting, introducing seven siblings by number rather than name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Superstore

2015–2021·NBC·Comedy

Big-box retail signage and shelving, shot with the flatness of the fluorescent light the whole show is lit by.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wayward Pines

2015–2016·Fox·Sci-Fi

An Idaho town nobody can leave, from the Blake Crouch novels.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hawaii Five-0 (2010)

2010–2020·CBS·Crime

The reboot, which keeps the 1968 theme almost note for note and rebuilds the wave and the zoom around it in high definition.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Line of Duty

2012–2021·BBC Two / BBC One·Crime

Redaction as a design language — evidence bags, case files and blocks of black covering the parts you are not cleared for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

His Dark Materials

2019–2022·BBC One / HBO·Sci-Fi

Pullman's trilogy adapted with a title sequence that opens a window between worlds and keeps going through it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gravity Falls

2012–2016·Disney Channel / Disney XD·Animation

A cipher hidden in the last second of every opening, so the title sequence is itself a puzzle the audience was expected to solve across two seasons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Last Ship

2014–2018·TNT·Drama

A destroyer at sea when a pandemic takes the rest of the world.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Legend of Korra

2012–2014·Nickelodeon·Animation

The Avatar sequel, which keeps the four-element structure of its predecessor's opening and moves it into an industrial age.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Key & Peele

2012–2015·Comedy Central·Comedy

Twenty-six seconds and two names, from a sketch show that spent its budget on the sketches.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rizzoli & Isles

2010–2016·TNT·Crime

A Boston detective and a medical examiner, from the Tess Gerritsen novels.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grimm

2011–2017·NBC·Horror

A Portland detective who can see the creatures the fairy tales were written about, opened in eleven seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Crash Landing on You

2019–2020·tvN·Drama

A South Korean heiress paraglides into North Korea, and the opening treats the border as scenery rather than politics.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Victorious

2010–2013·Nickelodeon·Comedy

A performing-arts high school, and the series that made Ariana Grande's name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Impractical Jokers

2011–·truTV·Comedy

Four friends daring each other in public, with a hidden-camera open that ran unchanged for nine seasons.

• Seasons 1–9

1 sequence

Arrow

2012–2020·The CW·Drama

A narrated premise delivered every week in the first person, which the entire subsequent CW superhero slate copied verbatim.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fear the Walking Dead

2015–2023·AMC·Horror

Seventeen seconds and a card — the spinoff declining the parent show's decaying montage entirely.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Veep

2012–2019·HBO·Comedy

Fourteen seconds of seal, fanfare and a card. The brevity is the joke — an office with all the pomp of the presidency and none of the power.

• Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Supergirl

2015–2021·CBS / The CW·Sci-Fi

The narrated-premise formula again, this time with a first-person introduction that ran for six seasons.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Blindspot

2015–2020·NBC·Crime

A woman found in Times Square covered in tattoos that are each a case.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Over the Garden Wall

2014·Cartoon Network·Animation

Nineteenth-century American illustration and a wax-cylinder recording, for a miniseries that spends ten episodes pretending to be much older than it is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elementary

2012–2019·CBS·Crime

Holmes and a female Watson in New York, opened by a Rube Goldberg machine assembling itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Girl Meets World

2014–2017·Disney Channel·Comedy

The Boy Meets World sequel, following the next generation of the same family.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gotham

2014–2019·Fox·Crime

The city before the character — architecture, rain and corruption, with the costume kept firmly off screen.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

2013–2020·ABC·Sci-Fi

Marvel's first television series, opening with agency insignia and a brass sting rather than any of the heroes it is adjacent to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Pacific

2010·HBO·Drama

The companion piece to Band of Brothers, with charcoal drawings taking the place of the pencil sketches and Hans Zimmer taking the place of Michael Kamen.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Regular Show

2010–2017·Cartoon Network·Animation

A blue jay and a raccoon employed as groundskeepers, opened with a synth sting and almost no information.

• Season 1

1 sequence

How to Get Away with Murder

2014–2020·ABC·Crime

Law-school iconography cut against evidence photographs, so the lecture and the crime scene share a visual language.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Originals

2013–2018·The CW·Horror

The Vampire Diaries spinoff, moving the family to New Orleans and giving them a title sequence the parent show never had.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Watchmen

2019·HBO·Drama

Damon Lindelof's sequel to the comic, scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the hardest entry in this catalogue to find footage of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Loud House

2016–·Nickelodeon·Animation

One boy, ten sisters, and a theme song that has to introduce all eleven of them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Re:Zero − Starting Life in Another World

2016–·TV Tokyo·Animation

A boy who restarts from a save point every time he dies, and remembers all of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Goldbergs

2013–2023·ABC·Comedy

Adam Goldberg's own 1980s home videos turned into a sitcom about making them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Good Fight

2017–2022·CBS All Access / Paramount+·Drama

Office furniture, law books and televisions exploding in slow motion, one after another, to an orchestral swell — a legal drama blowing up its own set every week.

• Season 2

1 sequence

American Gods

2017–2021·Starz·Drama

A totem pole of clashing worship — neon crosses, satellite dishes, astronauts and idols stacked into one object, which is the novel's argument compressed into ninety seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

2018–2020·Netflix·Horror

The Archie witch as horror rather than sitcom, from the Riverdale producers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Narcos: Mexico

2018–2021·Netflix·Crime

The parent show's archive-and-evidence method moved north — Guadalajara and Sinaloa in period photography, with the same documentary flatness.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Mirzapur

2018–·Prime Video·Crime

A carpet-trading family running the guns and opium of an eastern Uttar Pradesh town.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Newsroom

2012–2014·HBO·Drama

Broadcast news history as a procession of anchors, presses and control rooms, scored by Thomas Newman with more reverence than the show it introduces ever quite earns.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The OA

2016–2019·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Famously withheld — the first season put its title card nearly an hour into the first episode, so most viewers met the opening long after the show had started.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

See

2019–2022·Apple TV+·Sci-Fi

Texture rather than image — rope, bark, cloth and skin filmed close enough to be read by hand, for a world that lost its sight generations ago.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Storage Wars

2010–·A&E·Documentary

Abandoned storage lockers auctioned unseen, with the bidders introduced like a heist crew.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Made in Abyss

2017–·AT-X·Animation

A children's-book art style over a descent that gets progressively less survivable.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Titans

2018–2023·DC Universe / HBO Max·Drama

Thirteen seconds and a card, in the register of a comic that would prefer you did not call it a comic.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Happy Valley

2014–2023·BBC One·Crime

Sally Wainwright's Calder Valley series, which opens with almost nothing and is all the bleaker for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Revenge

2011–2015·ABC·Drama

The Count of Monte Cristo relocated to the Hamptons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Harley Quinn

2019–·DC Universe / HBO Max·Animation

The adult animated Harley, whose opening is short enough that the show keeps rewriting it episode to episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Puella Magi Madoka Magica

2011·Tokyo MX·Animation

A magical-girl opening played completely straight, which turns out to be the series' first and most effective lie about what it is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Night Of

2016·HBO·Crime

New York at night from inside a cab, the city sliding past in sodium light, cut so that nothing quite resolves — which is the state of the evidence for the entire series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Sails

2014–2017·Starz·Drama

Carved wood and bone — ships, skulls and rigging rendered as scrimshaw, animated as though the carving were happening as you watch.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jessica Jones

2015–2019·Netflix·Crime

Purple watercolour bleeding across Hell's Kitchen while a noir trumpet plays — the colour of the villain seeping into every frame before he is named.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Inside No. 9

2014–2024·BBC Two·Comedy

Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton's anthology, every episode set somewhere numbered nine, opened in seventeen seconds by a brass hare.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Atlanta

2016–2022·FX·Comedy

Donald Glover's series, opened with the same refusal to signal genre that the episodes run on — you are never told what kind of half-hour this is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fall

2013–2016·BBC Two·Crime

Belfast, and a series that shows you the killer in the first episode and spends three series on the pursuit anyway.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Under the Dome

2013–2015·CBS·Sci-Fi

A Stephen King novel stretched across three summers, and eleven seconds of a town under glass.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Chi

2018–·Showtime·Drama

Lena Waithe's South Side, following several lives that keep intersecting.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Pose

2018–2021·FX·Drama

Ballroom culture rendered in gold and satin, with the house names given the billing a network usually reserves for stars.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Modern Love

2019–2021·Prime Video·Drama

The New York Times column adapted an essay per episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Penny Dreadful

2014–2016·Showtime·Horror

Victorian specimen jars, insects and anatomical plates, filmed with the patience of a museum catalogue and none of its detachment.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Servant

2019–2023·Apple TV+·Horror

A doll's house filmed as an actual house — a brownstone rendered in miniature, with something wrong in one of the rooms.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Steven Universe

2013–2019·Cartoon Network·Animation

A theme sung by the characters about themselves, rewritten as the line-up of those characters changes — which for this show is the plot.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Bates Motel

2013–2017·A&E·Horror

Norman Bates before Psycho, in eleven seconds of a neon sign that everyone already knows the ending of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

When Calls the Heart

2014–·Hallmark Channel·Drama

A city teacher posted to a frontier coal town, and the longest-running scripted series Hallmark has made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Altered Carbon

2018–2020·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Bodies printed, sleeved and discarded in fluid — the show's premise, that a person is software and flesh is hardware, shown rather than explained.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Killing (US)

2011–2014·AMC / Netflix·Crime

The American remake of Forbrydelsen, moving the rain from Copenhagen to Seattle and keeping everything else.

• Season 1

1 sequence

After Life

2019–2022·Netflix·Comedy

Ricky Gervais on grief, in the smallest register he has ever worked in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Pope

2016·HBO / Sky Atlantic·Drama

Paolo Sorrentino's American pope, opened by a walk past papal portraits that come apart as he passes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Endeavour

2012–2023·ITV·Crime

The Morse prequel, which quotes Pheloung's Morse-code motif in its own theme without repeating it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ray Donovan

2013–2020·Showtime·Crime

Los Angeles at street level — a fixer's city, shot from the driver's seat rather than the hills.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Legacies

2018–2022·The CW·Horror

The third series in the Vampire Diaries line, set at a boarding school for the supernatural.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Son

2017–2019·AMC·Drama

Pierce Brosnan across two Texas timelines, from the Philipp Meyer novel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Turn: Washington's Spies

2014–2017·AMC·Drama

Invisible ink, cipher keys and folded letters — a spy series introduced entirely through its tradecraft.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Fauda

2015–·Yes / Netflix·Drama

An Israeli undercover unit and the Palestinian militants it pursues, played from both sides.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Series of Unfortunate Events

2017–2019·Netflix·Comedy

Lemony Snicket adapted with a title sequence whose lyrics are rewritten for every book — the song spends every verse telling you to stop watching.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Tokyo Ghoul

2014–2018·Tokyo MX·Horror

A student turned half-ghoul, opened by "Unravel" — one of the few anime openings better known than the series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sneaky Pete

2015–2019·Prime Video·Crime

A con man hiding inside his cellmate's identity, from Bryan Cranston and David Shore.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Haikyu!!

