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ABC opening titles

ABC accounts for 203 shows here, running from 1949 to the present, and 215 opening title sequences between them.

Comedy leads with 80, then drama with 45.

Twelve of them rebuilt their titles at least once.

203 shows · 215 sequences · oldest first

32 of these moved between networks during their run and appear under each one.

Still from the opening titles of The Lone Ranger1 sequence

The Lone Ranger

1949–1957ABCDrama

Rossini's William Tell overture attached so firmly to a masked rider that the music has never fully got free of it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sky King1 sequence

Sky King

1951–1962NBC / ABCDrama

An Arizona rancher who catches criminals from a twin-engined aeroplane, out of the radio serial.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Lawrence Welk Show1 sequence

The Lawrence Welk Show

1951–1982ABC / SyndicationDocumentary

Champagne music, bubbles in the titles, and thirty-one years of the same band leader counting in.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet1 sequence

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

1952–1966ABCComedy

A real family playing themselves for fourteen years, which is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Danny Thomas Show1 sequence

The Danny Thomas Show

1953–1964ABC / CBSComedy

Eleven years of a nightclub comedian's home life, and the series The Andy Griffith Show was spun out of.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Wagon Train1 sequence

Wagon Train

1957–1965NBC / ABCDrama

A wagon company crossing to California, and the series Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek against.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Donna Reed Show1 sequence

The Donna Reed Show

1958–1966ABCComedy

A sitcom its star produced herself, which is why the mother in it has a job the plot takes seriously.

  • Season 8
Still from the opening titles of The Rifleman1 sequence

The Rifleman

1958–1963ABCDrama

A widowed rancher and his son, opened by twelve rounds fired down a street in under ten seconds.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of One Step Beyond1 sequence

One Step Beyond

1959–1961ABCHorror

An anthology that claimed every story was true, a year before The Twilight Zone said the opposite.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bullwinkle Show1 sequence

The Bullwinkle Show

1959–1964ABC / NBCAnimation

Jay Ward's squirrel and moose, which began as Rocky and His Friends and was renamed for the character who talked more.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Untouchables1 sequence

The Untouchables

1959–1963ABCCrime

Walter Winchell narrating over Prohibition Chicago at a clip that makes the whole thing sound like a news bulletin — which was the intention.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of My Three Sons1 sequence

My Three Sons

1960–1972ABC / CBSComedy

Fred MacMurray raising three boys, opening on animated feet in a row that everyone remembers before the theme.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bugs Bunny Show1 sequence

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000ABC / CBSAnimation

The prime-time repackaging of the Warner shorts, with an original curtain-raiser animated for television.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Flintstones1 sequence

The Flintstones

1960–1966ABCAnimation

The first animated series in American primetime, and the source of a theme that did not arrive until the third season — the first two opened on something else entirely.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of ABC's Wide World of Sports1 sequence

ABC's Wide World of Sports

1961–1998ABCDocumentary

"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" — a narration so well known that the ski-jumper who supplied the agony became famous for falling over.

  • Season 20
Still from the opening titles of Top Cat1 sequence

Top Cat

1961–1962ABCAnimation

Hanna-Barbera doing Sgt. Bilko with alley cats, in the primetime slot the studio kept trying to hold.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of McHale's Navy1 sequence

McHale's Navy

1962–1966ABCComedy

A PT boat crew running a black market in the South Pacific.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Jetsons1 sequence

The Jetsons

1962–1963ABCAnimation

The same studio's future to answer its own past, with a theme that names the whole family in about fifteen seconds.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of General Hospital2 sequences

General Hospital

1963–ABCDrama

American daytime's longest-running scripted programme still in production.

  • Season 16
  • Season 43
Still from the opening titles of The Outer Limits1 sequence

The Outer Limits

1963–1965ABCSci-Fi

The control-voice narration that takes over your television set — a premise so effective that the sequence is better remembered than most of the episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Bewitched1 sequence

Bewitched

1964–1972ABCComedy

Animated witches and a swing arrangement — a live-action sitcom that opens as a cartoon, which was the only way to show the magic on a 1964 budget.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Peyton Place1 sequence

Peyton Place

1964–1969ABCDrama

The primetime serial that proved American networks could run a soap after dark, twice a week.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Addams Family1 sequence

The Addams Family

1964–1966ABCComedy

Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.

