Crime · 2000s

47 shows53 sequences

Dexter

2006–2013ShowtimeCrime

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

The Wire

2002–2008HBOCrime

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

NCIS

2003–CBSCrime

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

The Mentalist

2008–2015CBSCrime

A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.

Season 1

Sons of Anarchy

2008–2014FXCrime

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

Bones

2005–2017FoxCrime

Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.

Season 2

Veronica Mars

2004–2019UPN / The CW / HuluCrime

The Dandy Warhols over surveillance photographs and a Californian beach town that is much worse than it looks.

Season 1

Castle

2009–2016ABCCrime

Typewriter keys and New York, for a series about a novelist who follows a detective around.

Season 2

Southland

2009–2013NBC / TNTCrime

Los Angeles patrol work shot like documentary, dropped by NBC and picked up by TNT.

Season 1

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

2000–2015CBSCrime

The Who over forensic macro photography, and the sequence that turned laboratory work into prime-time spectacle for a decade.

Season 1

Murdoch Mysteries

2008–Citytv / CBCCrime

A Toronto detective in the 1890s using methods the era has not invented yet, past twenty seasons.

Season 1

The Closer

2005–2012TNTCrime

Kyra Sedgwick's LAPD deputy chief, and the most-watched drama basic cable had at the time.

Season 1

White Collar

2009–2014USA NetworkCrime

Nine seconds. A fedora, a card, and straight into it.

Season 1

Psych

2006–2014USA NetworkCrime

'I Know, You Know' — a theme re-recorded in a different genre for special episodes, which makes it a rare case of a comedy varying its own titles.

Season 4

Monk

2002–2009USA NetworkCrime

Randy Newman singing about being obsessive over a detective straightening things — a theme that explains the character faster than the pilot does.

Season 1

NCIS: Los Angeles

2009–2023CBSCrime

The first NCIS spin-off, fourteen seasons of undercover work.

Season 5

The Killing

2007–2012DR1Crime

Copenhagen in the dark and the rain, over twenty-nine seconds that established the visual language of an entire decade of Nordic crime drama.

Season 1

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

2001–2011NBC / USA NetworkCrime

The franchise entry that follows the criminal rather than the case, and so has to break the format's own rule about not showing you the answer.

Season 1

Burn Notice

2007–2013USA NetworkCrime

A narrated premise about being blacklisted, delivered over Miami heat in thirty-one seconds.

Season 1

CSI: Miami

2002–2012CBSCrime

The first CSI spin-off, opened by The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Season 1

Cold Case

2003–2010CBSCrime

Evidence boxes and faded photographs, for a procedural whose whole method is that the past is filed somewhere.

Season 1

New Tricks

2003–2015BBC OneCrime

Retired detectives reopening cold cases, with a theme song sung by Dennis Waterman about the premise.

Season 1

Damages

2007–2012FX / DirecTVCrime

Legal documents, blood and Manhattan glass, cut in the same non-linear fashion the series tells its story.

Season 1

Leverage

2008–2012TNTCrime

Twenty seconds of heist iconography, in a show that opens each episode with a job already half underway.

Season 1

CSI: NY

2004–2013CBSCrime

The third CSI, opened by "Baba O'Riley".

Season 1

Without a Trace

2002–2009CBSCrime

Missing-person photographs and a clock, in thirty-two seconds that state the format precisely.

Season 1

Numb3rs

2005–2010CBSCrime

An FBI agent and his mathematician brother, with the equations drawn over the city in the titles.

Season 1

Crossing Jordan

2001–2007NBCCrime

A Boston medical examiner who investigates her own cases against instruction.

Season 1

Flashpoint

2008–2012CTV / CBSCrime

A Toronto tactical unit, and the first Canadian drama to air simultaneously on an American network.

Season 1

Medium

2005–2011NBC / CBSCrime

Patricia Arquette as a consultant to the district attorney who dreams the cases.

Season 1

Whitechapel

2009–2013ITVCrime

Modern police work in the streets the Ripper murders happened in, with each series restaging an old case.

Season 1

Hustle

2004–2012BBC OneCrime

Playing cards, sleight of hand and London — a con-artist series whose titles are themselves a piece of misdirection.

Season 1

Law & Order: UK

2009–2014ITVCrime

American scripts reshot in London with the two-part structure intact, and the chung-chung kept.

Season 6

Underbelly

2008–2013Nine NetworkCrime

Australian organised crime, a different true story each season.

Season 1

Law & Order: Trial by Jury

2005–2006NBCCrime

The shortest-lived Law & Order, cancelled after thirteen episodes, covering the half of the format the parent series skipped.

Season 1

Spiral

2005–2020Canal+Crime

Paris police, courts and lawyers in thirty-one seconds, with none of the city that appears on postcards.

Season 1

Boomtown

2002–2003NBCCrime

A Los Angeles crime series that told each case from five points of view, and opened with the device stated up front.

Season 1

Braquo

2009–2016Canal+Crime

Olivier Marchal's Paris police series, about four officers who stop pretending to follow the law.

Season 1

Wallander

2005–2016SVT / BBC OneCrime

Henning Mankell's Ystad detective, filmed twice — in Swedish with Krister Henriksson, and in English with Kenneth Branagh.

Season 1

Agatha Christie's Marple

2004–2013ITVCrime

The ITV Marple, which adapted novels Miss Marple was never in by writing her into them.

Season 1

Criminal Minds

2005–CBS / Paramount+Crime

Case files and profiler jargon in thirty-one seconds, from a procedural that has now run for two decades.

Season 1

The District

2000–2004CBSCrime

A police chief running Washington on statistics, loosely modelled on the man who did it in New York.

Season 1

In Plain Sight

2008–2012USA NetworkCrime

A US marshal running witness protection in Albuquerque.

Season 1

Inspector George Gently

2007–2017BBC OneCrime

A Northumberland detective in the 1960s, and a series that uses the decade for its politics rather than its clothes.

Season 2

Lie to Me

2009–2011FoxCrime

A deception expert reading faces frame by frame, built on the research of the psychologist who consulted on it.

Season 1

Life (2007)

2007–2009NBCCrime

A detective released after twelve years for a crime he did not commit, handed back his badge and a very large settlement.

Season 1

Rosemary & Thyme

2003–2007ITVCrime

Two gardeners who keep finding bodies in the borders they have been hired to replant.

Season 1