BBC One

176 shows, 205 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

Panorama

1953–·BBC One·Documentary

The longest-running current affairs programme in the world, and a theme borrowed from Rachmaninoff.

• Season 30

1 sequence

The Sky at Night

1957–·BBC One / BBC Four·Documentary

The longest-running programme with the same presenter in television history, opening on Sibelius' At the Castle Gate.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Blue Peter

1958–·BBC One·Documentary

The world's longest-running children's programme, opening on a ship in full sail and a hornpipe.

• Season 45
• Season 64

2 sequences

Grandstand

1958–2007·BBC One·Documentary

Five hours of live sport on a Saturday afternoon, held together by a man at a desk and the teleprinter behind him.

• Season 23
• Season 33

1 sequence

Ivor the Engine

1959–1977·ITV / BBC One·Animation

A Welsh locomotive who wants to sing in the choir, drawn in pencil and cut out by hand.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Noggin the Nog

1959–1965·BBC One·Animation

Norse sagas drawn from the Lewis chessmen, narrated in the register of a bedtime story about a war.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Steptoe and Son

1962–1974·BBC One·Comedy

Two rag-and-bone men who cannot leave each other, and the series Sanford and Son was remade from.

• Season 1

10 sequences

Doctor Who

1963–1989·BBC One·Sci-Fi

Rebuilt for almost every Doctor, and each rebuild invented its own technique — a camera filming its own monitor, light photographed through moving slots, and finally the first computer-generated titles on British television.

• Seasons 1–3
• Seasons 4–6
• Seasons 7–10
• and 7 more

2 sequences

Match of the Day

1964–·BBC One·Documentary

Barry Stoller's theme, unchanged since 1970, over whatever graphics the decade happens to allow.

• Season 7
• Season 62

2 sequences

Top of the Pops

1964–2006·BBC One·Documentary

Forty-two years of the chart, and a Phil Lynott instrumental called Yellow Pearl for a theme.

• Season 1
• Seasons 18–20

1 sequence

Jackanory

1965–1996·BBC One·Drama

One actor, one chair, one book read aloud for fifteen minutes — the least televisual idea the BBC ever ran for thirty years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Magic Roundabout

1965–1977·BBC One·Animation

A French stop-motion series that Eric Thompson re-narrated in English without translating the scripts, inventing different characters over the same pictures.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Till Death Us Do Part

1965–1975·BBC One·Comedy

Alf Garnett shouting at his family, and the series All in the Family was remade from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tomorrow's World

1965–2003·BBC One·Documentary

Live demonstrations of things that did not work yet, opening on graphics that promised they would.

• Season 29

1 sequence

Camberwick Green

1966·BBC One·Animation

A musical box that opens to reveal whichever character the episode is about — a title sequence that is also the casting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Trumpton

1967·BBC One·Animation

The Camberwick Green sequel, opening on a town clock and a fire brigade roll-call people still recite.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dad's Army

1968–1977·BBC One·Comedy

The Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard, opened by animated arrows advancing and retreating across a map of Europe.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sportsnight

1968–1997·BBC One·Documentary

The midweek sports programme, and the strand most of British sports broadcasting learned its trade on.

• Season 26

1 sequence

Monty Python's Flying Circus

1969–1974·BBC One·Comedy

Terry Gilliam's cut-out animation and a Sousa march — a title sequence that behaves like a sketch, because it is one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Clangers

1969–1974·BBC One·Animation

Knitted creatures on a small planet who speak in swanee whistles, narrated as though it were a nature programme.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Question of Sport

1970–2023·BBC One·Documentary

The longest-running sports quiz on television, with a picture board and a what-happened-next round.

• Season 20

1 sequence

Doomwatch

1970–1972·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A government department investigating the science that is about to go wrong, from two Doctor Who writers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mr Benn

1971–1972·BBC One·Animation

A man in a bowler hat, a costume shop and a changing room door, thirteen times.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Two Ronnies

1971–1987·BBC One·Comedy

Barker and Corbett behind a news desk, with a pair of spectacles as the logo for sixteen years.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Are You Being Served?

