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Crime · 1990s

The 1990s account for 29 of the 337 crime shows here, and 32 opening sequences.

CBS carries the most, with six.

Three of them rebuilt their titles mid-run.

29 shows32 sequences

Still from the opening titles of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit2 sequences

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

1999–NBCCrime

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
Still from the opening titles of Law & Order2 sequences

Law & Order

1990–NBCCrime

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 20
Still from the opening titles of Midsomer Murders1 sequence

Midsomer Murders

1997–ITVCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Oz2 sequences

Oz

1997–2003HBOCrime

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Silent Witness1 sequence

Silent Witness

1996–BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 21
Still from the opening titles of Walker, Texas Ranger1 sequence

Walker, Texas Ranger

1993–2001CBSCrime

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

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of NYPD Blue1 sequence

NYPD Blue

1993–2005ABCCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Diagnosis: Murder1 sequence

Diagnosis: Murder

1993–2001CBSCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Nash Bridges1 sequence

Nash Bridges

1996–2001CBSCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Touch of Frost1 sequence

A Touch of Frost

1992–2010ITVCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Beck1 sequence

Beck

1997–TV4 (Sweden)Crime

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

  • Season 27
Still from the opening titles of Blue Heelers1 sequence

Blue Heelers

1994–2006Seven NetworkCrime

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

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Cracker1 sequence

Cracker

1993–2006ITVCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Silk Stalkings1 sequence

Silk Stalkings

1991–1999CBS / USA NetworkCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Profiler1 sequence

Profiler

1996–2000NBCCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pacific Blue1 sequence

Pacific Blue

1996–2000USA NetworkCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Murder One1 sequence

Murder One

1995–1997ABCCrime

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Da Vinci's Inquest1 sequence

Da Vinci's Inquest

1998–2005CBCCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of EZ Streets1 sequence

EZ Streets

1996–1997CBSCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Commish1 sequence

The Commish

1991–1996ABCCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Due South1 sequence

Due South

1994–1999CTVCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates1 sequence

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

1996–1998BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Martial Law1 sequence

Martial Law

1998–2000CBSCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pie in the Sky1 sequence

Pie in the Sky

1994–1997BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Prime Suspect1 sequence

Prime Suspect

1991–2006ITVCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Renegade1 sequence

Renegade

1992–1997Syndication / USA NetworkCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of V.I.P.1 sequence

V.I.P.

1998–2002SyndicationCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Viper1 sequence

Viper

1994–1999NBC / SyndicationCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Wycliffe1 sequence

Wycliffe

1993–1998ITVCrime

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

  • Season 1