  • Seasons 1–2
Still from the opening titles of F Troop1 sequence

F Troop

1965–1967ABCComedy

A frontier cavalry post run badly, opened by a sung account of how badly.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Big Valley1 sequence

The Big Valley

1965–1969ABCDrama

Barbara Stanwyck running a Stockton ranch, in the western that gave a woman the top billing.

  • Seasons 1–4
Still from the opening titles of The F.B.I.1 sequence

The F.B.I.

1965–1974ABCCrime

Nine seasons made with the Bureau's cooperation and its approval of every script, from the Quinn Martin production line.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Batman2 sequences

Batman

1966–1968ABCCrime

Cartoon versions of the cast run at the camera and fight their way through the rogues' gallery, because the budget for that in live action did not exist and the animation is funnier anyway. Neal Hefti's twelve-bar riff has an eight-voice chorus whose entire lyric is the word Batman.

  • Seasons 1–2
  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Dark Shadows1 sequence

Dark Shadows

1966–1971ABCHorror

Waves against a cliff and a theremin-adjacent wail, broadcast live on weekday afternoons — a gothic soap that ran over twelve hundred episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Time Tunnel1 sequence

The Time Tunnel

1966–1967ABCSci-Fi

Two scientists thrown through history, opened by a spiral that became the show's whole identity.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of George of the Jungle1 sequence

George of the Jungle

1967ABCAnimation

Jay Ward's Tarzan parody, and a theme that warns you about the tree before he hits it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Invaders1 sequence

The Invaders

1967–1968ABCSci-Fi

A Quinn Martin series about one man who knows and cannot prove it, narrated in the second person.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Land of the Giants1 sequence

Land of the Giants

1968–1970ABCSci-Fi

Irwin Allen's last 1960s series, about a suborbital flight stranded on a world of giants.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of One Life to Live2 sequences

One Life to Live

1968–2012ABCDrama

Llanview, and the first American daytime serial written around class and ethnicity rather than around a hospital.

  • Season 21
  • Season 44
Still from the opening titles of Marcus Welby, M.D.1 sequence

Marcus Welby, M.D.

1969–1976ABCDrama

A family doctor in Santa Monica, and the first ABC series to finish a season as the most-watched programme in America.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Brady Bunch1 sequence

The Brady Bunch

1969–1974ABCComedy

A three-by-three grid of faces all looking at each other — a title sequence so structurally famous that the grid alone is the reference.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of All My Children2 sequences

All My Children

1970–2011ABCDrama

Pine Valley, Agnes Nixon's serial, and the first American soap to put issue storylines in daytime.

  • Season 23
  • Season 41
Still from the opening titles of Monday Night Football1 sequence

Monday Night Football

1970–ABCDocumentary

The programme that moved American football into primetime, and gave it a fanfare to arrive on.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Odd Couple1 sequence

The Odd Couple

1970–1975ABCComedy

A narrated premise about two divorced men sharing an apartment, delivered in the tone of a public information film.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Alias Smith and Jones1 sequence

Alias Smith and Jones

1971–1973ABCDrama

Two outlaws promised an amnesty they have to stay out of trouble for twenty months to collect.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Columbo1 sequence

Columbo

1971–2003NBC / ABCCrime

Twenty-four seconds, and for much of the run no sequence at all — a series confident enough to open on the murder and let the detective arrive late.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Streets of San Francisco1 sequence

The Streets of San Francisco

1972–1977ABCCrime

Karl Malden and a young Michael Douglas, shot on location throughout.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Schoolhouse Rock!1 sequence

Schoolhouse Rock!

