Drama · 2000s
The 2000s account for 79 of the 575 drama shows here, and 83 opening sequences.
BBC One and HBO carry eleven each.
Four of them rebuilt their titles mid-run.
79 shows83 sequences
1 sequence
Breaking Bad
Twenty seconds of chemistry-set smoke and floating element symbols. Almost aggressively short, which leaves the cold open to do the work.
- Seasons 1–5
1 sequence
Grey's Anatomy
Twenty-six seconds of surgical instruments and a guitar figure, from a series that has now outlived most of the shows that copied it.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Mad Men
A silhouetted adman falls past skyscrapers built out of his own advertising — smiling wives, stockinged legs, a hand holding a drink — and then, at the bottom, is sitting comfortably with a cigarette. Nobody lands. That is the joke and the thesis.
- Seasons 1–7
1 sequence
Gilmore Girls
Carole King's 'Where You Lead' rewritten as a mother-and-daughter duet, over a small Connecticut town in every season at once.
- Season 1
2 sequences
House
Anatomical illustration and MRI imagery over Massive Attack's 'Teardrop' — a diagnostic show that opens by looking inside a body rather than at one.
- Season 8
- Season 1
1 sequence
Desperate Housewives
Art history restaged as domestic comedy — Cranach's Eve, Egyptian tomb painting, American Gothic — each one collapsing under a woman's exasperation.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Lost
One word, drifting slowly out of the dark towards the camera, over a low tone that is barely a piece of music. Fifteen seconds, no cast, no footage — the cheapest main title of any network drama of its size, and the most imitated.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequence
One Tree Hill
Gavin DeGraw's 'I Don't Want to Be' over a small North Carolina town, re-cut every season until the show dropped the sequence entirely.
- Seasons 1–4
1 sequence
Prison Break
Blueprints and tattoo ink treated as the same document — which, for this show's premise, they are.
- Season 1
1 sequenceEverwood
A New York surgeon moving his family to a Colorado mountain town after his wife's death.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSix Feet Under
Digital Kitchen's procession of small deaths: hands letting go, a crow on a wire, a hearse, feet on a mortuary table. It won the Emmy and set the template most prestige-drama openings still follow.
- Seasons 1–5
1 sequence24
A ticking clock and a card, and nothing else. For a series whose entire conceit is that time is passing, spending a minute on titles would have been the one unforgivable thing.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe O.C.
Phantom Planet's 'California' over Newport Beach, in thirty-two seconds that sold an entire idea of southern California to a generation.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDeadwood
A horse, mud, and a camp being built out of both. The sequence is almost entirely animals and construction — the town assembling itself while nobody is watching.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceSkins
A new cast every two series, and a new title sequence with them — the show rebuilt itself from scratch twice and the openings track it.
- Seasons 1–4
1 sequenceFriday Night Lights
Explosions in the Sky over Texas fields and floodlights — a football show whose titles are almost entirely landscape and weather.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tudors
Henry VIII played young and handsome for four seasons, opened by a montage of everything the reign would cost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRome
Graffiti coming alive on Roman walls — painted figures fighting, coupling and marching across plaster while the camera tracks past. The city's own scrawl doing the work a montage usually does.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceHeartland
A family ranch in Alberta, and the longest-running one-hour drama in Canadian television.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceBig Love
A family skating on ice that ends, over 'God Only Knows' — a marriage held up by something visibly about to give way.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceDegrassi: The Next Generation
A cast montage rebuilt every season across fourteen years, tracking a school through several complete changes of pupil.
- Season 14
1 sequenceMerlin
Camelot rendered in gold and firelight, with a narration establishing a prophecy in about the time it takes to say one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlias
Rapid-cut disguises and wigs, rebuilt every season as the show's premise was torn up and restarted — which happened more often than most series manage in a decade.
- Seasons 1–5
1 sequenceNip/Tuck
A mannequin being marked up for surgery, over a pop song — cosmetic work presented as retail, which is the show's position on it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBrothers & Sisters
The Walker family and the business they inherit, with Sally Field and Rachel Griffiths.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSpooks
Fast-cut surveillance imagery and a clock, from a series that made a habit of killing its leads without warning.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRescue Me
New York firefighters after 2001, introduced without a single heroic frame in it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe L Word
A circle of women in West Hollywood, and a theme song that lists what the show is about out loud.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJohn Adams
The thirteen colonies' flags and founding documents animated into a single banner, over a fife-and-drum theme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAngels in America
Kushner's play filmed by Mike Nichols, opened by a flight across America into a Manhattan fountain.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJericho
Thirteen seconds and a mushroom cloud on the horizon, seen from a Kansas town that has no idea what happened.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCranford
Elizabeth Gaskell's Cheshire town, with Judi Dench and most of the British stage.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLegend of the Seeker
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels, from the Hercules and Xena producers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDoctors
A Midlands surgery, twenty-four years of daytime, and one self-contained story an episode.
