Comedy · 1990s
142 shows154 sequences
1 sequenceFriends
1994–2004NBCComedy
A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.
- Season 6
1 sequenceSex and the City
1998–2004HBOComedy
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 sequenceMr. Bean
1990–1995ITVComedy
A man dropped from the sky in a spotlight while a choir sings about him in Latin, every week, for a character who never explains himself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceEverybody Loves Raymond
1996–2005CBSComedy
A brass sting and a family photograph, in forty-eight seconds that promise nothing more complicated than what you are about to get.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTeletubbies
1997–2001BBC TwoComedy
A baby's face in the sun, four aerials and a narrator counting them in — over two minutes of titles for a programme aimed at people under three.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat '70s Show
1998–2006FoxComedy
The cast singing 'In the Street' from the back of a Vista Cruiser, re-recorded and reshot every season — plus one-off Halloween and Christmas versions.
- Seasons 1–8
1 sequenceThe King of Queens
1998–2007CBSComedy
A delivery driver, his wife and her father in Rego Park, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHome Improvement
1991–1999ABCComedy
Power tools and a grunting brass riff, in the register of the fictional DIY programme the show is about.
- Season 1
1 sequenceKeeping Up Appearances
1990–1995BBC OneComedy
Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced Bouquet, and the relatives she would rather nobody met.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Daily Show
1996–Comedy CentralComedy
A news-graphics package rebuilt for each of its four hosts, and the programme that made the fake-news desk a form.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBoy Meets World
1993–2000ABCComedy
A cast montage rebuilt every season as its lead grew from eleven to eighteen, which few sitcoms have had to solve.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWhose Line Is It Anyway?
1998–ABC / The CWComedy
Improv games where the points don't matter, opened by a scramble of the cast in freeze-frame.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
1990–1996NBCComedy
An entire origin story rapped over an animated title card — the longest opening of its era, cut down substantially after the first season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Nanny
1993–1999CBSComedy
Cartoon animation narrating how a woman from Flushing ended up in a Manhattan townhouse — a premise delivered entirely in the titles.
- Season 1
2 sequencesWill & Grace
1998–2020NBCComedy
Thirteen seconds and a piano vamp, from a sitcom confident enough not to explain itself.
- Season 1
- Season 9
1 sequenceFreaks and Geeks
1999–2000NBCComedy
School photographs taken one at a time, with each cast member visibly hating the process — Joan Jett over the least flattering portraits anyone would agree to.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlly McBeal
1997–2002FoxComedy
Vonda Shepard singing over a lawyer walking through Boston — a theme so tied to the show that the singer became a recurring character.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSabrina the Teenage Witch
1996–2003ABC / The WBComedy
The Archie Comics witch as a TGIF sitcom, seven seasons across two networks.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNorthern Exposure
1990–1995CBSComedy
A moose walking through an empty Alaskan town, which is the entire opening and remains one of television's best jokes about scale.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBarney & Friends
1992–2010PBSComedy
A purple dinosaur who appears when children imagine him, and a closing song that became a schoolyard parody format.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAbsolutely Fabulous
1992–2012BBC Two / BBC OneComedy
Twenty-one seconds of Julie Driscoll's 'This Wheel's on Fire', re-recorded for the show by its own star.
- Season 1
1 sequenceStep by Step
1991–1998ABC / CBSComedy
Two single parents merging their families, in the middle of the TGIF block.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWings
1990–1997NBCComedy
A Nantucket airline run by two brothers, opened by Schubert.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Ted
1995–1998Channel 4Comedy
Three priests on a rock in the Atlantic, introduced by a whistle tune and some of the flattest scenery ever put in a title sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMad About You
1992–2019NBCComedy
A married couple in New York, over a theme that was re-recorded repeatedly and once sung by the show's own stars.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn Living Color
1990–1994FoxComedy
Graffiti, dance and a Heavy D theme — a sketch show that opened at a volume network television had not previously permitted.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSpin City
1996–2002ABCComedy
New York City Hall in twenty-two seconds, rebuilt partway through the run when the show changed its lead.
- Season 5
1 sequence3rd Rock from the Sun
1996–2001NBCComedy
Aliens observing suburban Ohio, opened with the brightness of a travel advertisement for a planet.
