Drama · 1990s

58 shows63 sequences

The Sopranos

1999–2007HBODrama

Ninety seconds of a man driving home from the Lincoln Tunnel to North Caldwell. No cast montage, no highlights — just the commute, which turns out to be the whole show.

Seasons 1–6

Twin Peaks

1990–1991, 2017ABC / ShowtimeDrama

A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.

Seasons 1–2
Season 3

ER

1994–2009NBCDrama

James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.

Season 1
Season 10

Dawson's Creek

1998–2003The WBDrama

Paula Cole over a Massachusetts creek — a theme so tied to the show that its absence from the streaming release became a story in itself.

Season 1

The West Wing

1999–2006NBCDrama

Oil portraits, flags and W.G. Snuffy Walden's brass — an opening that treats the executive branch as a cathedral, which is the show's entire register.

Season 1
Season 5

Beverly Hills, 90210

1990–2000FoxDrama

Freeze-frames of a cast grinning at the camera over a synth-brass hook — the template every teen drama of the decade copied.

Season 1

Xena: Warrior Princess

1995–2001SyndicationDrama

A narrated mythological premise and a war cry, from the spinoff that comprehensively outgrew Hercules.

Season 1

7th Heaven

1996–2007The WBDrama

A minister, his wife and seven children, in the longest-running family drama in American television.

Season 1

JAG

1995–2005NBC / CBSDrama

Navy lawyers across ten seasons, and the series NCIS was spun out of.

Season 9

Heartbreak High

1994–1999Ten / ABC (Australia)Drama

A Sydney comprehensive, revived by Netflix thirty years later.

Season 1

Felicity

1998–2002The WBDrama

J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves's college drama, opened by a montage that changed as often as its lead's haircut did.

Season 1

Heartbeat

1992–2010ITVDrama

A Yorkshire village policeman in the 1960s, opened by the Buddy Holly song the series is named for.

Season 1

My So-Called Life

1994–1995ABCDrama

Snapshots and handwriting, in the register of a teenager's own notebook rather than a network's idea of one.

Season 1

Hollyoaks

1995–Channel 4Drama

A Chester soap aimed at an audience twenty years younger than any other British serial's.

Season 14

Touched by an Angel

1994–2003CBSDrama

Angels sent to intervene in ordinary American lives, nine seasons long.

Season 1

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

1993–1998CBSDrama

A Boston doctor practising in 1860s Colorado Springs.

Seasons 2–3

Hercules: The Legendary Journeys

1995–1999SyndicationDrama

A narrated mythological premise delivered with total conviction over New Zealand hillsides.

Season 1

Wishbone

1995–1998PBSDrama

A Jack Russell terrier imagining himself into classic literature, one novel per episode.

Season 1

Queer as Folk (UK)

1999–2000Channel 4Drama

Russell T Davies on Manchester's Canal Street, remade later in America and never bettered.

Season 1

Third Watch

1999–2005NBCDrama

Police, paramedics and firefighters on the same New York shift, from the ER producers.

Season 5

Picket Fences

1992–1996CBSDrama

Small-town Wisconsin filmed as pastoral before every episode demonstrates it is anything but.

Season 2

Judging Amy

1999–2005CBSDrama

A family court judge and her social worker mother, built from the creator's own mother's career.

Season 1

Chicago Hope

1994–2000CBSDrama

The medical drama that premiered the same week as ER and spent six years being the other one.

Season 5

La Femme Nikita

1997–2001USA NetworkDrama

Cold blue corridors and electronic music, for a series that treated its agency as an antagonist from the first frame.

Season 1

Holby City

1999–2022BBC OneDrama

The Casualty spin-off that moved upstairs to the surgical wards and outlasted most of what was around it.

Season 12

Shortland Street

1992–TVNZ 2Drama

New Zealand's nightly hospital serial, running since 1992 and re-cut its titles roughly once a decade.

Seasons 10–13

Early Edition

1996–2000CBSDrama

A man who receives tomorrow's newspaper today, delivered by a cat.

Season 1

Ghostwriter

1992–1995PBSDrama

A ghost that communicates only in written words, and a group of Brooklyn children who solve cases with it.

Season 1

Relic Hunter

1999–2002SyndicationDrama

Tia Carrere as a professor recovering antiquities, in the syndication boom that followed Xena.