2014–2020·MBS / TBS·Animation

Volleyball animated with the weight of a fight scene, over a rock track that never lets the tempo drop.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Luther

2010–2019·BBC One·Crime

Massive Attack's 'Paradise Circus' over a city at night, with a detective who is already losing before the episode starts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Masters of Sex

2013–2016·Showtime·Drama

Masters and Johnson's research, opened by a sequence of double meanings built out of 1950s stock footage.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Top Boy

2011–2023·Channel 4 / Netflix·Crime

A Hackney estate shot from within rather than above, over Brian Eno's score — which is not the collaboration anyone predicted.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Warrior

2019–2023·Cinemax / HBO Max·Drama

Ink-brush figures fighting across parchment, for a series built from a Bruce Lee treatment that took fifty years to reach air.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vera

2011–·ITV·Crime

Northumberland coast and moorland in twenty seconds, with no detective visible in any of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doom Patrol

2019–2023·HBO Max·Sci-Fi

Collage and cut-out animation with the wrongness left in — a superhero opening that looks assembled from a scrapbook by someone unwell.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Borgias

2011–2013·Showtime·Drama

Neil Jordan's Renaissance papacy, opened in gilt and shadow.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Deuce

2017–2019·HBO·Drama

Forty-second Street as a marquee — neon, peep-show signage and the traffic of a block being monetised, assembled from the era's own advertising.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kingdom

2019–2021·Netflix·Horror

Joseon-era ink painting turning plague-ridden — court robes and mountains overrun by figures that do not move like the living.

• Season 2

1 sequence

New Amsterdam

2018–2023·NBC·Drama

A public hospital run by a director who keeps asking how he can help.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Legends of Tomorrow

2016–2022·The CW·Sci-Fi

Thirteen seconds, by a show that worked out earlier than its siblings that the narrated premise was a joke worth dropping.

• Season 5

1 sequence

All American

2018–2025·The CW·Drama

A South Los Angeles footballer recruited to a Beverly Hills school, from Spencer Paysinger's life.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The White Queen

2013·Starz / BBC One·Drama

Roses, water and heraldry — the Wars of the Roses introduced through the emblems both sides died for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Raising Hope

2010–2014·Fox·Comedy

A young father raising a baby with his own parents' help, from the My Name Is Earl creator.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Big Mouth

2017–2025·Netflix·Animation

Puberty rendered as a marching band of anxieties, with the hormone monsters given equal billing to the children.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sense8

2015–2018·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Two minutes of documentary footage from eight cities — festivals, protests, traffic, dancing — cut so fast the places stop being separable. The longest opening on this site, and it earns it.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Babylon Berlin

2017–·Sky 1 / Das Erste·Crime

Weimar Berlin as a cabaret poster — Bauhaus type, jazz and a city that already knows how this ends.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elite

2018–2024·Netflix·Drama

Eleven seconds of school crest and bass drop. The shortest opening on this site that still manages to be about class.

• Season 1

1 sequence

NOS4A2

2019–2020·AMC·Horror

Christmas ornaments and a vintage car rendered as threat — a sequence that makes tinsel frightening.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Reply 1988

2015–2016·tvN·Drama

Five families in one Seoul alley in 1988, and the most loved of the Reply series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Halt and Catch Fire

2014–2017·AMC·Drama

Elastic's red glitch: a screen tearing itself apart while the cast names surface out of the wreckage, over a Paul Haslinger synth line. Thirty seconds, and almost nothing in it is legible for more than a frame.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Timeless

2016–2018·NBC·Sci-Fi

A stolen time machine chased through American history, cancelled twice and revived once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Anger Management

2012–2014·FX·Comedy

Charlie Sheen's return to television after Two and a Half Men, opened in twelve seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sam & Cat

2013–2014·Nickelodeon·Comedy

A crossover spin-off pairing characters from iCarly and Victorious.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mob Psycho 100

2016–2022·Tokyo MX·Animation

Paint, distortion and animation techniques that change every few seconds — a title sequence used as a showcase for what the studio can do.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Luck Charlie

2010–2014·Disney Channel·Comedy

A teenager filming video diaries for her baby sister, which is the framing device and the title.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hell on Wheels

2011–2016·AMC·Drama

Iron, sleepers and surveyor's tools — the transcontinental railroad introduced as labour rather than achievement.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beastars

2019–2021·Fuji TV·Animation

A boarding school of carnivores and herbivores, opened by a stop-motion sequence unlike the series it introduces.

• Season 1

1 sequence

I Am the Night

2019·TNT·Crime

Patty Jenkins directing a story that runs alongside the Black Dahlia case without being it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Iron Fist

2017–2018·Netflix·Drama

The last of the four Defenders series, and the one that completes the set here.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Twilight Zone (2019)

2019–2020·CBS All Access·Sci-Fi

Jordan Peele's revival, which rebuilds Marius Constant's theme and the spiral for a fourth time — sixty years after the original and still recognisably the same idea.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scream Queens

2015–2016·Fox·Horror

Ryan Murphy's sorority slasher, with a title sequence longer than most of the deaths.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ash vs Evil Dead

2015–2018·Starz·Horror

A ten-second title card, which for a series this loud is the only restrained decision in it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Vinland Saga

2019–·NHK General TV·Animation

Norse violence scored with post-hardcore, and an opening that gets quieter as the series abandons the war it started with.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Kim's Convenience

2016–2021·CBC·Comedy

A Korean-Canadian family running a Toronto corner shop, adapted from the play by the man who wrote it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Search Party

2016–2022·TBS / HBO Max·Comedy

A missing-person search taken up by four Brooklynites who mostly want something to be part of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Missing

2014–2016·BBC One·Crime

A child vanishing in France and the two timelines that follow it, eight years apart.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Godless

2017·Netflix·Drama

The frontier shot as landscape photography and left to sit — no montage, no faces, just weather crossing New Mexico for over a minute.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Young Justice

2010–2022·Cartoon Network / HBO Max·Animation

Twenty-two seconds and a card, from a superhero series that assumed its audience already knew everyone.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Better Things

2016–2022·FX·Comedy

Twenty-nine seconds of domestic clutter, filmed with the affection of someone who lives in it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power

2018–2020·Netflix·Animation

The 1985 toy line rebuilt by Noelle Stevenson into something the original could not have carried.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pennyworth

2019–2022·Epix / HBO Max·Drama

Alfred as a young SAS veteran in an alternative 1960s London, which is a stranger idea than the Batman it leads to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vice Principals

2016–2017·HBO·Comedy

A school crest and a sting, over in twelve seconds — the institutional dignity the two leads spend the series destroying.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Dance Moms

2011–2019·Lifetime·Documentary

A Pittsburgh dance studio, the children in it, and the mothers watching from behind the glass.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Preacher

2016–2019·AMC·Drama

The Ennis and Dillon comic adapted with its worst instincts intact.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Big City Greens

2018–·Disney Channel·Animation

A country family relocated to the city, opened at the speed of a banjo run.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Spanish Princess

2019–2020·Starz·Drama

Catherine of Aragon's arrival in England, third in the same Philippa Gregory sequence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Girl from Nowhere

2018–2021·GMM 25 / Netflix·Horror

A girl who transfers into a different school every episode and exposes what it is hiding.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Carnival Row

2019–2023·Prime Video·Drama

Victorian illustration of wings, horns and hooves, catalogued like a natural history plate of a population being policed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Gifted

2017–2019·Fox·Sci-Fi

A family on the run in the X-Men world, made while Fox still held the rights.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Assassination Classroom

2015–2016·Fuji TV·Animation

A class assigned to kill their own teacher, who is the best teacher any of them have had.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Made in Heaven

2019–2023·Prime Video·Drama

Two Delhi wedding planners, and everything the families hire them to conceal.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Humans

2015–2018·Channel 4 / AMC·Sci-Fi

Domestic synths in an England that already has them, opened by faces that hold still a beat too long.

• Season 1

1 sequence

GLOW

2017–2019·Netflix·Comedy

A 1980s syndication opening played completely straight — chrome type, freeze-frames and spandex, as though the show inside it were the wrestling programme rather than a series about making one.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Mayans M.C.

2018–2023·FX·Crime

The Sons of Anarchy spin-off, on the other side of the California border.

• Season 1

1 sequence

We Bare Bears

2015–2019·Cartoon Network·Animation

Three bears stacked in a trenchcoat trying to fit into the Bay Area.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Dragon Prince

2018–·Netflix·Animation

Twenty-seven seconds of moving illustration, closer to a book being opened than a montage.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Friday Night Dinner

2011–2020·Channel 4·Comedy

The same family, the same meal, every week, for six series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Overlord

2015–·AT-X·Animation

A player left inside a shut-down game as his own undead avatar, playing the villain straight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Russian Doll

2019–2022·Netflix·Drama

Twenty-eight seconds, which is all a show about the same night repeating needs. The joke is that you will see it many more times than the episode count suggests.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Descendants of the Sun

2016·KBS2·Drama

A special forces captain and a surgeon in a fictional war zone, and the series that started the Hallyu streaming wave.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Magicians

2015–2020·Syfy·Sci-Fi

Magic treated as postgraduate study, opened with the seriousness of a university prospectus.

• Season 1

1 sequence

12 Monkeys

2015–2018·Syfy·Sci-Fi

The Terry Gilliam film expanded into four seasons of time travel that actually resolves.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Years and Years

2019·BBC One / HBO·Drama

Russell T Davies following one Manchester family fifteen years into a future that arrives faster than they do.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Major Crimes

2012–2018·TNT·Crime

The Closer continued around Mary McDonnell's captain rather than Kyra Sedgwick's chief.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shadowhunters

2016–2019·Freeform·Horror

Runes burning into skin, and a New York rendered as a warded city.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Travelers

2016–2018·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Consciousnesses sent back from a ruined future into people about to die anyway, so the timeline notices nothing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Portlandia

2011–2018·IFC·Comedy

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein on a city that is mostly an attitude, with a theme they wrote and perform themselves.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Batwoman

2019–2022·The CW·Sci-Fi

Gotham without Batman, with the cowl passing twice across three seasons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Jinx

2015–2024·HBO·Documentary

Andrew Jarecki's Robert Durst films, opened by a sequence that tells you nothing and implies everything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Atypical

2017–2021·Netflix·Comedy

Twenty-five seconds of hand-drawn Antarctic imagery, taken from the interests of the character it is about.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Reign

2013–2017·The CW·Drama

Mary, Queen of Scots at the French court, with a deliberately anachronistic soundtrack.

• Season 2

1 sequence

NCIS: New Orleans

2014–2021·CBS·Crime

The franchise moved to a city with a soundtrack, which the titles spend all twenty-one seconds on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Broad City

2014–2019·Comedy Central·Comedy

Abbi and Ilana's New York, opened in ten seconds of hand-drawn scribble.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Evil

2019–2024·CBS / Paramount+·Horror

Religious iconography and clinical diagrams intercut, so that possession and psychiatry are presented with equal weight — which is the show's entire method.

