Crime
Cities at night, shot as though the crime already happened.
Crime accounts for 337 of the 2,618 shows here, with 355 opening title sequences from 1951 to the present.
More of them began in the 2010s than in any other decade — 128, against 81 in the 2020s.
Twelve rebuilt their titles mid-run, The Wire most of all with five sequences.
CBS carries more of them than anyone else, with 50.
337 shows · 355 sequences
The ones that kept changing
All 12 in Crime · every genre →
5 sequences
The Wire
The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 2 more
4 sequences
True Detective
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
3 sequences
The Bill
A London police station shot at ground level, under a rule the programme kept for twenty-seven years: no scene an officer is not present for.
- Season 1
- Season 4
- Season 5
2 sequences
Batman
Cartoon versions of the cast run at the camera and fight their way through the rogues' gallery, because the budget for that in live action did not exist and the animation is funnier anyway. Neal Hefti's twelve-bar riff has an eight-voice chorus whose entire lyric is the word Batman.
- Seasons 1–2
- Season 3
2 sequences
Law & Order
The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.
- Season 1
- Season 20
2 sequences
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.
- Season 1
- Season 15
Most looked up in crime
Pick a decade above for all 337
1 sequence
Peaky Blinders
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
Dexter: Resurrection
The continuation that throws away the two-minute breakfast ritual the original was famous for and replaces it with a six-second card.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Dexter
Breakfast filmed as though it were a murder. A mosquito swatted, a blood orange crushed, a shaving nick, a steak sliced, floss drawn tight — every shot of an ordinary morning framed exactly as the violence the show never puts on screen this early.
- Seasons 1–8
1 sequence
Daredevil: Born Again
The revival, which rebuilds the Netflix series' red-liquid city rather than replacing it.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Rookie
A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Better Call Saul
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
1 sequence
Fargo
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 sequencesLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit
The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.
- Season 1
- Season 15
1 sequence
Dark Winds
Tony Hillerman's Navajo Tribal Police novels, opened across the same high desert the cases cross.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Dept. Q
Edinburgh stone and basement strip-lighting — a cold-case unit introduced by the room it was exiled to.
- Season 1
5 sequencesThe Wire
The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 2 more
2 sequences
NCIS
Naval insignia, photographs and a snare roll, refreshed periodically as a cast that has now turned over almost completely came and went.
- Season 10
- Season 1
4 sequencesTrue Detective
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
Reacher
Lee Child's drifter, adapted at the scale the books describe rather than the one previous adaptations settled for.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Blacklist
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
The Australian film remade in Southern California, following the same criminal family.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Ozark
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
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
2 sequencesLaw & Order
The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.
- Season 1
- Season 20
1 sequence
The Mentalist
A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMr Inbetween
An Australian hitman's domestic life, opened in twelve seconds because the series has no interest in ceremony.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Sons of Anarchy
Leather, chrome and a reaper patch, over a theme re-recorded by a different artist as the club's situation deteriorates.
- Season 1
- Season 7
1 sequence
Death in Paradise
Caribbean colour and a calypso theme, for a murder series that has never once let its setting look threatening.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Bones
Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.
- Season 2