1973–2009ABCAnimation

Three-minute songs about grammar and arithmetic dropped between Saturday morning cartoons, and remembered longer than the cartoons.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Six Million Dollar Man1 sequence

The Six Million Dollar Man

1973–1978ABCSci-Fi

A crash, a countdown and the promise that they can rebuild him — narration that entered the language more thoroughly than the show did.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Happy Days1 sequence

Happy Days

1974–1984ABCComedy

A fifties jukebox theme that started as a closing song and was promoted to the opening once it became a hit record.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hong Kong Phooey1 sequence

Hong Kong Phooey

1974ABCAnimation

A janitor dog who is a secret kung fu detective, with Scatman Crothers singing his own theme.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Kolchak: The Night Stalker1 sequence

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

1974–1975ABCHorror

A reporter whistling in a car park, and a premise established in twenty-six seconds — the direct ancestor of The X-Files, as Chris Carter has said repeatedly.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Baretta1 sequence

Baretta

1975–1978ABCCrime

An undercover detective and a cockatoo, with a Sammy Davis Jr. theme.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Barney Miller1 sequence

Barney Miller

1975–1982ABCComedy

A bass line so good it outlived the show entirely — a police-station sitcom remembered chiefly for forty seconds of funk.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Ryan's Hope1 sequence

Ryan's Hope

1975–1989ABCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of S.W.A.T.1 sequence

S.W.A.T.

1975–1976ABCCrime

The original, cancelled after two seasons over its violence, and remembered mostly for a theme that reached number one.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Starsky & Hutch1 sequence

Starsky & Hutch

1975–1979ABCCrime

Two Bay City detectives and a red Ford Torino with a white stripe.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Wonder Woman1 sequence

Wonder Woman

1975–1979ABC / CBSSci-Fi

An animated comic-book opening with a disco theme that names the character and tells her what to do, repeatedly.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Charlie's Angels1 sequence

Charlie's Angels

1976–1981ABCCrime

Three detectives working for a voice on a speakerphone, and a title sequence that explains the entire premise in narration before a scene is played.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Family Feud2 sequences

Family Feud

1976–ABC / SyndicationDocumentary

Survey says — two families, a buzzer, and a theme rearranged for every host since Richard Dawson.

  • Season 1
  • Season 35
Still from the opening titles of Jabberjaw1 sequence

Jabberjaw

1976–1978ABCAnimation

A drumming shark in an underwater band, which is Scooby-Doo restaged in 2076 with Curly Howard's voice.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Laverne & Shirley1 sequence

Laverne & Shirley

1976–1983ABCComedy

A skipping chant and two women walking through Milwaukee — the Happy Days spinoff that outrated its parent.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bionic Woman1 sequence

The Bionic Woman

1976–1978ABC / NBCSci-Fi

The Six Million Dollar Man's spinoff, with the same narrated-reconstruction structure and a better theme.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Three's Company1 sequence

Three's Company

1976–1984ABCComedy

A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Eight Is Enough1 sequence

Eight Is Enough

1977–1981ABCDrama

A newspaper columnist with eight children, and a theme song that counts them.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fantasy Island1 sequence

Fantasy Island

1977–1984ABCDrama

"De plane! De plane!" — an island where wishes are granted and then examined.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Roots1 sequence

Roots

1977ABCDrama

The miniseries that changed what American television believed it was allowed to broadcast, opened with Quincy Jones and a slave ship.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Soap1 sequence

Soap

1977–1981ABCComedy

A narrator recapping a plot that has already become unmanageable, ending every week on the same weary question about what will happen next.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Love Boat1 sequence

The Love Boat

1977–1987ABCComedy

A cruise ship with a new guest cast every week, introduced by name in the titles.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Battlestar Galactica (1978)1 sequence

Battlestar Galactica (1978)

1978–1979ABCSci-Fi

Stu Phillips's fanfare over Colonial Vipers and a narrated prologue about a lost tribe of humanity — the version the 2004 series would later strip of every ounce of that grandeur.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mork & Mindy1 sequence

Mork & Mindy

1978–1982ABCComedy

An egg-shaped spacecraft over Boulder, Colorado, and a theme that has to establish an alien, a roommate and a sitcom simultaneously.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Taxi1 sequence

Taxi

1978–1983ABC / NBCComedy

A single cab crossing the Queensboro Bridge to Bob James's electric piano — no cast, no jokes, and an unusually melancholy opening for a comedy.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Benson1 sequence

Benson

1979–1986ABCComedy

The Soap butler promoted into his own series and eventually into the lieutenant governorship.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Hart to Hart1 sequence

Hart to Hart

1979–1984ABCCrime

A wealthy married couple who solve murders, introduced by their own butler in voiceover.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Ropers1 sequence