• Season 1

1 sequence

PEN15

2019–2021·Hulu·Comedy

Two adult women playing themselves at thirteen among actual thirteen-year-olds, opened in the register of a middle-school video project.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mystery Road

2018–·ABC·Crime

The Australian outback shot as landscape rather than backdrop, for a detective series about who the land belongs to.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Disenchantment

2018–2023·Netflix·Animation

A fantasy kingdom introduced with the same long pan Groening's other shows use, and the same willingness to hide jokes in the background.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Revolution

2012–2014·NBC·Sci-Fi

Fifteen years after all electricity stopped working, from Eric Kripke and J. J. Abrams.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Magnificent Century

2011–2014·Show TV / Star TV·Drama

Suleiman the Magnificent's court, and the series that made Turkish dizi a global export.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Runaways

2017–2019·Hulu·Sci-Fi

Six teenagers who discover their parents are a supervillain cabal, from the Brian K. Vaughan comic.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Hero Academia

2016–·MBS / TBS·Animation

Superhero iconography by way of shonen convention, with a new opening for each season announcing how much worse things have got.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Little Drummer Girl

2018·BBC One / AMC·Drama

Park Chan-wook directing le Carré, in the most controlled colour palette on television that year.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Queer Eye

2018–·Netflix·Documentary

Two minutes of the five hosts introduced one at a time, in the format's own house style of relentless warmth.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gomorrah

2014–2021·Sky Atlantic Italia·Crime

Naples and the Camorra, shot in concrete and sodium light with no romance permitted anywhere in it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Norsemen

2016–2020·NRK1 / Netflix·Comedy

Viking iconography played with total sincerity by a comedy shot twice, in Norwegian and English, on the same sets.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Akame ga Kill!

2014·Tokyo MX·Animation

An assassin's guild against an empire, in a series that kills its cast far faster than the genre allows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bureau

2015–2020·Canal+·Drama

French intelligence procedure filmed with the patience of the job, and widely held to be the best spy series ever made for television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Girlfriend Experience

2016–2021·Starz·Drama

Steven Soderbergh's anthology, each season a different woman and a different arrangement.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Criminal Justice

2019–·Disney+ Hotstar·Crime

The BBC series remade in India, running longer than the original did.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Devious Maids

2013–2016·Lifetime·Drama

Beverly Hills housekeepers investigating a murder in one of the houses, from the Desperate Housewives creator.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shake It Up

2010–2013·Disney Channel·Comedy

Two Chicago dancers on a local television show, with Zendaya in her first series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Into the Badlands

2015–2019·AMC·Drama

Ink-wash landscapes and weaponry, drawn in the style of the wuxia films the series is built from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wentworth

2013–2021·SoHo / Fox Showcase·Drama

An Australian prison drama with a thirty-second opening that gets colder as the series goes on.

• Season 8

1 sequence

Camelot

2011·Starz·Drama

The Arthur legend with Eva Green as Morgan, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Patriot

2015–2018·Prime Video·Drama

An intelligence officer who processes his work by performing it as folk music, and an opening that treats that as unremarkable.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Quantico

2015–2018·ABC·Drama

FBI recruits and a bombing, told across two timelines.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Luke Cage

2016–2018·Netflix·Crime

Harlem projected onto a man's skin — brownstones, crowds and streets mapped across a body that cannot be marked. The one Marvel Netflix opening that is about a place rather than a mood.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Sleepy Hollow

2013–2017·Fox·Horror

Ichabod Crane woken in the present day, with the Horseman following him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ballers

2015–2019·HBO·Comedy

Miami, money and slow motion, cut to Big K.R.I.T. — an opening entirely comfortable with what the show is selling.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Star vs. the Forces of Evil

2015–2019·Disney XD / Disney Channel·Animation

A magical princess sent to Earth for remedial schooling, with a wand she does not control.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Creepshow

2019–·Shudder·Horror

The Romero and King film continued as an anthology, with the comic-book panels doing the same work in the titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dickinson

2019–2021·Apple TV+·Comedy

Nineteenth-century Amherst scored with modern pop, and a title card restaged for each episode's poem.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Insecure

2016–2021·HBO·Comedy

Twenty-one seconds of South Los Angeles and a beat, changing its track from season to season while the shape of the thing stays identical.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Detroiters

2017–2018·Comedy Central·Comedy

Two advertising men making local commercials in Detroit, played by two friends who grew up there.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kill la Kill

2013–2014·MBS·Animation

Trigger's first series, cut at a speed that leaves the title cards behind.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tron: Uprising

2012–2013·Disney XD·Animation

The Grid between the two films, animated with a design sense far beyond its slot.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ultimate Spider-Man

2012–2017·Disney XD·Animation

Spider-Man trained by S.H.I.E.L.D., opened in eleven seconds flat.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Limitless

2015–2016·CBS·Sci-Fi

The film's premise as a procedural, opened by Prologue in twenty-two seconds of chemical bloom.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gentleman Jack

2019–2022·BBC One / HBO·Drama

Anne Lister's coded diaries dramatised by Sally Wainwright, with Suranne Jones addressing the camera directly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mayday

2013·BBC One·Crime

A May Queen vanishing on the morning of the procession, and a village that suspects itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nikita

2010–2013·The CW·Drama

The third screen version of the Besson film, after the 1997 series this catalogue holds as La Femme Nikita.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Treme

2010–2013·HBO·Drama

Water stains, peeling paint and brass — post-Katrina New Orleans read off its own damaged walls, over John Boutté's title song.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Liv and Maddie

2013–2017·Disney Channel·Comedy

Dove Cameron playing identical twins with opposite lives.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Haven

2010–2015·Syfy·Sci-Fi

A Maine town where the afflictions are supernatural and hereditary, from the Stephen King novella.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Signal

2016·tvN·Crime

A walkie-talkie connecting a present-day profiler to a detective in 1989.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Making a Murderer

2015–2018·Netflix·Documentary

Manitowoc County in winter over a plucked string figure — the sequence that defined what a Netflix true-crime series would look like for the next decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Transparent

2014–2019·Amazon·Drama

Joey Soloway's family series, opened by home-movie footage of the Pfeffermans that turns out to be the whole thesis.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hemlock Grove

2013–2015·Netflix·Horror

A Pennsylvania steel town with a werewolf and a biotech company in it, and one of Netflix's first three originals.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Witch

2015–2021·Hallmark Channel·Drama

A film series turned into a returning one, about a woman whose neighbours are never quite sure about her.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance

2019·Netflix·Sci-Fi

The Henson prequel built with real puppets, opened by a sequence that shows you the crystal breaking before the story reaches it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Rain

2018–2020·Netflix (Denmark)·Sci-Fi

A virus carried in rainfall, and two siblings crossing a depopulated Scandinavia.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Amphibia

2019–2022·Disney Channel·Animation

A Californian teenager stranded in a world of frog people, with a banjo theme to match.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Mindy Project

2012–2017·Fox / Hulu·Comedy

Mindy Kaling as an obstetrician with a romantic-comedy view of her own life.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Episodes

2011–2017·Showtime / BBC Two·Comedy

Two British writers watching their sitcom be remade badly in Los Angeles, with Matt LeBlanc as himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Van Helsing

2016–2021·Syfy·Horror

A descendant of the vampire hunter waking into an America the vampires already hold.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Summer

2019–2021·Netflix·Horror

The Z Nation prequel, played without any of the parent series' jokes and shot in long unbroken takes.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Olive Kitteridge

2014·HBO·Drama

Coastal Maine in muted colour, at the pace of a woman who has decided not to be pleased about anything.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Lightning

2018–2021·The CW·Sci-Fi

A retired hero returning to the work as a school principal in his fifties.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes

2010–2012·Disney XD·Animation

The most complete adaptation of the Avengers comics animation has managed, cancelled at two seasons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Chance U

2016–2023·Netflix·Documentary

Junior college football players with one season left to be recruited, and a marching-band cue for a theme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nathan For You

2013–2017·Comedy Central·Comedy

Twenty-seven seconds of business-advice-show graphics, delivered with the flatness that makes everything after it land.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Defiance

2013–2015·Syfy·Sci-Fi

A terraformed St. Louis shared by seven alien species, launched alongside a video game set in the same world.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Eric André Show

2012–·Adult Swim·Comedy

A talk-show set destroyed by its own host before the first guest arrives — an opening that is demolished and rebuilt every episode.

• Season 1

4 sequences

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

2015–2019·The CW·Comedy

A musical comedy that threw away its theme song every year and wrote a new one, each arguing with the last about whether the word in the title is fair.

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

1 sequence

Chesapeake Shores

2016–2022·Hallmark Channel·Drama

A daughter called home to a Maryland inn, in the series that showed Hallmark could run a returning drama rather than only films.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

My Mister

2018·tvN·Drama

A middle-aged engineer and a young woman in debt, in one of the quietest series Korean television has made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Angie Tribeca

2016–2018·TBS·Comedy

A police procedural played entirely as Airplane!, produced by Steve Carell and shot at that density of joke.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Marco Polo

2014–2016·Netflix·Drama

Ink drawings of the Silk Road bleeding across parchment — cities, armies and mountains growing out of the map as the journey extends east.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Fresh Meat

2011–2016·Channel 4·Comedy

Six students sharing a Manchester house, from the Peep Show writers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Austin & Ally

2011–2016·Disney Channel·Comedy

A songwriter with stage fright and the performer who takes her songs.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Somebody Feed Phil

2018–·Netflix·Documentary

Phil Rosenthal eating his way around the world, with a theme song written and sung about him by his friends.

• Season 5

1 sequence

Covert Affairs

2010–2014·USA Network·Drama

A CIA trainee promoted early for reasons she is not told.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Alienist

2018–2020·TNT·Crime

An 1896 New York murder investigation using methods the police do not yet have a word for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Workaholics

2011–2017·Comedy Central·Comedy

Three telemarketers who share a house and a job and never leave either, in thirteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Colony

2016–2018·USA Network·Sci-Fi

Occupied Los Angeles under an alien administration nobody has seen, opened in ten seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gullak

2019–·SonyLIV·Comedy

A lower-middle-class family in a small north Indian town, narrated by their piggy bank.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Agent Carter

2015–2016·ABC·Drama

Post-war period design and a big-band arrangement, for the best-looking title sequence Marvel has put on television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Toast of London

2012–2015·Channel 4·Comedy

Matt Berry as a voiceover actor with an unshakeable opinion of himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Avengers Assemble

2013–2019·Disney XD·Animation

The film line-up animated weekly, with an opening as long as a station ident.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Borgen

2010–2022·DR1·Drama

Danish coalition politics, opened with the restraint the subject demands and none of the urgency an American network would insist on.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Krypton

2018–2019·Syfy·Sci-Fi

Superman's grandfather two hundred years before the planet dies, which the audience already knows it will.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Continuum

2012–2015·Showcase·Sci-Fi

Vancouver rendered as a surveillance grid, with the future arriving as an overlay on the present.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Counterpart

2017–2019·Starz·Sci-Fi

Imaginary Forces splitting everything in two — figures, corridors, the type itself — for a show about a man meeting the version of himself from the other side of a crossing.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Hilda

2018–2023·Netflix·Animation

Luke Pearson's blue-haired girl and the Nordic folklore living beside her town.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Hollow Crown

2012–2016·BBC Two·Drama

The history plays filmed as features, with a title card so brief it barely qualifies as a sequence.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Inhumans

2017·ABC·Sci-Fi

A cancelled film released as a series and shot partly for IMAX, in the least loved thing Marvel Television made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Terra Nova

2011·Fox·Sci-Fi

A colony sent eighty-five million years into the past, cancelled after one season for cost.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lilyhammer

2012–2014·NRK1 / Netflix·Crime

Netflix's first original commission, and an opening that plays a New Jersey mobster in rural Norway entirely straight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Infinity Train

2019–2021·Cartoon Network / HBO Max·Animation

A train of endless carriages, each its own world, with a nine-second open that refuses to explain any of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Brilliant Friend

2018–2024·HBO / RAI·Drama

Naples in the fifties rendered in faded photography, for an adaptation that spans fifty years of two lives.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Durarara!!