- Season 6
1 sequenceFrasier
1993–2004NBCComedy
A skyline drawn in simple lines while a man sings about tossed salads and scrambled eggs, and declines to explain either.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHave I Got News for You
1990–BBC Two / BBC OneComedy
Newspaper mastheads and printing presses, rebuilt periodically across thirty-five years of British political humiliation.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAll That
1994–2005NickelodeonComedy
A sketch show for children that launched Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes and Nick Cannon.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Vicar of Dibley
1994–2020BBC OneComedy
Dawn French as the first woman priest in a village that expected a man.
- Season 2
1 sequenceNewsRadio
1995–1999NBCComedy
Thirty seconds of a radio newsroom and a horn riff, from a workplace sitcom that never quite got the audience it deserved.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMADtv
1995–2016FoxComedy
Mad magazine turned into a sketch show, with Alfred E. Neuman in the titles and a cast that changed almost every year.
- Season 9
2 sequencesJust Shoot Me!
1997–2003NBCComedy
A fashion magazine staffed by people who should not be near one. The titles start as a full sequence and end as a logo.
- Season 1
- Seasons 3–5
1 sequenceDharma & Greg
1997–2002ABCComedy
A free spirit and a lawyer who marry on their first date.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSpace Ghost Coast to Coast
1994–2008Cartoon Network / Adult SwimComedy
A 1960s Hanna-Barbera superhero repurposed as a chat-show host, and the programme every Adult Swim series descends from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMartin
1992–1997FoxComedy
Detroit, a hip-hop bed and a lead who plays most of the supporting cast himself.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceOne Foot in the Grave
1990–2000BBC OneComedy
Victor Meldrew, forcibly retired at sixty and furious about everything since.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLiving Single
1993–1998FoxComedy
Queen Latifah performing the theme over Brooklyn — a sitcom opening sung by one of its own stars.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Amanda Show
1999–2002NickelodeonComedy
Amanda Bynes given her own sketch show out of All That, at seventeen.
- Seasons 2–3
1 sequenceKenan & Kel
1996–2000NickelodeonComedy
The All That double act given their own series, and "Who loves orange soda?"
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Adventures of Pete & Pete
1993–1996NickelodeonComedy
Two brothers with the same name in a suburb tuned slightly wrong, scored by Polaris.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMr. Show with Bob and David
1995–1998HBOComedy
The American sketch show that took Monty Python's structure — sketches flowing into one another rather than ending — and put it on cable.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Larry Sanders Show
1992–1998HBOComedy
A talk-show opening for a talk show that does not exist, performed with total conviction by a band and an announcer who are also characters.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMoesha
1996–2001UPNComedy
Brandy Norwood as a Los Angeles teenager, and UPN's first real hit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Big Comfy Couch
1992–2006YTVComedy
A clown and her doll on a couch, with a clock-stretch exercise that gave the programme its shape.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSpaced
1999–2001Channel 4Comedy
Freeze-frames and film-reference visual gags, cut at the speed the show quotes at — which is constant.
- Season 2
1 sequenceAs Time Goes By
1992–2005BBC OneComedy
Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer meeting again thirty-eight years after they lost touch.
- Season 1
1 sequenceClarissa Explains It All
1991–1994NickelodeonComedy
The first Nickelodeon live-action series built around a girl, addressed straight to camera.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGoodnight Sweetheart
1993–1999BBC OneComedy
A man who finds a London alley that leads back to 1940 and keeps a wife in each decade.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequenceBottom
1991–1995BBC TwoComedy
Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in a Hammersmith flat, hitting each other.
- Season 1
1 sequenceStrangers with Candy
1999–2000Comedy CentralComedy
An after-school special inverted: a forty-six-year-old ex-convict returning to high school as a freshman.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ben Stiller Show
1992–1993FoxComedy
Thirteen episodes, cancelled, then given an Emmy — the writers' room that produced most of the next decade's American comedy.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDream On
1990–1996HBOComedy
A man whose inner life is old black-and-white television clips, which the titles establish before a word is said.