The Ropers

1979–1980ABCComedy

Three's Company's landlords given their own series, from the British spin-off George and Mildred.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Bosom Buddies1 sequence

Bosom Buddies

1980–1982ABCComedy

Two admen who take rooms in a women-only building in drag, and the first thing Tom Hanks was known for.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fridays1 sequence

Fridays

1980–1982ABCComedy

ABC's answer to Saturday Night Live, best remembered for the night Andy Kaufman refused to say his lines.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Galactica 19801 sequence

Galactica 1980

1980ABCSci-Fi

The fleet reaching Earth at last, on a tenth of the original's budget and for ten episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of It's a Living2 sequences

It's a Living

1980–1989ABC / SyndicationComedy

Waitresses at a restaurant on the thirteenth floor, cancelled by ABC and revived in syndication.

  • Season 1
  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Nightline1 sequence

Nightline

1980–ABCDocumentary

A late bulletin that began as nightly updates on the Iran hostage crisis and outlived the crisis by forty-five years.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Thundarr the Barbarian1 sequence

Thundarr the Barbarian

1980–1982ABCAnimation

A post-apocalyptic Earth designed by Jack Kirby, with a narrated prologue doing all the world-building in twenty seconds.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Too Close for Comfort1 sequence

Too Close for Comfort

1980–1987ABC / SyndicationComedy

A cartoonist whose grown daughters move into the flat downstairs, which is the entire problem.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dynasty1 sequence

Dynasty

1981–1989ABCDrama

Gold lettering, oil money and an orchestral theme played with no irony whatsoever — the decade's idea of wealth, stated in ninety seconds.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Fall Guy1 sequence

The Fall Guy

1981–1986ABCDrama

A Hollywood stuntman working as a bounty hunter, with a theme song about being unknown.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Greatest American Hero1 sequence

The Greatest American Hero

1981–1983ABCSci-Fi

A schoolteacher handed a flying suit by aliens who lost the instruction manual in the first episode and never found it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Matt Houston1 sequence

Matt Houston

1982–1985ABCCrime

A Texas oil heir running a detective agency in Los Angeles because he is bored.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Police Squad!1 sequence

Police Squad!

1982ABCComedy

Six episodes of the Airplane! team's deadpan, cancelled on the grounds that watching it required looking at it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of T. J. Hooker1 sequence

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986ABC / CBSCrime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Automan1 sequence

Automan

1983–1984ABCSci-Fi

A hologram crime-fighter generated by a police clerk's own program, made the year after Tron and looking it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hardcastle and McCormick1 sequence

Hardcastle and McCormick

1983–1986ABCCrime

A retired judge and the ex-convict he paroles into being his driver, chasing the cases he could not convict.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Littles1 sequence

The Littles

1983–1985ABCAnimation

Six-inch people with tails living inside the walls, from the John Peterson books.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Thorn Birds1 sequence

The Thorn Birds

1983ABCDrama

The second most-watched miniseries in American television history, after Roots.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Winds of War1 sequence

The Winds of War

1983ABCDrama

Wouk's novel as eighteen hours across a single week, and the most expensive thing American television had made.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Webster1 sequence

Webster

1983–1989ABC / SyndicationComedy

A boy adopted by his late father's team-mate, in the sitcom ABC ran in Diff'rent Strokes' shadow.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Who's the Boss?1 sequence

Who's the Boss?

1984–1992ABCComedy

A theme called 'Brand New Life' over a move from Brooklyn to Connecticut, which is the entire premise sung aloud.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Growing Pains1 sequence

Growing Pains

1985–1992ABCComedy

A Long Island psychiatrist who moved his practice into the house so his wife could go back to reporting.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of MacGyver1 sequence

MacGyver

1985–1992ABCDrama

Improvised solutions cut fast enough that you never see how any of them work, which is also true of the episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Moonlighting1 sequence

Moonlighting

1985–1989ABCComedy

Al Jarreau singing a theme written for the show, over two people who spend four seasons refusing to admit anything.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mr. Belvedere1 sequence

Mr. Belvedere

1985–1990ABCComedy

An English butler working for a Pittsburgh family, out of a film series forty years older than the sitcom.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of North and South1 sequence