2010–2016·Tokyo MX·Animation

Ikebukuro told through a dozen viewpoints that only connect in the last act.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ramy

2019–2022·Hulu·Comedy

Ramy Youssef's series about a first-generation Egyptian American trying to be a good Muslim, opened in nine seconds flat.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Food Wars! Shokugeki no Soma

2015–2020·Tokyo MX·Animation

Competitive cooking staged as combat, with the reaction shots doing most of the work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Crashing

2017–2019·HBO·Comedy

Pete Holmes sleeping on other comedians' sofas after his marriage ends, opened in eighteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elena of Avalor

2016–2020·Disney Channel·Animation

A crown princess ruling a Latin American-inspired kingdom before she is old enough to be queen.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Caprica

2010·Syfy·Sci-Fi

The Battlestar Galactica prequel, fifty years earlier, about the invention of the Cylons rather than the war with them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Call My Agent!

2015–2020·France 2·Comedy

Paris and a jazz figure, in the register of a film the agency's clients would be too grand to appear in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Musketeers

2014–2016·BBC One·Drama

Dumas serialised for Sunday evenings, with ink and gunpowder titles to match.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Constantine

2014–2015·NBC·Horror

The Hellblazer comic adapted, cancelled after thirteen episodes and continued in animation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Upstart Crow

2016–2020·BBC Two·Comedy

Ben Elton's Shakespeare sitcom, written in the shape of the plays it mocks.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kuroko's Basketball

2012–2015·Mainichi Broadcasting·Animation

A basketball player whose entire skill is being unnoticeable.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cloak & Dagger

2018–2019·Freeform·Sci-Fi

Two New Orleans teenagers whose powers only work near each other, which the titles make the whole design out of.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Wynonna Earp

2016–2021·Syfy·Horror

Twenty-one seconds of western iconography and a revolver, for a show about Wyatt Earp's great-great-granddaughter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)

2019–2022·Netflix·Comedy

A teenager who builds Europe's largest online drug market from his bedroom to win back a girlfriend, and eleven seconds to say so.

• Season 1

1 sequence

One Day at a Time

2017–2020·Netflix / Pop·Comedy

The Norman Lear sitcom remade around a Cuban American family, with the 1975 theme rerecorded by Gloria Estefan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Top of the Lake

2013–2017·BBC Two / SundanceTV·Crime

Jane Campion's missing-girl series, opened across the South Island lake it is named for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Little Women

2017·BBC One·Drama

Alcott in three parts, with a title sequence made of cut paper and pressed flowers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Andi Mack

2017–2019·Disney Channel·Drama

A thirteen-year-old told that her sister is her mother, and the first Disney Channel series to give a main character a coming-out story.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Milo Murphy's Law

2016–2019·Disney XD·Animation

A boy for whom anything that can go wrong does, from the Phineas and Ferb creators.

• Season 1

1 sequence

McMafia

2018·BBC One / AMC·Crime

A banker pulled back into his family's Russian organised-crime money.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bridge

2011–2018·SVT / DR1·Crime

The Øresund Bridge at night, and Choir of Young Believers — a border filmed as a character, which is what the show is about.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Carmen Sandiego

2019–2021·Netflix·Animation

The game-show thief given an origin, animated in flat colour and a lot of red.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Stranger

2017–2020·tvN·Crime

A prosecutor without emotional affect and the detective who trusts him anyway. Known at home as 비밀의 숲, Secret Forest.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Conan

2010–2021·TBS·Comedy

The show Conan O'Brien built after losing The Tonight Show, opening on a cartoon of himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cuckoo

2012–2019·BBC Three·Comedy

A daughter returning from a gap year married to an American with no discernible occupation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Marianne

2019·Netflix·Horror

A horror novelist who discovers the witch she invented has been real the whole time, and eleven seconds to say it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Pickles

2013–2019·Adult Swim·Animation

A family dog who is secretly satanic, opened in the visual language of a wholesome fifties cartoon.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Stath Lets Flats

2018–2021·Channel 4·Comedy

Jamie Demetriou as a lettings agent with no aptitude for letting flats.

• Season 1

1 sequence

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

2018–·Tokyo MX·Animation

A salaryman reincarnated as the weakest monster in the game, who builds a country anyway.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nancy Drew

2019–2023·The CW·Crime

The teenage detective relocated to a haunted Maine town.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

2018–2020·Nickelodeon·Animation

The turtles redrawn in a hand-animated style closer to a comic than the CG series before it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories

2016–2019·Netflix / MBS·Drama

Two minutes of Tokyo at night before anyone speaks — a series whose opening is longer and slower than most shows' cold opens, deliberately.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Da Vinci's Demons

2013–2015·Starz·Drama

David Goyer's young Leonardo, opened by a sequence built entirely from his own notebook drawings.

• Season 1

1 sequence

UnREAL

2015–2018·Lifetime·Drama

The production office of a dating format, written by someone who had worked in one.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

A Very English Scandal

2018·BBC One·Drama

Russell T Davies and Stephen Frears on the Thorpe affair, opened in the graphic register of a 1970s political cartoon.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kidding

2018–2020·Showtime·Drama

Jim Carrey as a children's television presenter coming apart, directed by Michel Gondry.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gogglebox

2013–·Channel 4·Documentary

People watching television, filmed watching television, which turned out to be the format of the decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

And Then There Were None

2015·BBC One·Crime

Christie's island novel adapted straight, with a title sequence that counts the cast down as the story does.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Generator Rex

2010–2013·Cartoon Network·Animation

A boy who can rebuild his own limbs into machines, in a world where nanites turned everything else monstrous.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kick Buttowski: Suburban Daredevil

2010–2012·Disney XD·Animation

A boy in a stunt suit treating an ordinary suburb as a series of ramps.

• Season 1

1 sequence

You're the Worst

2014–2019·FX / FXX·Comedy

Two people who should not be together, opened in twenty-two seconds of exactly that.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chewing Gum

2015–2017·E4·Comedy

Michaela Coel's Tower Hamlets comedy, made three years before I May Destroy You.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Purge

2018–2019·USA Network·Horror

The film franchise given two seasons of television, opened in sixteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blood Drive

2017·Syfy·Horror

A grindhouse pastiche about cars that run on human blood, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bad Education

2012–·BBC Three·Comedy

Jack Whitehall as a teacher less mature than his pupils.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Salem

2014–2017·WGN America·Horror

The witch trials with actual witches, and the series that turned a superstation into a scripted network.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Final Space

2018–2021·TBS / Adult Swim·Animation

A prisoner adrift in space with an alien that everyone in the galaxy wants.

• Season 1

1 sequence

City on a Hill

2019–2022·Showtime·Crime

Boston in the early nineties, a corrupt FBI agent and the prosecutor trying to use him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Clarence

2014–2018·Cartoon Network·Animation

A relentlessly cheerful boy and two friends, drawn in a loose line that never tidied itself up.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Vietnam War

2017·PBS·Documentary

Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's ten-part account, scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Space Dandy

2014·Tokyo MX·Animation

Shinichiro Watanabe again, and again the opening is a music cue with a visual identity of its own — surf rock, neon and a pompadour.

• Season 1

1 sequence

DC Super Hero Girls

2019–2021·Cartoon Network·Animation

The DC heroines at high school, from the Powerpuff Girls' creative lineage.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Craig of the Creek

2018–·Cartoon Network·Animation

A wooded creek run entirely by the children who play in it, mapped like a country.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Awkward

2011–2016·MTV·Comedy

A high-school accident mistaken for a suicide attempt, and the reputation that follows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Aggretsuko

2018–2023·Netflix·Animation

Sanrio character design and death metal, in an opening that switches between the two exactly as the protagonist does.

• Season 5

1 sequence

La Reina del Sur

2011–2023·Telemundo·Crime

Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Sinaloan trafficker, remade in English by USA Network as Queen of the South.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alias Grace

2017·Netflix·Drama

Quilt patterns assembling and unpicking themselves — the needlework the narrator hides behind, used as the structure of the telling.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mike Tyson Mysteries

2014–2020·Adult Swim·Animation

Scooby-Doo's structure with Mike Tyson, a ghost, a pigeon and an adopted daughter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rapunzel's Tangled Adventure

2017–2020·Disney Channel·Animation

The film continued in hand-drawn animation, which the feature never was.

• Season 1

1 sequence

OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes

2017–2019·Cartoon Network·Animation

A hero-supply plaza run as a beat-em-up, with the video game's grammar kept in the titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Justice

2017·NBC·Crime

The fourth Chicago series, cancelled after thirteen episodes — the only one Dick Wolf could not make stick.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sym-Bionic Titan

2010–2011·Cartoon Network·Animation

Genndy Tartakovsky's mecha series, cancelled after one season for having no toy line.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Truth Be Told

2019–2023·Apple TV+·Crime

Recording equipment and case material, for a series about a true-crime podcast reopening its own mistake.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Servant of the People

2015–2019·1+1·Comedy

A history teacher accidentally elected president of Ukraine, played by a comedian who was then elected president of Ukraine.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Behavior

2016–2017·TNT·Crime

A thief on parole and the hitman she decides not to turn in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Uncle Grandpa

2013–2017·Cartoon Network·Animation

Everyone's uncle and everyone's grandpa, travelling in an RV that is also a tiger.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tyrant

2014–2016·FX·Drama

The younger son of a Middle Eastern dictator dragged back from a Californian suburb.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wander Over Yonder

2013–2016·Disney Channel / Disney XD·Animation

Craig McCracken's relentlessly cheerful nomad and the villain he will not stop befriending.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fortitude

2015–2018·Sky Atlantic·Crime

An Arctic settlement where nothing decays and a killing therefore cannot be buried.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Treadstone

2019–2020·USA Network·Drama

The Bourne programme as a series, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hey Duggee

2014–·CBeebies·Animation

A dog running a scout group for small animals, structured around a badge per episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Big Hero 6: The Series

2017–2021·Disney XD / Disney Channel·Animation

The film's team continued in 2D, in a San Fransokyo drawn rather than modelled.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fish Hooks

2010–2014·Disney Channel·Animation

A high school inside a pet-shop fish tank, animated over photographed backgrounds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lost Girl

2010–2016·Showcase / Syfy·Sci-Fi

A succubus choosing neither Fae court, in one of Canada's longest-running genre exports.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Louie

2010–2015·FX·Comedy

A man walking to a comedy club and eating a slice of pizza, singing his own theme — fifty-two seconds with no jokes in them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Order

2019–2020·Netflix·Horror

A university secret society of magicians and the werewolves who police them, which is two shows at once and knows it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Swamp Thing

2019·DC Universe·Horror

Cancelled after one episode aired and finished anyway, which is why all ten exist.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mozart in the Jungle

2014–2018·Prime Video·Comedy

A New York orchestra and the conductor who takes it apart, opened in thirteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chef's Table

2015–·Netflix·Documentary

Food shot in extreme close-up to classical strings — a cookery series that opens like a perfume advertisement and means it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

2011·Fuji TV·Animation

Childhood friends reassembled by the one of them who died, who only one of them can see.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Jesus

2014–2019·Adult Swim·Comedy

Aaron McGruder's live-action series, with Jesus living in Compton.

• Season 2

1 sequence

High Maintenance

2016–2020·HBO·Comedy

A weed delivery cyclist as the only connection between otherwise unrelated New York stories.