- Season 7
1 sequenceAmerican Dreams
A Philadelphia family in the mid-1960s, built around American Bandstand.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Corner
David Simon and David Mills's West Baltimore miniseries, made three years before The Wire took the same corner.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBoston Public
David E. Kelley's high school, running alongside his legal series on the same network.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSecret Diary of a Call Girl
Billie Piper addressing the camera between clients, adapted from the Belle de Jour blog.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJoan of Arcadia
A teenager who talks to God, introduced by a Joan Osborne song that asks what if God were one of us — the rare case of a theme predating and defining the premise.
- Season 1
1 sequenceArmy Wives
Four wives and one husband on a South Carolina army post, and the series that made Lifetime a scripted network.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Dorrit
Dickens serialised across fourteen parts, opened by ink and engraving that assemble the Marshalsea.
- Season 1
1 sequenceQueer as Folk (US)
The Russell T Davies series remade in Pittsburgh and run for five seasons — four more than the original managed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBeing Erica
A therapist sending his patient back to her own regrets, one per session.
- Season 1
1 sequencePasión de Gavilanes
Three brothers avenging their sister, and one of the most exported Colombian telenovelas.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMen of a Certain Age
Three friends at the wrong end of their forties, written by Ray Romano and Mike Royce.
- Season 1
1 sequenceEmpire Falls
Richard Russo adapting his own novel about a Maine mill town that has already lost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDirt
Courteney Cox as the editor of a celebrity tabloid, cancelled during the writers' strike.
- Season 2
1 sequenceJohn from Cincinnati
David Milch's surfing series, cancelled after one season and still argued about.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBlue Water High
A surf academy on the northern beaches, with the cast chosen partly for whether they could actually surf.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHuff
A psychiatrist whose own life comes apart after a patient's suicide.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSleeper Cell
An FBI agent undercover in a Los Angeles terrorist cell, two seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCasi Ángeles
Cris Morena's Buenos Aires teen musical, which exported across Latin America and Israel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCidade dos Homens
Two boys growing up in a Rio favela, made by the City of God team either side of the film.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOccupation
Three soldiers from one Manchester regiment and the years after Basra.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Good Wife
Chicago legal iconography in thirty-nine seconds, from the network drama most often argued to be the best of its era.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceIn Treatment
Nineteen seconds and a chair. For a show that is entirely two people talking in one room, the titles decline to leave it.
- Season 1
1 sequence90210
Beverly Hills, 90210 restarted for a new decade, keeping the postcode and the zip-code typography.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAutumn in My Heart
The melodrama credited with starting the Korean wave, about two children swapped at the hospital.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Band of Brothers
Michael Kamen's theme over pencil sketches of soldiers dissolving into photographs — two and a half minutes, and among the most imitated title sequences ever made for television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBleak House
Dickens serialised the way he was published — half-hour instalments, twice a week — with a title sequence cut to match.
- Season 1
2 sequences
The Guardian
A corporate lawyer sentenced to community service in child advocacy, which turns out to be the real job.
- Season 1
- Seasons 2–3
1 sequenceH2O: Just Add Water
Three Gold Coast girls who become mermaids on contact with water, and an Australian export that reached a hundred and twenty countries.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHana Yori Dango
The manga that became Boys Over Flowers in Korea and Meteor Garden in Taiwan, in its Japanese live-action form.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHigher Ground
A wilderness school for troubled teenagers, cancelled after one season and remembered for its cast list.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIris
A secret agent thriller shot across five countries, and the most expensive Korean drama made to that point.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJewel in the Palace
A kitchen servant who rises to be the king's physician, and the drama that carried Korean television across Asia.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJumong
The founding of Goguryeo across eighty-one episodes, and one of the largest audiences Korean television has held.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLark Rise to Candleford
Flora Thompson's hamlet and its market town, adapted into four years of BBC Sunday evenings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLas Vegas
Casino surveillance as an ensemble drama, opening on the Strip at the hour it looks best.
- Season 1
2 sequences
McLeod's Daughters
Two half-sisters who inherit a South Australian cattle station and run it with an all-female crew.
- Season 1
- Season 5
1 sequenceMeadowlands
A family in witness protection on an estate where everyone else is hiding something too.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMidnight Diner (2009)
The original MBS run of the Shinjuku diner open from midnight to seven, seven years before Netflix continued it as Tokyo Stories.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Secret Life of the American Teenager
A teen pregnancy drama that ran five seasons on the channel that had spent the decade before avoiding the subject.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSense and Sensibility
Andrew Davies adapting Austen across three parts, a decade after he did Pride and Prejudice.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSmall Island
Andrea Levy's Windrush novel in two parts, moving between Jamaica and a Earls Court boarding house.
- Season 1
1 sequenceStrong Medicine
Two doctors from opposite ends of the system sharing a women's clinic in Philadelphia.
- Season 1
1 sequenceStudio 60 on the Sunset Strip
Sorkin backstage at a sketch show, cancelled after one season while another series took the same premise and survived.
- Season 1
2 sequences
The Unit
Delta Force at work and their wives at home on the base, developed for television by David Mamet.
- Season 1
- Season 3
1 sequenceWaterloo Road
A failing comprehensive in Rochdale, and the successor to Grange Hill as British television's school of record.
- Season 1