North and South

1985–1994ABCDrama

Two West Point friends on opposite sides of the Civil War, over a Bill Conti march.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Spenser: For Hire1 sequence

Spenser: For Hire

1985–1988ABCCrime

Robert B. Parker's Boston detective, with Avery Brooks as Hawk in the part that made him.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Star Wars: Droids1 sequence

Star Wars: Droids

1985–1986ABCAnimation

The two droids between the trilogies, in the first Star Wars television made for children.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Head of the Class1 sequence

Head of the Class

1986–1991ABCComedy

A history teacher handed the gifted programme at a Manhattan school, played by a stand-up who had never taught anyone.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life with Lucy1 sequence

Life with Lucy

1986ABCComedy

Lucille Ball's last series, pulled after eight episodes of a thirteen-episode order.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Matlock1 sequence

Matlock

1986–1995NBC / ABCCrime

Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Perfect Strangers1 sequence

Perfect Strangers

1986–1993ABCComedy

'Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now' over Chicago — one of the decade's most earnest sitcom themes attached to one of its silliest premises.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sledge Hammer!1 sequence

Sledge Hammer!

1986–1988ABCComedy

A detective who holds conversations with his revolver, in a parody ABC scheduled directly against the police shows it was mocking.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Care Bears Family1 sequence

The Care Bears Family

1986–1988ABCAnimation

The greetings-card bears given a series, with a stare that resolves every plot.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Real Ghostbusters1 sequence

The Real Ghostbusters

1986–1991ABCAnimation

The film continued as a cartoon, keeping the theme and adding Real to the title because another studio already had the name.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Full House1 sequence

Full House

1987–1995ABCComedy

A San Francisco picnic and a song about everywhere you look — the platonic form of the American family-sitcom opening.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Max Headroom1 sequence

Max Headroom

1987–1988ABCSci-Fi

A cyberpunk satire about television, broadcast on television, twenty minutes into the future.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of thirtysomething1 sequence

thirtysomething

1987–1991ABCDrama

The series that invented the domestic-anxiety drama, and gave a generation of television writers their register.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of China Beach1 sequence

China Beach

1988–1991ABCDrama

An evacuation hospital on the Vietnamese coast, told from the women posted to it rather than the men passing through.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Just the Ten of Us1 sequence

Just the Ten of Us

1988–1990ABCComedy

The Growing Pains teacher spun off with eight children of his own.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Roseanne2 sequences

Roseanne

1988–2018ABCComedy

A family at a kitchen table, laughing at something you cannot hear, rebuilt for every season across twenty years and a thirty-year gap.

  • Season 1
  • Season 10
Still from the opening titles of The Wonder Years1 sequence

The Wonder Years

1988–1993ABCComedy

Home-movie footage and Joe Cocker singing 'With a Little Help from My Friends' — an opening that establishes the entire retrospective frame before a word of narration.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of America's Funniest Home Videos1 sequence

America's Funniest Home Videos

1989–ABCDocumentary

A clip show assembled entirely from what the audience sent in, and the longest-running entertainment programme ABC has.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Beetlejuice1 sequence

Beetlejuice

1989–1991ABC / Fox KidsAnimation

The Burton film animated with Danny Elfman's theme intact, and Lydia and the ghost as friends rather than adversaries.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Coach1 sequence

Coach

1989–1997ABCComedy

A Minnesota football program run by three men who are markedly better at the game than at the rest of their lives.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doogie Howser, M.D.1 sequence

Doogie Howser, M.D.

1989–1993ABCComedy

A sixteen-year-old physician, and a synth theme that became shorthand for the entire decade.