- Season 1
1 sequenceI'm Alan Partridge
1997–2002BBC TwoComedy
A theme with all the brass of a chat show its subject is no longer allowed to host, over a Travel Tavern car park.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBrum
1991–2002BBC OneComedy
A small yellow car loose in a city, told without dialogue — a preschool series that is closer to silent film than to television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBrass Eye
1997–2001Channel 4Comedy
The Day Today's successor, with a new themed opening built for each episode's subject — crime, drugs, science, sex.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Parkers
1999–2004UPNComedy
The Moesha spin-off, with a mother and daughter enrolled at the same community college.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSalute Your Shorts
1991–1992NickelodeonComedy
Camp Anawanna, and a theme song the campers sing badly on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceArli$$
1996–2002HBOComedy
A sports agent played by Robert Wuhl, running seven seasons on almost no critical goodwill.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRosie and Jim
1990–2000ITVComedy
Two rag dolls on a narrowboat who come alive when the adult is not looking.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Day Today
1994BBC TwoComedy
News-graphics bombast pushed just past the point of sense — a parody so accurate that actual bulletins caught up with it within a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSmack the Pony
1999–2003Channel 4Comedy
A sketch show written and performed by women, at a point when British television had decided that was a format rather than a fact.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGoodness Gracious Me
1998–2001BBC TwoComedy
A radio sketch show that transferred to television and gave British comedy going for an English one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDrop the Dead Donkey
1990–1998Channel 4Comedy
A television newsroom recorded days before broadcast so that real headlines could be written in.
- Season 5
1 sequenceThe Brittas Empire
1991–1997BBC OneComedy
A leisure centre run by the least suitable manager in British comedy.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTots TV
1993–1998ITVComedy
Three rag dolls with a bag, one of whom only speaks French, from the studio that went on to make Teletubbies.
- Season 1
1 sequenceKnowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge
1994–1995BBC TwoComedy
The radio chat show moved to television, opening on a title sequence that is itself the character's idea of a good one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSeaChange
1998–2019ABC (Australia)Comedy
A city lawyer moving to a coastal town, and the series that put the phrase into Australian English.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBrooklyn Bridge
1991–1993CBSComedy
Gary David Goldberg's memory of a 1950s Jewish family in Bensonhurst.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMen Behaving Badly
1992–1998ITV / BBC OneComedy
Two flatmates and the phrase the British press attached to a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBig Train
1998–2002BBC TwoComedy
Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews' sketch show, which opens on nothing explaining itself and never does.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSooty & Co
1993–1998ITVComedy
The Sooty puppets moved to a shop, in the ITV series Matthew Corbett handed over at the end of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoyal Canadian Air Farce
1993–2008CBCComedy
A radio sketch troupe of twenty years' standing moved to television, and kept there for fifteen more.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBananas in Pyjamas
1992–2001ABC (Australia)Comedy
Two bananas, three teddy bears and a rat, made by the ABC and sold to eighty countries.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBear in the Big Blue House
1997–2006Playhouse DisneyComedy
A seven-foot bear who greets the camera by smelling it, and a moon in the window who sings the goodbye song.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBecker
1998–2004CBSComedy
A Bronx doctor with no patience for his patients, and a diner where nobody is much happier.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBlossom
1990–1995NBCComedy
A teenager narrating her own life to camera in a house otherwise entirely male, opening on a dance she performs herself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBoston Common
1996–1997NBCComedy
A Virginian who follows a woman to Boston and takes a job at the university she attends.
- Season 1
2 sequencesCalifornia Dreams
1992–1996NBCComedy
A Californian high school band, made by the Saved by the Bell producers for the same Saturday morning block.
- Season 1
- Seasons 3–5
2 sequencesCaroline in the City
1995–1999NBCComedy
A Manhattan cartoonist drawing a strip about her own life, and the colourist who is in love with her.
- Season 1
- Season 3
2 sequencesClueless
1996–1999ABC / UPNComedy
The film continued at Bronson Alcott High, with most of the cast replaced and Dionne kept.