• Season 1

1 sequence

In the Flesh

2013–2014·BBC Three·Horror

Cured zombies sent home to the villages that killed them, opened in twelve seconds.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Riviera

2017–2020·Sky Atlantic·Drama

A widow discovering what her husband's money was, retitled between seasons as the show moved away from the coast it is named for.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

El Señor de los Cielos

2013–·Telemundo·Crime

A narco drama loosely built on Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Telemundo's longest-running original.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Rectify

2013–2016·SundanceTV·Drama

Rural Georgia at a pace matching the series — a man released after nineteen years, and titles that refuse to hurry him.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brickleberry

2012–2015·Comedy Central·Animation

A national park staffed entirely by people who should not be near one, opened in ten seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Detour

2016–2019·TBS·Comedy

A family road trip that goes wrong in a different way every season, written by a married couple about themselves.

• Season 4

1 sequence

The Exorcist

2016–2018·Fox·Horror

A sequel to the film rather than a remake, which it does not admit until the end of the first season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vinyl

2016·HBO·Drama

Record sleeves, needles and 1970s New York cut at the speed of the drug the show is about. One season only, so the titles outlived the series by a fortnight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fosse/Verdon

2019·FX·Drama

Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon's working marriage, opened in eleven seconds because the choreography is the show.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tuca & Bertie

2019–2022·Netflix / Adult Swim·Animation

Buildings with faces and plants with opinions — a city drawn as though everything in it is slightly alive, which in this show it is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Dynamite

2012–2015·Adult Swim·Animation

The blaxploitation pastiche film continued as a series, with the seventies title grammar intact.

• Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Cyber

2015–2016·CBS·Crime

The last CSI, moving the forensics from bodies to hard drives, and the one the franchise ended on.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Kung Fu Panda: Legends of Awesomeness

2011–2016·Nickelodeon·Animation

The DreamWorks films continued weekly, opened in ten seconds of brush-and-ink.

• Season 1

1 sequence

SMILF

2017–2019·Showtime·Comedy

A single mother in South Boston, cancelled after two seasons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Keepers

2017·Netflix·Documentary

The unsolved killing of a Baltimore nun, and what her former pupils found when they investigated it themselves fifty years on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Man Down

2013–2017·Channel 4·Comedy

Greg Davies as a teacher whose life is a sustained emergency, with Rik Mayall as his father.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Returned

2012–2015·Canal+·Horror

The dead walking back into an Alpine town as though nothing happened, opened by Mogwai over a collapsing dam.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fruits Basket

2019–2021·TV Tokyo·Animation

The second adaptation, which ran the manga to its end rather than stopping partway.

• Season 1

1 sequence

An Idiot Abroad

2010–2012·Sky1·Documentary

Karl Pilkington sent to the wonders of the world by two people enjoying it more than he is.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Deutschland 83

2015–2020·RTL / Amazon·Drama

Cold War East and West cut together over eighties pop, with the period's own graphic design doing the work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

O.J.: Made in America

2016·ESPN·Documentary

Nearly eight hours on one trial and a century of Los Angeles, opened in sixteen seconds because there is no time to spare.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Almost Human

2013–2014·Fox·Sci-Fi

A detective partnered with an android in 2048, cancelled after thirteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

No Offence

2015–2018·Channel 4·Crime

Paul Abbott's Manchester police series, opened in eighteen seconds by Peter Anderson Studio.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

2016–2017·CBS·Crime

The spin-off that moved the profiling unit to crimes against Americans abroad.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Casagrandes

2019–2022·Nickelodeon·Animation

The Loud House spin-off, following the Mexican American family next door into the city.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Deadly Class

2019·Syfy·Drama

A boarding school for assassins in 1987, from the Rick Remender comic.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sanjay and Craig

2013–2016·Nickelodeon·Animation

A boy and his talking snake, drawn in the loosest line Nickelodeon has ever put on air.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Unikitty!

2017–2020·Cartoon Network·Animation

The Lego Movie character given her own kingdom and a great deal more sugar.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Guardians of the Galaxy

2015–2019·Disney XD·Animation

The team animated after the first film, in the same eleven-second house style as the rest of the block.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Trust

2018·FX·Drama

The Getty kidnapping told across ten hours by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Summer Camp Island

2018–2021·Cartoon Network / HBO Max·Animation

A camp where the counsellors are witches and the moon is a person, drawn in chalk pastel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

How to Make It in America

2010–2011·HBO·Comedy

New York street fashion and hustle, cut to Aloe Blacc — the East Coast answer to Entourage, and a better title sequence than the show got credit for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rake

2010–2018·ABC·Comedy

Sydney and a barrister who is his own worst client, opened with rather more restraint than he ever manages.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Naked Director

2019–2021·Netflix·Drama

Toru Muranishi and the 1980s Japanese adult video industry.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Trapped

2015–2022·RÚV·Crime

Icelandic weather as an antagonist — ice, sea and a town nobody can leave, which is both the plot and the title.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Claws

2017–2022·TNT·Crime

A Florida nail salon laundering money for a pill mill, staged in saturated colour throughout.

• Season 1

1 sequence

T.U.F.F. Puppy

2010–2015·Nickelodeon·Animation

A dog secret agent, from the creator of The Fairly OddParents.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Enlightened

2011–2013·HBO·Comedy

Nature footage of the sort used in wellness videos, played entirely straight — which becomes the joke the moment the show starts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Witches of East End

2013–2014·Lifetime·Horror

A mother who has kept from her two daughters that all three of them are witches.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Graceland

2013–2015·USA Network·Crime

Undercover agents from three agencies sharing a confiscated beach house.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Killjoys

2015–2019·Syfy·Sci-Fi

Fourteen seconds, a logo and a bass hit — a bounty-hunter show with no interest in explaining itself first.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Trollhunters

2016–2018·Netflix·Animation

Guillermo del Toro's trolls under a Californian town, opened in fifteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tin Star

2017–2020·Sky Atlantic·Crime

A British policeman running a small Alberta force, and the refinery that follows him there.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alphas

2011–2012·Syfy·Sci-Fi

People with abilities that each cost them something, run as a case-of-the-week team show.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Helix

2014–2015·Syfy·Horror

A CDC team at an Arctic research base, opened in ten seconds because the show never slows down either.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Black Lady Sketch Show

2019–2023·HBO·Comedy

Robin Thede's sketch series, opened by a title sequence with more production value than most of the sketches.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Show Me a Hero

2015·HBO·Drama

David Simon on a Yonkers housing desegregation fight, opened by one of the longest title sequences on premium television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Deadwind

2018–2023·Yle (Finland)·Crime

A Helsinki homicide detective returning to work after her husband's death. Known at home as Karppi.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Republic of Doyle

2010–2014·CBC·Crime

A father-and-son detective agency in St. John's, Newfoundland.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boss

2011–2012·Starz·Drama

Kelsey Grammer as a Chicago mayor concealing a degenerative diagnosis, opened to Robert Plant.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mob City

2013·TNT·Crime

Frank Darabont's post-Walking Dead series, on 1940s Los Angeles, cancelled after six episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

NTSF:SD:SUV::

2011–2013·Adult Swim·Comedy

A procedural parody whose title is an acronym joke that never resolves, opened in fourteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gran Hotel

2011–2013·Antena 3·Drama

A 1905 luxury hotel and the disappearance of a chambermaid, from the team who went on to make Velvet and Cable Girls.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Green Lantern: The Animated Series

2011–2013·Cartoon Network·Animation

The first fully CG DC series, cancelled after one season when its toy line failed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja

2012–2015·Disney XD·Animation

A ninth-grader handed an eight-hundred-year-old ninja suit and no instructions.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Velvet

2014–2016·Antena 3·Drama

A 1950s Madrid couture house, and the seamstress and the heir who grew up in it together.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Parade's End

2012·BBC Two / HBO·Drama

Tom Stoppard adapting Ford Madox Ford across the First World War.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Inside Amy Schumer

2013–2022·Comedy Central·Comedy

A sketch show with stand-up and street interviews between, and eleven seconds to get into it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wilfred

2011–2014·FX / FXX·Comedy

A man who sees his neighbour's dog as an Australian in a dog suit, which the series never explains.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Howards End

2017·BBC One / Starz·Drama

Kenneth Lonergan's Forster adaptation, with titles built from cut-paper Edwardian silhouettes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wolfblood

2012–2017·CBBC·Horror

Teenagers who are not werewolves but something older, in a children's series that took the mythology seriously.

• Season 1

1 sequence

On Becoming a God in Central Florida

2019·Showtime·Drama

Kirsten Dunst working her way up a pyramid scheme that destroyed her family.

• Season 1

1 sequence

V Wars

2019·Netflix·Horror

A thawing glacier releasing a pathogen that turns some of the infected into vampires, from the Jonathan Maberry comics.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Neo Yokio

2017–2018·Netflix·Animation

Ezra Koenig's magistocrat comedy, animated in Japan and pitched somewhere nobody has located since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.

2013–2015·Disney XD·Animation

The Hulks as a team, framed as a documentary crew filming themselves.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The 7D

2014–2016·Disney XD·Animation

The seven dwarfs before Snow White, animated in a rubber-hose style by Tom Ruegger's team.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bitten

2014–2016·Space·Horror

The only female werewolf in existence, from the Kelley Armstrong novels, made in Canada.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Lodge 49

2018–2019·AMC·Comedy

A Long Beach fraternal lodge and a man who joins it looking for something he cannot name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Black Clover

2017–2021·TV Tokyo·Animation

A boy born without magic in a world made of it, across thirteen different openings.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Please Like Me

2013–2016·ABC2·Comedy

An Australian comedy that rewrites its opening for every episode — a different song, a different set of images, in a show otherwise built on stillness.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kodoku no Gurume

2012–·TV Tokyo·Drama

A salesman eating alone in a different restaurant each week, narrating his own meal. Known abroad as Solitary Gourmet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Magic City

2012–2013·Starz·Drama

A Miami Beach hotel in 1959, on the night Castro takes Havana.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cable Girls

2017–2020·Netflix (Spain)·Drama

Four switchboard operators in 1928 Madrid, Netflix's first Spanish original.