  • Seasons 1–4
Still from the opening titles of Family Matters1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998ABC / CBSComedy

A Chicago family and a theme about the tiny things adding up, from a spinoff that was quietly taken over by a neighbour.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Father Dowling Mysteries1 sequence

Father Dowling Mysteries

1989–1991NBC / ABCCrime

A Chicago priest and a nun solving murders, cancelled by NBC and picked up by ABC.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life Goes On1 sequence

Life Goes On

1989–1993ABCDrama

The first American series built around a lead actor with Down syndrome, opening on the Beatles.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Round the Twist1 sequence

Round the Twist

1989–2001ABC / Seven NetworkComedy

An Australian children's series set in a lighthouse, with a theme song that asks whether strange things ever happen to you.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Young Riders1 sequence

The Young Riders

1989–1992ABCDrama

Pony Express riders in the years before the Civil War, with Billy the Kid among them.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of It (1990)1 sequence

It (1990)

1990ABCHorror

Two nights on ABC, and the reason a generation of viewers will not stand near a storm drain.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Twin Peaks2 sequences

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
Still from the opening titles of Dinosaurs1 sequence

Dinosaurs

1991–1994ABCComedy

A Henson animatronic sitcom about a working family in the Mesozoic, which finished by freezing the world over.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doug1 sequence

Doug

1991–1999Nickelodeon / ABCAnimation

A mouth-percussion theme over a boy walking to school — an opening performed almost entirely with a human voice.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Home Improvement1 sequence

Home Improvement

1991–1999ABCComedy

Power tools and a grunting brass riff, in the register of the fictional DIY programme the show is about.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Step by Step1 sequence

Step by Step

1991–1998ABC / CBSComedy

Two single parents merging their families, in the middle of the TGIF block.

  • 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 Hangin' with Mr. Cooper2 sequences

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

1992–1997ABCComedy

A retired basketball player teaching gym in Oakland and sharing a house with two women he went to school with.

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 4–5
Still from the opening titles of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles1 sequence

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
Still from the opening titles of Boy Meets World1 sequence

Boy Meets World

1993–2000ABCComedy

A cast montage rebuilt every season as its lead grew from eleven to eighteen, which few sitcoms have had to solve.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Grace Under Fire1 sequence

Grace Under Fire

1993–1998ABCComedy

Brett Butler as a single mother working at an oil refinery, in a sitcom built on her stand-up.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman1 sequence

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

1993–1997ABCSci-Fi

Superman rewritten as a workplace romance, on the principle that Clark is the real man and the cape is the costume.

  • Season 1
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 Ellen1 sequence

Ellen

1994–1998ABCComedy

A Los Angeles bookshop owner, in the sitcom whose fourth season changed what American television would say out loud.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of My So-Called Life1 sequence

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
Still from the opening titles of Sister, Sister1 sequence

Sister, Sister

1994–1999ABC / The WBComedy

Twins separated at birth and reunited in a shopping mall, played by twins.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Critic1 sequence

The Critic

1994–1995ABC / FoxAnimation

Al Jean and Mike Reiss's film critic, made between their Simpsons runs and cancelled by two networks.

  • 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 The Beatles Anthology1 sequence

The Beatles Anthology

1995ABCDocumentary

The band's own account of itself, assembled with the three surviving members.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Drew Carey Show1 sequence

The Drew Carey Show

1995–2004ABCComedy

A Cleveland department-store personnel manager, opened for two seasons by a cartoon of his own face.

  • Seasons 1–2
Still from the opening titles of Clueless2 sequences

Clueless

1996–1999ABC / UPNComedy

The film continued at Bronson Alcott High, with most of the cast replaced and Dionne kept.

  • Season 1
  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Sabrina the Teenage Witch1 sequence

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

1996–2003ABC / The WBComedy

The Archie Comics witch as a TGIF sitcom, seven seasons across two networks.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Spin City1 sequence

Spin City

1996–2002ABCComedy

New York City Hall in twenty-two seconds, rebuilt partway through the run when the show changed its lead.

  • Season 5
Still from the opening titles of Dharma & Greg1 sequence

Dharma & Greg

1997–2002ABCComedy

A free spirit and a lawyer who marry on their first date.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Port Charles1 sequence

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
Still from the opening titles of Recess1 sequence

Recess

1997–2001ABCAnimation

A brass march over a school playground treated as a sovereign state, which is exactly how the series plays it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Practice1 sequence

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
Still from the opening titles of The Shining (1997)1 sequence

The Shining (1997)

1997ABCHorror

King's own remake for television, made largely because he disliked what Kubrick had done with the book.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Hughleys1 sequence

The Hughleys

1998–2000ABCComedy

A family moving to a white suburb and the father who cannot stop noticing it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Two Guys and a Girl2 sequences

Two Guys and a Girl

1998–2001ABCComedy

A Boston pizza place the series was named after for two seasons and then quietly dropped from the title.

