Comedy
Openings that get out of the way, and occasionally refuse to.
Comedy is the largest genre in the catalogue, with 698 opening title sequences from 1949 to the present.
More of them began in the 2010s than in any other decade — 149, against 142 in the 1990s.
34 rebuilt their titles mid-run, Silicon Valley most of all with five sequences.
NBC carries more of them than anyone else, with 81.
654 shows · 698 sequences
The ones that kept changing
All 34 in Comedy · every genre →
5 sequences
Silicon Valley
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
4 sequences
Blackadder
Four series, four centuries, and a theme re-orchestrated each time to suit the period — lute, harpsichord, military band.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more
4 sequences
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
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
4 sequences
Young Sheldon
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
3 sequences
The Facts of Life
A girls' boarding school in Peekskill, spun off from Diff'rent Strokes and running three years longer than it.
- Season 1
- Season 7
- Season 8
2 sequences
ALF
A sitcom built around a puppet the cast could not see, worked from a trench cut into the set floor.
- Season 1
- Season 3
Most looked up in comedy
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1 sequence
Ted Lasso
Twenty-two seconds of Richmond's own stadium seats, photographed close and covered in fan graffiti, over a brass hook — brisk, warm, and gone before it can outstay itself.
- Season 2
1 sequence
The Bear
A kitchen show with no main titles at all — it opens cold, every week, which is exactly the sensation of a service starting.
- Season 3
1 sequence
Shrinking
Hand-drawn scribbles over domestic footage, in the register of a therapist's notebook margin.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Peacemaker
The entire cast dancing in formation, in costume, completely deadpan, to Wig Wam's 'Do Ya Wanna Taste It'. No plot content whatsoever, and the best argument on this site for titles as a bit.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Taskmaster
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 Big Bang Theory
Fourteen billion years of natural history in twenty-three seconds, flashing past at one image per beat.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Malcolm in the Middle
They Might Be Giants' 'Boss of Me' over archive film of chaos — falling, crashing and general misadventure, cut faster than a network comedy usually dares.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Only Murders in the Building
The Arconia drawn as a cutaway illustration with the residents inside it, redrawn each season as the building's secrets change.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Shameless
A bathroom door opening on each member of the family in turn — an entire household characterised through one room.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Office
Scranton, a car park and a filing cabinet, shot like stock footage for a regional business — twenty-two seconds that promise nothing will happen.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Scrubs
Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Chair Company
Tim Robinson on a man who will not let a collapsing office chair go.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Saturday Night Live
A new cast montage every single season for fifty years — New York at night, the current company photographed in it, and a band playing over the top. The longest-running rotating title sequence on television.
- Season 1
1 sequence
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Photographs of Philadelphia over a jaunty public-domain waltz, with the episode's absurd title card dropped into the middle of it.
- Seasons 2–4
4 sequencesYoung Sheldon
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
Friends
A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.
- Season 6
1 sequence
Betty
A group of women skateboarding in New York, expanded from the film Skate Kitchen.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Modern Family
Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Sex and the City
A tutu, a bus and a splash of dirty water — an opening whose entire joke is that New York does not care who you think you are.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Middle
An Indiana family with no money and no prospects, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Abbott Elementary
A Philadelphia public school shot as a documentary, and the first network comedy in years to become a hit on its own terms.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Schitt's Creek
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
Two and a Half Men
Twelve seasons on a Malibu beach house, opened by four sung syllables.
- Season 6
1 sequence
Emily in Paris
Paris as a postcard rack — every landmark in order, photographed exactly as the show's protagonist would photograph them.
- Season 1