Season 1

Providence

1999–2002NBCDrama

A plastic surgeon returning to Rhode Island, advised by her dead mother.

Season 1

Port Charles

1997–2003ABCDrama

The General Hospital spin-off that later restructured itself into thirteen-week arcs with an ending each — the closest American daytime came to a limited series.

Season 1

BeastMaster

1999–2002SyndicationDrama

The 1982 film continued as a series, made in Australia.

Season 1

Party of Five

1994–2000FoxDrama

Five siblings and a house, over BoDeans — an opening that establishes an absence rather than a cast.

Season 1

Passions

1999–2008NBCDrama

A daytime serial that ran witchcraft, a living doll and an orangutan nurse alongside the usual, and was the last new one American network daytime commissioned.

Season 1

Alex Haley's Queen

1993CBSDrama

Haley's last book filmed as three nights on CBS, following his own paternal grandmother.

Season 1

All Saints

1998–2009Seven NetworkDrama

An emergency ward in Sydney, running twelve years and outlasting most of its cast.

Season 1

Any Day Now

1998–2002LifetimeDrama

Two friends in Birmingham, told in the present and in 1963 at once.

Season 1

Bad Girls

1999–2006ITVDrama

A women's prison wing written by two of Prisoner Cell Block H's admirers, and ITV's answer to it.

Season 1

Ballykissangel

1996–2001BBC OneDrama

An English priest posted to a village in Wicklow, and the BBC's most watched Sunday drama of the late nineties.

Season 1
Season 6

The Bradys

1990CBSDrama

The Brady children as adults, played as an hour-long drama, which lasted six weeks.

Season 1

Family Affairs

1997–2005Channel 5Drama

The soap Channel 5 launched with, and the one that had to build an audience from nothing five nights a week.

Season 3

From the Earth to the Moon

1998HBODrama

Tom Hanks's twelve-part Apollo history, opened by archive footage cut to Michael Kamen's march.

Season 1

Hornblower

1998–2003ITVDrama

Forester's naval officer, made not as a series but as eight television films spread over five years.

Season 1

Melrose Place

1992–1999FoxDrama

The same freeze-frame grammar as its parent show, moved to an apartment complex and given a considerably nastier theme.

Season 1

Popular

1999–2001The WBDrama

A high school seen from both sides of its social order, from the man who later made Glee.

Season 1

The Practice

1997–2004ABCDrama

Boston law offices in grey and brown, from the producer who would spin this off into Boston Legal and lighten it considerably.

Season 1

The Pretender

1996–2000NBCDrama

A man raised in a laboratory who can become any professional he reads about, running from the people who made him.

Season 1

Pride and Prejudice

1995BBC OneDrama

Carl Davis's theme over needlework and a country lane — the adaptation against which every subsequent Austen has been measured.

Season 1

Road to Avonlea

1990–1996CBCDrama

Montgomery's Prince Edward Island stories, made by the CBC with Disney paying half the bill.

Season 1
Season 5

Sharpe

1993–2008ITVDrama

A rifleman commissioned out of the ranks in the Peninsular War, filmed for its first runs in Crimea.

Season 1

Sisters

1991–1996NBCDrama

Four sisters in Illinois, in a network drama that let all four of them be difficult.

Season 1

Soldier Soldier

1991–1997ITVDrama

A fictional infantry regiment and the families attached to it, which made two of its cast into pop stars.

Season 1

Sunset Beach

1997–1999NBCDrama

Aaron Spelling's daytime serial, which NBC ran for three years and then replaced with Passions.

Season 1

Sweet Valley High

1994–1997Syndication / UPNDrama

The paperback series about twin sisters, adapted for television with real twins.

Season 1

This Life

1996–2007BBC TwoDrama

Five law graduates sharing a house in Southwark, shot handheld and stopped after two series while it was still growing.

Season 1

The Tribe

1999–2003Channel 5Drama

A virus kills every adult and the children left over form tribes, made in New Zealand for a British channel.

Season 1

Where the Heart Is

1997–2006ITVDrama

District nurses in a Yorkshire town, which ran nine years on almost no incident.

Season 1

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

1992–1996ABCDrama

Indiana Jones tutored by the twentieth century itself, each episode setting him down beside somebody who was really there.

Season 1