ABC

203 shows, 215 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

The Lone Ranger

1949–1957·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sky King

1951–1962·NBC / ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Lawrence Welk Show

1951–1982·ABC / Syndication·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

1952–1966·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Danny Thomas Show

1953–1964·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wagon Train

1957–1965·NBC / ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Donna Reed Show

1958–1966·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 8

1 sequence

The Rifleman

1958–1963·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

One Step Beyond

1959–1961·ABC·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bullwinkle Show

1959–1964·ABC / NBC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Untouchables

1959–1963·ABC·Crime

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

1 sequence

My Three Sons

1960–1972·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000·ABC / CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Flintstones

1960–1966·ABC·Animation

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

1 sequence

ABC's Wide World of Sports

1961–1998·ABC·Documentary

"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

1 sequence

Top Cat

1961–1962·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

McHale's Navy

1962–1966·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Jetsons

1962–1963·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

General Hospital

1963–·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 16
• Season 43

1 sequence

The Outer Limits

1963–1965·ABC·Sci-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

1 sequence

Bewitched

1964–1972·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Peyton Place

1964–1969·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Addams Family

1964–1966·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

F Troop

1965–1967·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Big Valley

1965–1969·ABC·Drama

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

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

The F.B.I.

1965–1974·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Batman

1966–1968·ABC·Crime

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

1 sequence

Dark Shadows

1966–1971·ABC·Horror

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

1 sequence

The Time Tunnel

1966–1967·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

George of the Jungle

1967·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Invaders

1967–1968·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Land of the Giants

1968–1970·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 2

2 sequences

One Life to Live

1968–2012·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 21
• Season 44

1 sequence

Marcus Welby, M.D.

1969–1976·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Brady Bunch

1969–1974·ABC·Comedy

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

2 sequences

All My Children

1970–2011·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 23
• Season 41

1 sequence

Monday Night Football

1970–·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Odd Couple

1970–1975·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Alias Smith and Jones

1971–1973·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Columbo

1971–2003·NBC / ABC·Crime

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

1 sequence

The Streets of San Francisco

1972–1977·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Schoolhouse Rock!

1973–2009·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Six Million Dollar Man

1973–1978·ABC·Sci-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

1 sequence

Happy Days

1974–1984·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hong Kong Phooey

1974·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kolchak: The Night Stalker

1974–1975·ABC·Horror

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

1 sequence

Baretta

1975–1978·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Barney Miller

1975–1982·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 3

1 sequence

Ryan's Hope

1975–1989·ABC·Drama

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 sequence

S.W.A.T.

1975–1976·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Starsky & Hutch

1975–1979·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wonder Woman

1975–1979·ABC / CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Charlie's Angels

1976–1981·ABC·Crime

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

2 sequences

Family Feud

1976–·ABC / Syndication·Documentary

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

• Season 1
• Season 35

1 sequence

Jabberjaw

1976–1978·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Laverne & Shirley

1976–1983·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bionic Woman

1976–1978·ABC / NBC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Three's Company

1976–1984·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Eight Is Enough

1977–1981·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fantasy Island

1977–1984·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Roots

1977·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Soap

1977–1981·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Love Boat

1977–1987·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 3

1 sequence

Battlestar Galactica (1978)

1978–1979·ABC·Sci-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

1 sequence

Mork & Mindy

1978–1982·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Taxi

1978–1983·ABC / NBC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Benson

1979–1986·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Hart to Hart

1979–1984·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Ropers

1979–1980·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bosom Buddies

1980–1982·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fridays

1980–1982·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Galactica 1980

1980·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

It's a Living

1980–1989·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

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

• Season 1
• Season 2

1 sequence

Nightline

1980–·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Thundarr the Barbarian

1980–1982·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Too Close for Comfort

1980–1987·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dynasty

1981–1989·ABC·Drama

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

1 sequence

The Fall Guy

1981–1986·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Greatest American Hero

1981–1983·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Matt Houston

1982–1985·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Police Squad!

1982·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986·ABC / CBS·Crime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Automan

1983–1984·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hardcastle and McCormick

1983–1986·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Littles

1983–1985·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Thorn Birds

1983·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Winds of War

1983·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Webster

1983–1989·ABC / Syndication·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Who's the Boss?

1984–1992·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Growing Pains

1985–1992·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

MacGyver

1985–1992·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Moonlighting

1985–1989·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Belvedere

1985–1990·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

North and South

1985–1994·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spenser: For Hire

1985–1988·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Star Wars: Droids

1985–1986·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Head of the Class

1986–1991·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life with Lucy

1986·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Matlock

1986–1995·NBC / ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Perfect Strangers

1986–1993·ABC·Comedy

'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

1 sequence

Sledge Hammer!

