Drama · 1970s
The 1970s account for 27 of the 575 drama shows here, and 31 opening sequences.
CBS carries the most, with seven.
Four of them rebuilt their titles mid-run.
27 shows31 sequences
1 sequence
The Waltons
A Virginia mountain homestead in the Depression, introduced with a warmth the decade's other dramas had no interest in.
- Season 1
2 sequences
The Young and the Restless
Genoa City, and the daytime ratings leader in America for more than thirty-five consecutive years.
- Season 16
- Season 45
1 sequenceDallas
A three-panel split screen over the Dallas skyline, and the theme that defined what a primetime soap was allowed to sound like.
- Season 10
2 sequences
Emmerdale
A Yorkshire Dales farming serial that dropped Farm from its name in 1989 and kept the landscape.
- Season 27
- Season 49
1 sequenceEmergency!
Los Angeles County paramedics, made with the fire department's cooperation and credited with popularising the profession.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoots
The miniseries that changed what American television believed it was allowed to broadcast, opened with Quincy Jones and a slave ship.
- Season 1
2 sequences
All My Children
Pine Valley, Agnes Nixon's serial, and the first American soap to put issue storylines in daytime.
- Season 23
- Season 41
1 sequenceEight Is Enough
A newspaper columnist with eight children, and a theme song that counts them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceUpstairs, Downstairs
The Edwardian household drama that Downton Abbey is, by its own creator's admission, a direct descendant of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceKnots Landing
A cul-de-sac shot from above, with the neighbours' houses laid out like a diagram of everyone's business.
- Season 1
1 sequenceI, Claudius
A snake crossing a Roman mosaic — one image, held for forty-five seconds, and among the most efficient title sequences ever made.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTinker Tailor Soldier Spy
A Russian nesting doll opening onto a blank face, over Geoffrey Burgon's setting of the Nunc Dimittis — the most quietly devastating title sequence the BBC has made.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrapper John, M.D.
The MASH surgeon twenty-eight years later, running a San Francisco hospital.
- Season 6
2 sequences
Grange Hill
A London comprehensive school taken seriously, opening on a comic strip and a sausage on a fork.
- Season 1
- Seasons 13–16
1 sequenceThe Persuaders!
Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as bickering millionaires, opened by John Barry's most-covered television theme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLou Grant
The Mary Tyler Moore Show character moved into an hour-long newspaper drama — the only American series to make that jump.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlias Smith and Jones
Two outlaws promised an amnesty they have to stay out of trouble for twenty months to collect.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFantasy Island
"De plane! De plane!" — an island where wishes are granted and then examined.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRyan's Hope
An Irish-American family running a bar near a Manhattan hospital, in a serial set in a real neighbourhood rather than an invented town.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Beachcombers
Log salvage on the British Columbia coast, and the longest-running dramatic series Canadian television has made.
- Season 14
1 sequenceHolocaust
The miniseries that put the word into everyday use in Germany, where half the country watched it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJesus of Nazareth
Zeffirelli's six-hour life of Christ, cast so deeply that the titles are mostly name cards.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
A man wrongly accused who goes to live in the mountains with a bear, and NBC's biggest surprise of 1977.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle House on the Prairie
Three girls running down a hill, one of whom falls — a shot kept in for nine years because it was better than the take where nobody did.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Sandbaggers
British intelligence run as an office job, with the operations mostly discussed rather than shown.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSecret Army
An escape line moving Allied airmen out of occupied Belgium, played without any of the adventure the premise invites.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe White Shadow
A white ex-professional coaching basketball at a mostly black Los Angeles high school.
- Season 1