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 3–4
Still from the opening titles of Whose Line Is It Anyway?1 sequence

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

1998–ABC / The CWComedy

Improv games where the points don't matter, opened by a scramble of the cast in freeze-frame.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Norm Show1 sequence

The Norm Show

1999–2001ABCComedy

Norm Macdonald as a hockey player struck off and sentenced to social work.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of According to Jim1 sequence

According to Jim

2001–2009ABCComedy

Eight seasons of a Chicago family sitcom that critics ignored and audiences kept renewing.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Alias1 sequence

Alias

2001–2006ABCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of My Wife and Kids1 sequence

My Wife and Kids

2001–2005ABCComedy

Damon Wayans running a household on a theory of parenting he makes up as he goes.

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Scrubs1 sequence

Scrubs

2001–2010NBC / ABCComedy

Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Mole1 sequence

The Mole

2001–2008ABCDocumentary

Contestants building a prize fund while one of them sabotages it, and nobody knows which.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of 8 Simple Rules1 sequence

8 Simple Rules

2002–2005ABCComedy

A father guarding his daughters, and the sitcom that had to keep going after John Ritter died during its second season.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of American Idol1 sequence

American Idol

2002–Fox / ABCDocumentary

The talent format that ran American primetime for a decade, opening on a spotlight and a logo that spins.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of George Lopez1 sequence

George Lopez

2002–2007ABCComedy

A Los Angeles factory manager and the family around him, and the longest-running American sitcom led by a Latino cast.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bachelor1 sequence

The Bachelor

2002–ABCDocumentary

The format that turned courtship into an elimination bracket, and gave the rose its own verb.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition1 sequence

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2003–2020ABCDocumentary

A family's house rebuilt in a week, opening on the bus that is about to move.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Jimmy Kimmel Live!1 sequence

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

2003–ABCComedy

ABC's late-night hour, opening on a Hollywood Boulevard that the show films on the pavement outside.

  • Season 23
Still from the opening titles of Miracles1 sequence

Miracles

2003ABCHorror

A church investigator of the unexplained, cancelled after six of its thirteen episodes aired.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Boston Legal1 sequence

2004–2008ABCComedy

Legal-drama iconography played as farce, from the same producer as Ally McBeal and with the same refusal to take the profession seriously.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Desperate Housewives1 sequence

Desperate Housewives

2004–2012ABCDrama

Art history restaged as domestic comedy — Cranach's Eve, Egyptian tomb painting, American Gothic — each one collapsing under a woman's exasperation.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lost1 sequence

Lost

2004–2010ABCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Dancing with the Stars1 sequence

Dancing with the Stars

2005–ABCDocumentary

The American Strictly, which runs two seasons a year and rebuilds its titles for most of them.

  • Season 10
Still from the opening titles of Grey's Anatomy1 sequence

Grey's Anatomy

2005–ABCDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Brothers & Sisters1 sequence

Brothers & Sisters

2006–2011ABCDrama

The Walker family and the business they inherit, with Sally Field and Rachel Griffiths.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ugly Betty1 sequence

Ugly Betty

2006–2010ABCComedy

Fashion-magazine collage and a poncho, in twelve seconds.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pushing Daisies1 sequence

Pushing Daisies

2007–2009ABCComedy

Storybook illustration and saturated colour, pitched exactly between a fairy tale and a mortuary — which is the show.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life on Mars (US)1 sequence

Life on Mars (US)

2008–2009ABCSci-Fi

The American remake of the BBC series, opening on 1973 New York and the Bowie song both versions are named for.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Castle1 sequence

Castle

2009–2016ABCCrime

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of FlashForward1 sequence

FlashForward

2009–2010ABCSci-Fi

Everyone on Earth blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds and sees the same day six months ahead.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Modern Family1 sequence

Modern Family

2009–2020ABCComedy

Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Shark Tank1 sequence

Shark Tank

2009–ABCDocumentary

The American Dragons' Den, with the same format's Japanese parent behind both.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Middle1 sequence

The Middle

2009–2018ABCComedy

An Indiana family with no money and no prospects, nine seasons long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Rake1 sequence

Rake

2010–2018ABCComedy

Sydney and a barrister who is his own worst client, opened with rather more restraint than he ever manages.