• Season 1

1 sequence

La Casa de las Flores

2018–2020·Netflix·Comedy

A Mexico City florist family and the second family the father has been keeping.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frankie Drake Mysteries

2017–2021·CBC·Crime

Toronto's only female private detective in the 1920s, from the Murdoch Mysteries producers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

I'm Dying Up Here

2017–2018·Showtime·Drama

The 1970s Los Angeles stand-up scene, produced by Jim Carrey.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Apple & Onion

2018–2021·Cartoon Network·Animation

An apple and an onion sharing a flat in a city of anthropomorphic food.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bless the Harts

2019–2021·Fox·Animation

A North Carolina family whose matriarch talks to a Jesus only she can see.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mao Mao: Heroes of Pure Heart

2019–2020·Cartoon Network·Animation

A cat sheriff who wants to be a legendary hero and is instead responsible for a valley of fruit people.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Los Espookys

2019–2022·HBO·Comedy

Handmade horror props filmed lovingly and badly on purpose — fake blood, rubber and fog, exactly the standard the characters work to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Harvey Beaks

2015–2017·Nickelodeon·Animation

A well-behaved bird and the two feral children who are his best friends.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pickle and Peanut

2015–2018·Disney XD·Animation

A pickle and a peanut, animated over photographed backgrounds and stock imagery.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Loudest Voice

2019·Showtime·Drama

Roger Ailes and the building of Fox News, one episode per significant year.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Minority Report

2015·Fox·Sci-Fi

The film continued a decade after precrime was shut down, and cancelled after ten episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blue Planet II

2017·BBC One·Documentary

Hans Zimmer and Radiohead scoring the ocean — the first natural history series to hire a film composer and a rock band for its titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero

2015–2017·Disney XD·Animation

A part-time hero zapped into a different world every episode, each drawn in its own style.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Salvation

2017–2018·CBS·Sci-Fi

An asteroid six months from Earth and a government that would rather not say so.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sarah & Duck

2013–2017·CBeebies·Animation

A girl, her duck, and a narrator who talks to both of them, in fifteen seconds of open.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Feud

2017–2024·FX·Drama

Ryan Murphy's anthology of famous enmities, retitled from scratch for each pair.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Bastard Executioner

2015·FX·Drama

Kurt Sutter's fourteenth-century Wales, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Luck

2011–2012·HBO·Drama

Milch and Michael Mann at a racetrack, ended after one season when horses died during production.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strange Angel

2018–2019·CBS All Access·Drama

Jack Parsons, rocket engineer and occultist, in 1930s Pasadena.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Occupied

2015–2020·TV2 Norge·Drama

A Norwegian political thriller about a soft occupation, opened with the calm of a corporate annual report.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Faking It

2014–2016·MTV·Comedy

Two friends mistaken for a couple who decide not to correct anyone.

• Season 1

1 sequence

High Seas

2019–2020·Netflix·Crime

Two sisters on a 1940s liner to Rio, and a passenger who was never on the manifest.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Breathe

2018–·Prime Video·Crime

A father working his way up a transplant list by removing the people above his son.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lady Dynamite

2016–2017·Netflix·Comedy

Maria Bamford's series about Maria Bamford, structured across three timelines and opened in fifteen seconds.

• Season 1

1 sequence

At Home with Amy Sedaris

2017–2020·truTV·Comedy

A homemaking show that is not one, opened in the idiom of 1970s daytime television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Count Arthur Strong

2013–2017·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Steve Delaney's radio character given a sitcom around him, co-written by Graham Linehan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dirty Money

2018–2020·Netflix·Documentary

One corporate fraud an episode, opening on money being counted by a machine that never stops.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rubicon

2010·AMC·Drama

An intelligence analyst finding a pattern nobody wants found, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

El Ministerio del Tiempo

2015–2020·La 1·Sci-Fi

A secret Spanish government department policing doors into the country's own history.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tunnel

2017·OCN·Crime

A 1986 detective stepping through a tunnel into 2017, still chasing the same killer.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Motorcity

2012·Disney XD·Animation

A hidden Detroit beneath a corporate city, from the Titmouse studio, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bluestone 42

2013–2015·BBC Three·Comedy

A bomb disposal detachment in Helmand, played as a workplace comedy without pretending the work is safe.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Victor and Valentino

2019–2022·Cartoon Network·Animation

Two half-brothers in a Mesoamerican village where the folklore is real and mostly annoyed with them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll

2015–2016·FX·Comedy

Denis Leary as a failed rock singer reforming his band around his own daughter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bordertown

2016·Fox·Animation

A Seth MacFarlane-produced border comedy, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Club de Cuervos

2015–2019·Netflix·Comedy

Netflix's first Spanish-language original, about two siblings inheriting a football club.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Welcome to the Wayne

2017–2019·Nickelodeon·Animation

An apartment building with a secret in every corridor, and children who map it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Terriers

2010·FX·Crime

An unlicensed private investigator in Ocean Beach, cancelled after thirteen episodes and mourned ever since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Baroness von Sketch Show

2016–2021·CBC·Comedy

Four women writing and performing every sketch, with no host, no studio audience and no linking material.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Full Frontal with Samantha Bee

2016–2022·TBS·Comedy

A weekly satire whose opening graphics were redesigned more often than most dramas change a season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Requiem

2018·BBC One·Horror

A cellist in a Welsh village that remembers a disappearance she does not.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Deutschland 86

2018·Amazon Prime Video·Drama

The Deutschland 83 spy sent to Angola and South Africa three years on, in the middle chapter of the trilogy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blunt Talk

2015–2016·Starz·Comedy

Patrick Stewart as a British cable news anchor in Los Angeles, from Jonathan Ames.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Briarpatch

2019–2020·USA Network·Crime

A Texas border town where the zoo animals have got out, which the series treats as background.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frequency

2016–2017·The CW·Sci-Fi

A ham radio that reaches the operator's dead father twenty years earlier, from the 2000 film.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Angry Boys

2011·ABC (Australia)·Comedy

The follow-up to Summer Heights High, co-produced with HBO and the BBC and shot on three continents.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frozen Planet

2011·BBC One·Documentary

Ice filmed as architecture, and George Fenton again — twenty-six seconds with no animal in them at all.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rita

2012–2020·TV 2·Comedy

A Danish schoolteacher who is very good at her job and bad at everything else.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hormones

2013–2015·GMM 25·Drama

A Bangkok school series that broke Thai television's rules about what teenagers could be shown doing.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Real Humans

2012–2014·SVT1·Sci-Fi

Household androids in a Sweden otherwise exactly like this one, remade in Britain as Humans.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Moonbeam City

2015·Comedy Central·Animation

A Patrick Nagel pastiche in neon and chrome, which is the entire aesthetic argument of the series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fades

2011·BBC Three·Horror

The unburied dead accumulating in the air above a British town, and a teenager who can see them.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Oath

2018–2019·Crackle·Crime

A gang made up of serving police officers, opened by Imaginary Forces.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The White Princess

2017·Starz·Drama

The sequel to The White Queen, following Elizabeth of York into the Tudor marriage.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Web Therapy

2011–2015·Showtime·Comedy

Lisa Kudrow's improvised therapist, conducting three-minute sessions by video call.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hip-Hop Evolution

2016–2020·Netflix·Documentary

Shad interviewing the people who were actually in the room, decade by decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Outcasts

2011·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A human settlement on Carpathia five years after Earth stopped answering.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Low Winter Sun

2013·AMC·Crime

The British two-parter remade in Detroit and stretched to ten episodes, cancelled after one season.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lazor Wulf

2019–2021·Adult Swim·Animation

A wolf with a laser bolted to his back, in fourteen seconds of open.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Chozen

2014·FX·Animation

An animated rapper released from prison, from the Archer production team.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Future-Worm!

2016–2018·Disney XD·Animation

A time-travelling worm and the boy who built his flask, from Ryan Quincy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A to Z

2014·NBC·Comedy

A romantic comedy that told you in the pilot exactly how many months it would last, and lasted thirteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cubicles

2019–·SonyLIV / TVF·Comedy

A first job in an Indian IT firm, from the studio that made Panchayat and Kota Factory.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blinded

2019–2021·TV4·Drama

A financial journalist sleeping with the bank chief she is investigating. Swedish title Fartblinda — speed-blind.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Silver Spoon

2014–2021·NTV·Crime

A Russian oligarch's son forced to work as a policeman, and the most exported Russian drama of its decade. Original title Мажор.

• Season 3

1 sequence

Marseille

2016–2018·Netflix·Drama

The port city from the water, for Netflix's first French commission — a political drama that opens like a tourist board film and then does not behave like one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Rising of the Shield Hero

2019–·Tokyo MX·Animation

The isekai hero given the defensive weapon and none of the credit.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Velvet Colección

2017–2019·Movistar+·Drama

The Velvet sequel, moving the fashion house from Madrid to Barcelona in 1967.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Cop

2012·BBC One·Crime

A Liverpool response officer who stops waiting for the system to work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Legacy

2014–2017·DR1 (Denmark)·Drama

Four siblings fighting over an artist mother's estate. Arvingerne at home.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Last Panthers

2015·Sky Atlantic·Crime

A jewel heist across Europe, opening on the title track of Blackstar — the last title music David Bowie wrote.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Human Planet

2011·BBC One·Documentary

The BBC natural-history unit turning its cameras on people, one habitat per episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Crazyhead

2016·Channel 4·Horror

Two women who can see demons, from the writer of Misfits, and cancelled after six episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bad Banks

2018–2020·ZDF / Arte·Drama

Frankfurt and London investment banking, made as a European co-production and shot in three languages.

• Season 1

1 sequence

De Twaalf

2019–2022·VRT·Crime

A Belgian trial told from the jury box rather than the bench. Remade in Australia as The Twelve.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rotten

2018–2019·Netflix·Documentary

The food supply chain taken apart one commodity at a time, in seventeen seconds of things going bad.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sky Castle

2018–2019·JTBC·Drama

Four families in a gated Seoul compound competing over university admissions.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rellik

2017·BBC One·Crime

A murder investigation told backwards — the title is killer reversed, and so is the series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dicte

2013–2016·TV 2·Crime

A crime reporter back in Aarhus after a divorce, from the Elsebeth Egholm novels.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Umbre

2014–2019·HBO Romania·Crime

A Bucharest debt collector holding two lives apart, in HBO Europe's Romanian production. The title means Shadows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Young James Herriot

2011·BBC One·Drama

The veterinary student years, three episodes long, from the same books All Creatures Great & Small comes from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Catherine the Great

2019·HBO / Sky Atlantic·Drama

Helen Mirren as the empress in her last decades, in four parts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Maniac

2018·Netflix·Sci-Fi

Retro-futurist hardware and pharmaceutical diagrams in a palette borrowed from 1980s Japan — a computer's idea of a mind, drawn by the machine trying to fix one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beau Séjour

2017–2021·VRT·Crime

A murdered girl who can be seen by five people, investigating her own death in a Flemish hotel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pustina

2016·HBO Czech·Crime

A girl disappears from a north Bohemian village that a mining company is trying to buy. The title means Wasteland.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wataha

2014–2019·HBO Europe·Crime

Border guards in the Bieszczady mountains, and the first Polish drama HBO made for itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Abstract: The Art of Design

2017–2019·Netflix·Documentary

One designer an episode, with a title sequence rebuilt each time in that designer's own idiom — the rare series whose titles are the argument.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Belfer

2016–2018·Canal+ Poland·Crime

A teacher arriving in a small Polish town where a pupil has been murdered, and finding the town would rather he did not ask.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Valkyrien

2017·NRK1·Drama

A doctor running an illegal clinic in a disused Oslo underground station.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boruto: Naruto Next Generations

2017–2023·TV Tokyo·Animation

The Naruto sequel, following the son of the boy the first series was about.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Aranyélet

2015–2018·HBO Hungary·Crime

A Budapest family whose comfortable life runs on crime, and the first Hungarian series HBO Europe made itself. Known abroad as Golden Life.

• Season 1

1 sequence

11.22.63

2016·Hulu·Sci-Fi

King's time-travel novel as eight hours, in which the past resists being changed and pushes back.

• Season 1

1 sequence

13 Reasons Why

2017–2020·Netflix·Drama

Thirteen tapes left behind by a girl who has died, addressed one to each person she holds responsible.