- Season 1
- Season 3
1 sequenceCousin Skeeter
1998–2002NickelodeonComedy
A boy and the puppet cousin who moves in with him, which nobody in the series treats as unusual.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCybill
1995–1998CBSComedy
An actress whose career never quite happened, written closely around the one its star actually had.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Darling Buds of May
1991–1993ITVComedy
H. E. Bates's Kent farming family, and the series that made Catherine Zeta-Jones a household name inside a fortnight.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDave's World
1993–1997CBSComedy
Dave Barry's columns turned into a sitcom, with the household drawn rather than filmed in the titles.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDinosaurs
1991–1994ABCComedy
A Henson animatronic sitcom about a working family in the Mesozoic, which finished by freezing the world over.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Drew Carey Show
1995–2004ABCComedy
A Cleveland department-store personnel manager, opened for two seasons by a cartoon of his own face.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceEllen
1994–1998ABCComedy
A Los Angeles bookshop owner, in the sitcom whose fourth season changed what American television would say out loud.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Famous Jett Jackson
1998–2001Disney ChannelComedy
A teenage action star who moves his own production to his grandmother's town in North Carolina.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFerris Bueller
1990–1991NBCComedy
The film adapted for television without its star, and remembered mostly for opening with a joke about that.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFired Up
1997–1998NBCComedy
Two women sacked from a public relations firm who start their own out of a spare room.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrontline
1994–1997ABC (Australia)Comedy
A current affairs programme satirised from inside its own newsroom, and the model most workplace mockumentaries since have followed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGame On
1995–1998BBC TwoComedy
Three flatmates and an agoraphobic landlord, recast in the middle and carried on regardless.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGet a Life
1990–1992FoxComedy
A thirty-year-old paperboy still living at home, in a sitcom that got stranger every week.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Golden Palace
1992–1993CBSComedy
The Golden Girls minus one, running a Miami hotel for a single season before CBS stopped.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGrace & Favour
1992–1993BBC OneComedy
The Are You Being Served? staff inheriting a country manor, with most of the original cast.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGrace Under Fire
1993–1998ABCComedy
Brett Butler as a single mother working at an oil refinery, in a sitcom built on her stand-up.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHang Time
1995–2000NBCComedy
A girl on a boys' high school basketball team, made for the Saturday morning block.
- Season 2
2 sequencesHangin' with Mr. Cooper
1992–1997ABCComedy
A retired basketball player teaching gym in Oakland and sharing a house with two women he went to school with.
- Season 1
- Seasons 4–5
1 sequenceHarry Enfield & Chums
1990–1992BBC TwoComedy
Enfield's characters given a series each week, and most of British catchphrase comedy for a decade after.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHerman's Head
1991–1994FoxComedy
A man's four personified impulses arguing inside his skull while the plot happens outside it.
- Season 1
2 sequencesHope & Gloria
1995–1996NBCComedy
A talk show producer and a hairdresser sharing a Pittsburgh apartment building.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceThe Hughleys
1998–2000ABCComedy
A family moving to a white suburb and the father who cannot stop noticing it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Jamie Foxx Show
1996–2001The WBComedy
A hotel in Los Angeles run by relatives, and the nephew who wants to act instead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJeeves and Wooster
1990–1993ITVComedy
Wodehouse played by Fry and Laurie, who had spent the previous decade writing sketches together.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJesse
1998–2000NBCComedy
A single mother working in her father's Buffalo bar while training as a nurse.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe John Larroquette Show
1993–1996NBCComedy
A recovering alcoholic managing a bus terminal at night, in a sitcom NBC steadily made lighter against its writers' wishes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLamb Chop's Play-Along
1992–1995PBSComedy
Shari Lewis and her puppets, and the song that does not end.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLate Night with Conan O'Brien
1993–2009NBCComedy
An unknown writer handed the 12.30 slot, and sixteen years to grow into it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLate Show with David Letterman
1993–2015CBSComedy
Letterman moved to CBS and to a theatre on Broadway, which the titles put on screen every night for twenty-two years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMalcolm & Eddie
1996–2000UPNComedy
Malcolm-Jamal Warner and Eddie Griffin sharing a Kansas City bar, four years after The Cosby Show ended.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMinor Adjustments
1995NBCComedy
A child psychologist who is markedly better with other people's children than with his own.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNever Mind the Buzzcocks
1996–2015BBC TwoComedy
A music panel game whose identity parade round outlasted most of the acts standing in it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe New Addams Family
1998–1999YTV / Fox FamilyComedy
The 1964 scripts remade almost line for line in Vancouver, thirty-four years afterwards.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNoel's House Party
1991–1999BBC OneComedy
Saturday night from a fictional house in Crinkley Bottom, and the programme that dropped celebrities into gunge on purpose.