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

Rookie Blue

2010–2015Global / ABCCrime

Five recruits out of the academy in Toronto, made as a summer series for two countries at once.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Happy Endings1 sequence

Happy Endings

2011–2013ABCComedy

Six friends in Chicago talking over one another at a speed most sitcoms do not attempt.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Once Upon a Time1 sequence

Once Upon a Time

2011–2018ABCDrama

A card hidden inside the episode's own imagery — the title appears somewhere in the opening scene rather than over a sequence, in a different place every week.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pan Am1 sequence

Pan Am

2011–2012ABCDrama

Mad Men at altitude, cancelled after one season of very expensive period detail.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Revenge1 sequence

Revenge

2011–2015ABCDrama

The Count of Monte Cristo relocated to the Hamptons.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Suburgatory1 sequence

Suburgatory

2011–2014ABCComedy

A Manhattan teenager relocated to the suburbs by a father who found a box of condoms in her drawer.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 231 sequence

Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23

2012–2013ABCComedy

A Midwesterner sharing a New York flat with the worst possible person, and James Van Der Beek playing himself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Last Resort1 sequence

Last Resort

2012–2013ABCDrama

A submarine crew who refuse an order and declare an island sovereign, cancelled after thirteen episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Scandal1 sequence

Scandal

2012–2018ABCDrama

Shonda Rhimes's Washington fixer series, and the show that made the phrase 'it's handled' a network brand.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Goldbergs1 sequence

The Goldbergs

2013–2023ABCComedy

Adam Goldberg's own 1980s home videos turned into a sitcom about making them.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of How to Get Away with Murder1 sequence

How to Get Away with Murder

2014–2020ABCCrime

Law-school iconography cut against evidence photographs, so the lecture and the crime scene share a visual language.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Agent Carter1 sequence

Agent Carter

2015–2016ABCDrama

Post-war period design and a big-band arrangement, for the best-looking title sequence Marvel has put on television.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fresh Off the Boat1 sequence

Fresh Off the Boat

2015–2020ABCComedy

A Taiwanese-American family moving to Orlando in 1995, from Eddie Huang's memoir.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Quantico1 sequence

Quantico

2015–2018ABCDrama

FBI recruits and a bombing, told across two timelines.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Muppets (2015)1 sequence

The Muppets (2015)

2015–2016ABCComedy

The Muppets as a workplace mockumentary, which lasted one season and a mid-season change of format.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of American Housewife1 sequence

American Housewife

2016–2021ABCComedy

A woman who reckons herself the second-fattest in Westport, Connecticut, and says so at length.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Designated Survivor1 sequence

Designated Survivor

2016–2018ABCDrama

The housing secretary kept away from the State of the Union, and therefore president by the end of it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Inhumans1 sequence

Inhumans

2017ABCSci-Fi

A cancelled film released as a series and shot partly for IMAX, in the least loved thing Marvel Television made.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Good Doctor1 sequence

The Good Doctor

2017–2024ABCDrama

An autistic surgical resident, adapted from the Korean series of the same name.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mystery Road1 sequence

Mystery Road

2018–ABCCrime

The Australian outback shot as landscape rather than backdrop, for a detective series about who the land belongs to.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Conners2 sequences

The Conners

2018–2025ABCComedy

Roseanne continued without her, after the network cancelled the revival it had just recommissioned.

  • Season 1
  • Season 5
Still from the opening titles of The Rookie1 sequence

The Rookie

2018–ABCCrime

A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Abbott Elementary1 sequence

Abbott Elementary

2021–ABCComedy

A Philadelphia public school shot as a documentary, and the first network comedy in years to become a hit on its own terms.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of High Potential1 sequence

High Potential

2024–ABCCrime

A cleaner with an exceptional mind who starts solving the cases in the files she is dusting.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of 9-1-1: Nashville1 sequence

9-1-1: Nashville

2025–ABCDrama

The third 9-1-1, moving the format to Tennessee, with the franchise's siren-and-dispatch open rebuilt in country.

  • Season 1