• Season 1

1 sequence

2 Broke Girls

2011–2017·CBS·Comedy

Two waitresses in Williamsburg saving towards a cupcake business, with the running total printed on screen at the end of every episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A.N.T. Farm

2011–2014·Disney Channel·Comedy

Gifted children fast-tracked into a high school that does not want them there.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Adam Ruins Everything

2015–2019·truTV·Documentary

A comedian interrupting people to explain, with citations on screen, why what they believe is wrong.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Race Canada

2013–·CTV·Documentary

The format run entirely inside one country, which turns out to be quite large enough for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing World of Gumball

2011–2019·Cartoon Network·Animation

A cat, a goldfish with legs, and a suburb assembled by layering drawn animation, models and live-action photography in the same shot.

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Housewife

2016–2021·ABC·Comedy

A woman who reckons herself the second-fattest in Westport, Connecticut, and says so at length.

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Pickers

2010–·History·Documentary

Two dealers driving across America buying things out of other people's barns.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Anne with an E

2017–2019·CBC / Netflix·Drama

Prince Edward Island in stop-motion paper and pressed flowers, over The Tragically Hip.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Another Miss Oh

2016·tvN·Drama

Two women with the same name, and a man who can see a few seconds into the future.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Another Period

2015–2018·Comedy Central·Comedy

Newport in 1902 shot as a reality series, with the confessional interviews and everything.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Atlantis

2013–2015·BBC One·Sci-Fi

The BBC's Saturday teatime myth series after Merlin, with the same job to do and the same slot to do it in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bar Rescue

2011–2017·Spike·Documentary

A consultant shouting a failing bar back into business over three days.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Battle Creek

2015·CBS·Crime

Vince Gilligan's script from a decade earlier, finally made, and cancelled after thirteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bing

2014–2019·CBeebies·Animation

A preschool rabbit and the small woollen carer who manages him, from Ted Dewan's books.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bletchley Circle

2012–2014·ITV·Crime

Four women who broke codes during the war, using the same habits on a murder afterwards.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bloodline

2015–2017·Netflix·Drama

A Florida Keys family whose eldest brother comes home, told across one summer and a confession.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blue Mountain State

2010–2011·Spike·Comedy

A football scholarship treated as a licence rather than a job, in Spike's fraternity comedy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boardwalk Empire

2010–2014·HBO·Crime

One man on a beach while the tide brings him bottles. No montage, no cast — just Nucky Thompson standing still as Prohibition washes up around his shoes, to The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

• Seasons 1–5

1 sequence

Bunheads

2012–2013·ABC Family·Comedy

Amy Sherman-Palladino's dance-school series, one season long and talked about since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Castlevania

2017–2021·Netflix·Animation

Gothic architecture and stained glass rendered as a slow climb, refusing the game series' rock score for something closer to a requiem.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Childhood's End

2015·Syfy·Sci-Fi

The Arthur C. Clarke novel adapted across three nights.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Chosen

2017–·VidAngel / Prime Video·Drama

The crowdfunded life of Christ, with a title sequence that deliberately does not look like a Bible show.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Chuno

2010·KBS2·Drama

Slave hunters in late Joseon, shot handheld in the mountains and unusually violent for its slot.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Code Black

2015–2018·CBS·Drama

The busiest emergency room in America, named for the state it spends most of its time in.

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Conners

2018–2025·ABC·Comedy

Roseanne continued without her, after the network cancelled the revival it had just recommissioned.

• Season 1
• Season 5

1 sequence

The Curse of Oak Island

2014–·History·Documentary

Two brothers digging a Nova Scotian island for treasure, across more than a decade of not finding it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dead to Me

2019–2022·Netflix·Comedy

A widow and the woman she meets at grief counselling, who knows rather more about the death than she says.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Designated Survivor

2016–2018·ABC·Drama

The housing secretary kept away from the State of the Union, and therefore president by the end of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency

2016–2017·BBC America·Comedy

Douglas Adams's holistic detective remade in Seattle, still working on the principle that everything is connected.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Discovery of Witches

2018–2022·Sky One / Sky Max·Sci-Fi

A historian who finds an enchanted manuscript in the Bodleian and cannot put it back.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doctor Foster

2015–·BBC One·Drama

A GP who works out that her husband is having an affair, and then takes it apart methodically.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dog with a Blog

2012–2015·Disney Channel·Comedy

A stepfamily's dog who can talk, and keeps a blog about them that none of them know exists.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dominion

2014–2015·Syfy·Sci-Fi

Archangels at war over a walled Las Vegas, twenty-five years after the film it follows.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

2012–2013·ABC·Comedy

A Midwesterner sharing a New York flat with the worst possible person, and James Van Der Beek playing himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Drunk History

2013–2019·Comedy Central·Comedy

History retold by someone too drunk to tell it, lip-synced straight-faced by actors in costume.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dublin Murders

2019·BBC One / Starz·Crime

Tana French's first two novels braided into one eight-part case.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Duck Dynasty

2012–2017·A&E·Documentary

A Louisiana family who got rich making duck calls, and then considerably richer being filmed doing it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

DuckTales (2017)

2017–2021·Disney XD·Animation

The reboot, which rerecorded the 1987 theme rather than replacing it — the rare remake that understood the song was the asset.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Empress Ki

2013–2014·MBC·Drama

A Goryeo woman who becomes empress of the Yuan court, across fifty-one episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The End of the F***ing World

2017–2019·Channel 4 / Netflix·Drama

Sixties pop over two teenagers on a road trip that is going to end badly — an opening that is much sweeter than anything it introduces.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Erased

2016·Fuji TV·Animation

A man sent back to his own childhood to prevent a murder, opened with the cold blue of a Hokkaido winter.

• Season 1

1 sequence

F Is for Family

2015–2021·Netflix·Animation

A 1970s sitcom opening built out of wood panelling, cigarette smoke and a father arriving home — the era's own title design, with the warmth removed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Father Brown

2013–·BBC One·Crime

Chesterton's priest detective moved to the 1950s Cotswolds, and the most durable daytime drama the BBC has.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fosters

2013–2018·ABC Family / Freeform·Drama

A couple raising biological, adopted and foster children together, on a channel then rebranding around exactly that audience.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fresh Off the Boat

2015–2020·ABC·Comedy

A Taiwanese-American family moving to Orlando in 1995, from Eddie Huang's memoir.

• Season 1

1 sequence

From Dusk till Dawn: The Series

2014–2016·El Rey·Horror

Rodriguez remaking his own film at series length, on the channel he founded to show it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Future Man

2017–2020·Hulu·Sci-Fi

A janitor recruited by time travellers because he finished a video game nobody else could.

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Geordie Shore

2011–2025·MTV·Documentary

Jersey Shore relocated to Newcastle, and the format that gave British reality its next decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Get Down

2016–2017·Netflix·Drama

The South Bronx in 1977, where disco is ending and hip hop has not been given a name yet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ghosts

2019–2023·BBC One·Comedy

The Horrible Histories troupe as the dead of one country house, opened by all of them at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life

2016·Netflix·Comedy

Four ninety-minute films returning to Stars Hollow nine years on, one for each season of the year.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Glades

2010–2013·A&E·Crime

A Chicago detective exiled to Florida, working murders he keeps being told are not his.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Goblin

2016–2017·tvN·Drama

A nine-hundred-year-old immortal looking for the bride who can end him. Known abroad as Guardian: The Lonely and Great God.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Godfather of Harlem

2019–2021·Epix·Crime

Bumpy Johnson out of prison in 1963 and finding Harlem taken, with Malcolm X across the street.

• Season 4

2 sequences

Good Omens

2019–2026·Amazon Prime Video / BBC Two·Comedy

An angel and a demon who have both grown too fond of England to let it end, from Pratchett and Gaiman.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Grace and Frankie

2015–2022·Netflix·Comedy

Two women whose husbands leave them for each other, and who then have to live together.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Great Expectations

2011·BBC One·Drama

The Dickens novel in three parts, with Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Green Eggs and Ham

2019–2022·Netflix·Animation

Fifty Seuss words expanded into two seasons, animated with more craft than the premise suggests.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Hannibal

2013–2015·NBC·Horror

A figure forming out of blood in water, on network television at ten o'clock. Twenty-one seconds, and among the most beautiful things any broadcast network has aired.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Happy Endings

2011–2013·ABC·Comedy

Six friends in Chicago talking over one another at a speed most sitcoms do not attempt.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hardcore Pawn

2010–2015·truTV·Documentary

A Detroit pawnbroker and the arguments across his counter, which are most of the programme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hart of Dixie

2011–2015·The CW·Drama

A New York surgeon who inherits half a general practice in Alabama and finds she cannot leave it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Haunting of Hill House

2018–2020·Netflix·Horror

The house drawn as an architectural plate, rooms opening into rooms, with figures standing in doorways you are not meant to notice on a first pass.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Healer

2014–2015·KBS2·Drama

A night courier who takes any job without asking what it is, and the reporter who works out who he is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Heirs

2013·SBS·Drama

The children of chaebol families at the same school, arranged by inheritance rather than friendship.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Her Private Life

2019·tvN·Comedy

A gallery curator running a fan site for an idol, and the director who finds out.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Heroes Reborn

2015–2016·NBC·Sci-Fi

The revival, five years after the original stopped, and one season long.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hinterland

2013–2016·S4C / BBC One·Crime

Aberystwyth and the country behind it, shot twice over - once in Welsh as Y Gwyll, once in English.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hot in Cleveland

2010–2015·TV Land·Comedy

Three Los Angeles women whose plane diverts, and who find that in Ohio they are considered striking.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hot Stove League

2019–2020·SBS·Drama

A baseball club's front office in the closed season, which is where the title's stove is.

• Season 1

2 sequences

House of Anubis

2011–2013·Nickelodeon·Drama

An English boarding school with an Egyptian secret underneath it, remade by Nickelodeon from a Dutch and Belgian original.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Hudson & Rex

2019–·Citytv·Crime

A St John's detective and his German shepherd, remade from an Austrian series that ran for twenty years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hunter × Hunter

2011–2014·Nippon TV·Animation

One opening held for most of a hundred and forty-eight episodes, which for a shonen series of that length is close to unheard of.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Ink Master

2012–2018·Spike·Documentary

Tattoo artists competing on other people's skin, which raises the stakes over most craft contests.

• Season 2
• Season 5

1 sequence

Jane the Virgin

2014–2019·The CW·Comedy

A telenovela about a woman inside a telenovela, opened in the form it is parodying and loving at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Jericho (2016)

2016·ITV·Drama

A shanty town thrown up under a Victorian railway viaduct in Yorkshire, and ITV's attempt at a British western.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kickin' It

2011–2015·Disney XD·Comedy

A martial arts dojo in a shopping centre, and the longest-running live-action comedy Disney XD made.

• Season 3

1 sequence

KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!