- Season 2
1 sequenceThe Norm Show
1999–2001ABCComedy
Norm Macdonald as a hockey player struck off and sentenced to social work.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOh, Doctor Beeching!
1995–1997BBC OneComedy
A branch-line station waiting to be closed by the Beeching cuts, from the writers of Hi-de-Hi!
- Season 1
1 sequenceParker Lewis Can't Lose
1990–1993FoxComedy
Ferris Bueller as a weekly series, shot on wide lenses with a narrator who never once stops talking.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Queen's Nose
1995–2003BBC OneComedy
A fifty pence piece that grants wishes, from the Dick King-Smith book.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Red Green Show
1991–2006CHCH-TV / CBCComedy
A lodge of middle-aged Canadian men and the duct tape with which they solve everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoc
1991–1994FoxComedy
A Baltimore refuse collector and his family, and a season shot live to air on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Royal Family
1991–1992CBSComedy
Redd Foxx and Della Reese as a couple whose children move back in, and the series Foxx died making.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSaved by the Bell: The College Years
1993–1994NBCComedy
The Bayside cast moved to a university for one season, in prime time rather than Saturday morning.
- Season 1
2 sequencesSaved by the Bell: The New Class
1993–2000NBCComedy
Bayside kept and the pupils replaced, for seven seasons rather more than anyone had expected.
- Season 1
- Seasons 6–7
1 sequenceThe Single Guy
1995–1997NBCComedy
A novelist whose friends are all married, scheduled by NBC between Friends and Seinfeld and never forgiven for it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSister, Sister
1994–1999ABC / The WBComedy
Twins separated at birth and reunited in a shopping mall, played by twins.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSmart Guy
1997–1999The WBComedy
A ten-year-old skipped ahead to high school, and the two older siblings who have to sit next to him.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSomething So Right
1996–1997NBCComedy
A remarried couple with children from three previous marriages between them.
- Season 1
2 sequencesThe Steve Harvey Show
1996–2002The WBComedy
A funk musician turned high school teacher, in the sitcom that carried The WB's Monday nights for six years.
- Season 1
- Seasons 4–6
1 sequenceSuddenly Susan
1996–2000NBCComedy
A columnist who leaves her fiancé at the altar and then has to write about it every week.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTwo Guys and a Girl
1998–2001ABCComedy
A Boston pizza place the series was named after for two seasons and then quietly dropped from the title.
- Season 1
- Seasons 3–4
1 sequenceUnhappily Ever After
1995–1999The WBComedy
Married… with Children's writers doing it again, with a talking stuffed rabbit only the father can hear.
- Season 1
1 sequenceUnion Square
1997–1998NBCComedy
A New York diner and the people in it, taken off after fifteen episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Upper Hand
1990–1996ITVComedy
Who's the Boss? remade for ITV, and one of the few American formats that worked coming the other way.
- Season 1
2 sequencesVeronica's Closet
1997–2000NBCComedy
A lingerie magnate whose marriage collapses in public, in one of NBC's Thursday night bets after Seinfeld.
- Season 1
- Season 3
2 sequencesThe Wayans Bros.
1995–1999The WBComedy
Two brothers running a Harlem newsstand, made by the family whose name is over the door.
- Season 1
- Season 3
1 sequenceWeird Science
1994–1998USA NetworkComedy
The film turned into a series, with the computer-made woman staying on as a regular.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Wiggles
1998–ABC (Australia)Comedy
Four early-childhood teachers from Sydney who worked out that a children's band could tour like a rock one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWorking
1997–1999NBCComedy
A graduate's first office job, narrated by him straight to camera.
- Season 1
1 sequenceYo soy Betty, la fea
1999–2001RCN (Colombia)Comedy
The most adapted television format in history — remade in more than twenty countries, including as Ugly Betty, which this catalogue also holds.
- Season 1