1986–1988·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Care Bears Family

1986–1988·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Real Ghostbusters

1986–1991·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Full House

1987–1995·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Max Headroom

1987–1988·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

thirtysomething

1987–1991·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

China Beach

1988–1991·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Just the Ten of Us

1988–1990·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Roseanne

1988–2018·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Wonder Years

1988–1993·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

America's Funniest Home Videos

1989–·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beetlejuice

1989–1991·ABC / Fox Kids·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Coach

1989–1997·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doogie Howser, M.D.

1989–1993·ABC·Comedy

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

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Father Dowling Mysteries

1989–1991·NBC / ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life Goes On

1989–1993·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Round the Twist

1989–2001·ABC / Seven Network·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Riders

1989–1992·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

It (1990)

1990·ABC·Horror

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Twin Peaks

1990–1991, 2017·ABC / Showtime·Drama

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

1 sequence

Dinosaurs

1991–1994·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doug

1991–1999·Nickelodeon / ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Home Improvement

1991–1999·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Step by Step

1991–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Commish

1991–1996·ABC·Crime

A police commissioner who solves things by talking, in a series built against the action shows around it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Hangin' with Mr. Cooper

1992–1997·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles

1992–1996·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boy Meets World

1993–2000·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grace Under Fire

1993–1998·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman

1993–1997·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

NYPD Blue

1993–2005·ABC·Crime

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

1 sequence

Ellen

1994–1998·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

My So-Called Life

1994–1995·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sister, Sister

1994–1999·ABC / The WB·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Critic

1994–1995·ABC / Fox·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murder One

1995–1997·ABC·Crime

Steven Bochco's experiment in giving a single trial an entire season, and the courtroom-portrait titles that went with it.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Beatles Anthology

1995·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Drew Carey Show

1995–2004·ABC·Comedy

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

• Seasons 1–2

2 sequences

Clueless

1996–1999·ABC / UPN·Comedy

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

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

Sabrina the Teenage Witch

1996–2003·ABC / The WB·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spin City

1996–2002·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 5

1 sequence

Dharma & Greg

1997–2002·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Port Charles

1997–2003·ABC·Drama

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

1 sequence

Recess

1997–2001·ABC·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Practice

1997–2004·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Shining (1997)

1997·ABC·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Hughleys

1998–2000·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Two Guys and a Girl

1998–2001·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1
• Seasons 3–4

1 sequence

Whose Line Is It Anyway?

1998–·ABC / The CW·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Norm Show

1999–2001·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

According to Jim

2001–2009·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alias

2001–2006·ABC·Drama

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 sequence

My Wife and Kids

2001–2005·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 4

1 sequence

Scrubs

2001–2010·NBC / ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Mole

2001–2008·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

8 Simple Rules

2002–2005·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Idol

2002–·Fox / ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

George Lopez

2002–2007·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bachelor

2002–·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Extreme Makeover: Home Edition

2003–2020·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 3

1 sequence

Jimmy Kimmel Live!

2003–·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 23

1 sequence

Miracles

2003·ABC·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boston Legal

2004–2008·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Desperate Housewives

2004–2012·ABC·Drama

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

2004–2010·ABC·Drama

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

Grey's Anatomy

2005–·ABC·Drama

Twenty-seven 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

Brothers & Sisters

2006–2011·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ugly Betty

2006–2010·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pushing Daisies

2007–2009·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life on Mars (US)

2008–2009·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Castle

2009–2016·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

FlashForward

2009–2010·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Modern Family

2009–2020·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shark Tank

2009–·ABC·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Middle

2009–2018·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rake

2010–2018·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rookie Blue

2010–2015·Global / ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Happy Endings

2011–2013·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Once Upon a Time

2011–2018·ABC·Drama

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

1 sequence

Pan Am

2011–2012·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Revenge

2011–2015·ABC·Drama

The Count of Monte Cristo relocated to the Hamptons.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Suburgatory

2011–2014·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

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

2012–2013·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Resort

2012–2013·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scandal

2012–2018·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

2013–2020·ABC·Sci-Fi

Marvel's first television series, opening with agency insignia and a brass sting rather than any of the heroes it is adjacent to.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Goldbergs

2013–2023·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

How to Get Away with Murder

2014–2020·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Agent Carter

2015–2016·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fresh Off the Boat

2015–2020·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Quantico

2015–2018·ABC·Drama

FBI recruits and a bombing, told across two timelines.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Muppets (2015)

2015–2016·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Housewife

2016–2021·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Designated Survivor

2016–2018·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Inhumans

2017·ABC·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Good Doctor

2017–2024·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mystery Road

2018–·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 2

2 sequences

The Conners

2018–2025·ABC·Comedy

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

• Season 1
• Season 5

1 sequence

The Rookie

2018–·ABC·Crime

Los Angeles patrol work, opened with the network-procedural confidence the format has run on since Hill Street Blues.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Abbott Elementary

2021–·ABC·Comedy

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

1 sequence

High Potential

2024–·ABC·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

9-1-1: Nashville

2025–·ABC·Drama

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

• Season 1