2016–·Tokyo MX·Animation

An isekai where the hero's party is uniformly useless and the show knows it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kruk

2018–2021·Canal+ Poland·Crime

A Białystok detective returning to the town he grew up in, with a subtitle that translates as whispers are heard after dark.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Last Man on Earth

2015–2018·Fox·Comedy

The last man alive, who turns out not to be, and who is not much of a loss to anybody either way.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Resort

2012–2013·ABC·Drama

A submarine crew who refuse an order and declare an island sovereign, cancelled after thirteen episodes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Tango in Halifax

2012–2020·BBC One·Drama

Two people who were sweethearts at school meeting again in their seventies, and the families that have accumulated since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

2014–·HBO·Comedy

A weekly half-hour whose animated globe-and-newsprint open has run essentially unchanged for a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Legend of the Blue Sea

2016–2017·SBS·Drama

A mermaid and a con artist, reincarnated from a Joseon folk tale into modern Seoul.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life in Pieces

2015–2019·CBS·Comedy

One family across four short stories an episode, told out of order and cut together at the end.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life Unexpected

2010–2011·The CW·Drama

A girl in foster care who finds both her birth parents and asks them to take her back.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Light in Your Eyes

2019·JTBC·Drama

A woman who can turn back time and ages a lifetime doing it, which the series does not explain until it has to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Live

2018·tvN·Drama

Beat officers at a Seoul substation, from the writer of the Reply series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Lying Game

2011–2013·ABC Family·Drama

Twins separated at birth swapping places, from the author of Pretty Little Liars.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Madam Secretary

2014–2019·CBS·Drama

A CIA analyst made Secretary of State, in the political drama CBS ran opposite prestige cable.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Mandalorian

2019–2023·Disney+·Sci-Fi

A chapter card and Ludwig Göransson's bass recorder — the first live-action Star Wars series opens like a serial, which is what it is.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Manhattan

2014–2015·WGN America·Drama

The scientists at Los Alamos, and the families billeted alongside them who were told nothing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

March Comes in Like a Lion

2016–2018·NHK·Animation

A teenage professional shogi player and the depression the game is holding at bay.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Melissa & Joey

2010–2015·ABC Family / Freeform·Comedy

A local politician and the man who becomes her nanny, in the longest-running sitcom ABC Family made.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Miffy's Adventures Big and Small

2015–2019·KRO-NCRV / Tiny Pop·Animation

The same rabbit remade in computer animation a decade later, and given considerably more to do.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Mike & Molly

2010–2016·CBS·Comedy

Two people who meet at an overeaters group on the north side of Chicago.

• Season 1
• Seasons 4–6

1 sequence

Mildred Pierce

2011·HBO·Drama

Todd Haynes's five-part Cain adaptation with Kate Winslet.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Miracle Workers

2019–2023·TBS·Comedy

An anthology that keeps its cast and changes everything else — heaven, the Dark Ages, the Oregon Trail, the apocalypse.

• Season 2

2 sequences

Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir

2015–·TF1·Animation

Two Parisian teenagers who transform into superheroes and spend six seasons not working out who the other one is.

• Season 5
• Season 6

1 sequence

Misaeng

2014·tvN·Drama

A go player with no qualifications put into a trading company, and the office drama that made Korea talk about its own working hours.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Misty

2018·JTBC·Drama

A news anchor accused of murder, and the husband defending her without knowing.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mom

2013–2021·CBS·Comedy

A newly sober mother and her newly sober mother, in a Chuck Lorre sitcom that got steadily less comfortable on purpose.

• Season 8

1 sequence

The Moon Embracing the Sun

2012·MBC·Drama

A king and the shaman he was betrothed to as a boy, in the year's most-watched Korean drama.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr Selfridge

2013–2016·ITV·Drama

The American who opened a department store on Oxford Street and spent everything keeping it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Mr. Mercedes

2017–2019·Audience·Crime

King's retired detective and the man who drove a car into a queue of people looking for work.

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

Mr. Sunshine

2018·tvN·Drama

A Korean boy sold into slavery who returns as an American marine, set in the last years before annexation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mrs. Brown's Boys

2011–·BBC One / RTÉ One·Comedy

A Dublin matriarch played by the man who writes her, taped with the crew, the corpsing and the fluffed lines all left in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Muppets (2015)

2015–2016·ABC·Comedy

The Muppets as a workplace mockumentary, which lasted one season and a mid-season change of format.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

2010–2019·The Hub / Discovery Family·Animation

A toy line handed to an animator who took it entirely seriously, and an audience nobody had forecast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

My Sassy Girl

2017·SBS·Comedy

The film remade as a Joseon romance, with a princess in place of the original's student.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Neighborhood

2018–2026·CBS·Comedy

A relentlessly friendly Midwestern family moving into a Black neighbourhood in Pasadena, and the man next door who would rather they had not.

• Season 8

1 sequence

The Next Step

2013–2025·Family Channel·Drama

A dance studio filmed as a documentary about itself, which ran for twelve years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn

2014–2018·Nickelodeon·Comedy

Quadruplets who share everything including the title, and want to share less of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nielegalni

2018·Canal+ Poland·Crime

A Polish intelligence unit whose members do not officially exist.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Octonauts

2010–·CBeebies·Animation

A crew of animals working out of an underwater base, each episode built around a real marine species.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Odd Squad

2014–·PBS Kids·Comedy

Child agents investigating mathematical strangeness, played entirely deadpan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

One Punch Man

2015–·TV Tokyo·Animation

A screaming rock track and animation of enormous ambition, for a hero who wins every fight in one hit and is bored by it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Only Way Is Essex

2010–·ITV2·Documentary

Structured reality built around a group of Essex friends, and the format most British television copied afterwards.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Our Girl

2013–2020·BBC One·Drama

An army medic on tour, in a drama that recast its lead and kept going.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pair of Kings

2010–2013·Disney XD·Comedy

Two brothers from Chicago who inherit an island kingdom neither of them had heard of.

• Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Pan Am

2011–2012·ABC·Drama

Mad Men at altitude, cancelled after one season of very expensive period detail.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Penn & Teller: Fool Us

2011–·ITV / The CW·Documentary

Magicians performing one trick each for two men who will say afterwards whether they worked out how it was done.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Pillars of the Earth

2010·Starz·Drama

Ken Follett's cathedral built across eight hours of twelfth-century England.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ping Pong the Animation

2014·Fuji TV·Animation

Masaaki Yuasa drawing table tennis in a line nobody else would have approved.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pinocchio

2014–2015·SBS·Drama

A reporter who hiccups when she lies, in a drama about what television news does to the people in it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

PJ Masks

2015–2024·Disney Junior·Animation

Three children who become animal-themed heroes at night, from the French picture books.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Plebs

2013–2022·ITV2·Comedy

Ancient Rome played as a flatshare, with the empire happening somewhere off to one side.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Poldark (2015)

2015–2019·BBC One·Drama

Winston Graham's Cornish captain home from the American war to find his father dead and his fiancée engaged to his cousin.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Beast Morphers

2019·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

Animal DNA and Grid energy, and the first season made after Hasbro bought the franchise.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Dino Charge

2015–2016·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

Energems and dinosaur spirits, and the season that ran two years under one name.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Power Rangers Megaforce

2013·Nickelodeon·Sci-Fi

The twentieth-anniversary season, built to reach back through the whole franchise.

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Pretty Little Liars

2010–2017·Freeform·Drama

Four girls shushing the camera over a coffin — twenty-two seconds that state the entire premise and the entire threat.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Prison Playbook

2017–2018·tvN·Comedy

A baseball pitcher jailed weeks before signing for the major leagues, and the wing he ends up in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Red Road

2014–2015·SundanceTV·Drama

A New Jersey policeman and a Ramapough man held together by what each knows about the other.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Reply 1994

2013·tvN·Drama

A Seoul boarding house of students up from the provinces, and the second of the three Reply series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Reply 1997

2012·tvN·Drama

Busan schoolfriends and first-generation fandom, told from a reunion looking back.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Restaurant

2017–2021·SVT (Sweden)·Drama

A Stockholm restaurant family from 1945 onwards. Vår tid är nu at home — "our time is now".

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ringer

2011–2012·The CW·Drama

A woman who takes over her twin sister's identity and finds it is worse than the one she left.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ripper Street

2012–2016·BBC One / Prime Video·Crime

Whitechapel in the years after the murders, policed by men the murders made famous.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rookie Blue

2010–2015·Global / ABC·Crime

Five recruits out of the academy in Toronto, made as a summer series for two countries at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rosewood

2015–2017·Fox·Crime

A private pathologist in Miami working the cases the police have already closed.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Royals

2015–2018·E!·Drama

An invented British royal family behaving badly, on a channel that had spent a decade filming real ones.

• Season 1

1 sequence

RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars

2012–2016·Logo TV·Documentary

Returning queens competing again, in the spin-off that handed the eliminations to the contestants.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sacred Games

2018–2019·Netflix·Crime

Mumbai rendered as a mandala of crime and religion, with the city's iconography arranged into something closer to a devotional image.

• Season 1

1 sequence

School 2017

2017·KBS2·Drama

The seventh entry in a school series running since 1999, each with a new cast and year in the title.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scorpion

2014–2018·CBS·Drama

A team of geniuses contracted by Homeland Security, very loosely based on a real consultant's account of himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scream

2015–2016·MTV·Horror

The film franchise remade as a weekly series, with a new mask of its own.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Secret Garden

2010–2011·SBS·Drama

A department store heir and a stuntwoman who wake up in each other's bodies.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sharp Objects

2018·HBO·Crime

Wind Gap seen at speed from a car window, with words hidden in the frame — the same trick the show plays for eight episodes, put in the titles from the first minute.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Star Wars Rebels

2014–2018·Disney XD·Animation

Kevin Kiner rewriting John Williams for a series about the Rebellion before it was one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strike

2017–·BBC One·Crime

Galbraith's one-legged private detective and the assistant who turns out to be better at it than he expected.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strike Back

2010–2020·Sky1 / Cinemax·Drama

A British special-forces unit shot like an action franchise, in one of Sky's first co-productions with an American premium channel.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Suburgatory

2011–2014·ABC·Comedy

A Manhattan teenager relocated to the suburbs by a father who found a box of condoms in her drawer.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Switched at Birth

2011–2017·ABC Family / Freeform·Drama

Two teenagers swapped as babies, in a family drama that plays whole scenes in sign language.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tales of the City

2019·Netflix·Drama

Armistead Maupin's Barbary Lane, returned to thirty years after the first adaptation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Team

2015–2018·ZDF / DR1·Crime

A Europol task force built out of three countries' police, and shot in all three languages.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Teen Wolf

2011–2017·MTV·Horror

Transformation rendered as anatomy — claws, teeth and eyes, in a sequence rebuilt several times across six seasons.

• Season 6

1 sequence

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

2012–2017·Nickelodeon·Animation

The CG revival, which kept the 1987 theme's shape and rebuilt everything around it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Tick

2016–2019·Amazon·Comedy

The live-action Tick, whose main title is a full superhero sequence played entirely straight.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

2015–2019·Netflix·Comedy

A woman released after fifteen years in a bunker, who moves to New York on the strength of it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Unforgettable

2011–2016·CBS·Crime

A detective who remembers every day of her life except the one that matters.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Unforgotten

2015–·ITV·Crime

Two detectives working cold cases old enough that the suspects have built whole lives since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vanderpump Rules

2013–·Bravo·Documentary

The staff of a Los Angeles restaurant, most of whom would rather be famous than employed.

• Season 12

1 sequence

Vicious

2013–2016·ITV·Comedy

Two actors who have lived together for fifty years, insulting each other in front of a studio audience.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Virgin River

2019–·Netflix·Drama

A nurse practitioner who answers an advertisement for a job in a Californian mountain town.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vlad

2019–2021·Pro TV·Crime

A Romanian crime series about a man returning to Bucharest to find who killed his brother.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wormwood

2017·Netflix·Documentary

Errol Morris on Frank Olson's death, told half as interview and half as drama, with titles for both halves at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

You

2018–·Lifetime / Netflix·Crime

A bookshop manager narrating his own stalking in the second person, moved to Netflix after one season.

• Season 1