1972–1985·BBC One·Comedy

The Grace Brothers department store, opened by a lift announcing each floor's stock.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em

1973–1978·BBC One·Comedy

Frank Spencer in a beret, and stunts Michael Crawford performed himself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Wombles

1973–1975·BBC One·Animation

Litter-collecting creatures under Wimbledon Common, whose fictional band had six top-twenty singles in one year.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

1973–1974·BBC One·Comedy

The sequel to the 1964 series, about two friends who have grown in opposite directions.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bagpuss

1974·BBC One·Animation

Thirteen episodes, and a sepia photograph opening that colours in when the cat wakes up — Smallfilms doing the whole premise in the titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

It Ain't Half Hot Mum

1974–1981·BBC One·Comedy

A Royal Artillery concert party in wartime India, and the Croft series that has aged worst.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Porridge

1974–1977·BBC One·Comedy

Ronnie Barker inside HMP Slade, opened by a judge's sentencing read over the prison gates.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Roobarb

1974·BBC One·Animation

Felt-tip animation that boils and shimmers because it was drawn one frame at a time and never traced twice.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Survivors

1975–1977·BBC One·Sci-Fi

Terry Nation's plague series, in which the titles kill the world in forty seconds using nothing but a broken test tube and a series of passport stamps.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Good Life

1975–1978·BBC One·Comedy

A couple turning their Surbiton garden into a smallholding, next door to neighbours who would rather they did not.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Open All Hours

1976–1985·BBC One·Comedy

Ronnie Barker again, this time behind a corner-shop till with a faulty cash register.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rentaghost

1976–1984·BBC One·Comedy

An agency staffed entirely by ghosts, which is a sitcom premise and a title sequence at the same time.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

1976–1979·BBC One·Comedy

A middle manager who fakes his own death by leaving his clothes on a beach, weekly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Citizen Smith

1977–1980·BBC One·Comedy

John Sullivan's first series, a Tooting revolutionary with no revolution, written five years before Only Fools and Horses.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Secret Army

1977–1979·BBC One·Drama

An escape line moving Allied airmen out of occupied Belgium, played without any of the adventure the premise invites.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Blake's 7

1978–1981·BBC One·Sci-Fi

BBC electronic music and a rotating logo, rebuilt each series as the crew was killed off — which on this show happened often enough to matter.

• Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Connections

1978·BBC One·Documentary

James Burke tracing one invention to another across centuries, in a structure the titles set up before he says a word.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Going Straight

1978·BBC One·Comedy

Fletcher out of prison and trying to stay out, six episodes after Porridge finished.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Grange Hill

1978–2008·BBC One·Drama

A London comprehensive school taken seriously, opening on a comic strip and a sausage on a fork.

• Season 1
• Seasons 13–16

1 sequence

Blankety Blank

1979–1990·BBC One·Documentary

A panel game with a deliberately worthless prize, and a microphone shaped like a fishing rod.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Terry and June

1979–1987·BBC One·Comedy

Suburban misunderstanding for eight years, and the programme most often used as shorthand for what alternative comedy rebelled against.

• Season 1

1 sequence

To the Manor Born

1979–1981·BBC One·Comedy

A widow forced to sell the manor and move into the lodge at the end of its drive.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hi-de-Hi!

1980–1988·BBC One·Comedy

A 1950s holiday camp, the fourth David Croft series in this catalogue.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Only Fools and Horses

1981–2003·BBC One·Comedy

A theme sung by the show's own writer, explaining the premise in verse — and one of the very few British sitcom openings to have charted.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pigeon Street

1981·BBC One·Animation

A street of neighbours introduced one at a time, including a long-distance lorry driver called Long Distance Clara.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Postman Pat

1981–2017·BBC One·Animation

A rural postman and his black and white cat, stop-motion, with a theme everyone in Britain can finish.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Willo the Wisp

1981·BBC One·Animation

Kenneth Williams voicing every character, in five-minute films made to fill the gap before the news.

• Season 1

1 sequence

'Allo 'Allo!

1982–1992·BBC One·Comedy

A French café in occupied France, from the same writer as Dad's Army twenty years on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bananaman

1983–1986·BBC One·Animation

The Beano strip animated with the Goodies doing the voices, and a narrator who explains the transformation every week.

• Season 1

4 sequences

Blackadder

1983–1989·BBC One·Comedy

Four series, four centuries, and a theme re-orchestrated each time to suit the period — lute, harpsichord, military band.

• Season 1
• Season 2
• Season 3
• and 1 more

1 sequence

Ever Decreasing Circles

1984–1989·BBC One·Comedy

Richard Briers after The Good Life, running every committee in his cul-de-sac.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Living Planet

1984·BBC One·Documentary

The Life on Earth sequel, on habitats rather than lineages, opening on the planet doing the sorting.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Tripods

1984–1985·BBC One·Sci-Fi

The John Christopher novels adapted at great expense and cancelled two thirds of the way through the story.

• Season 1

2 sequences

EastEnders

1985–·BBC One·Drama

An aerial pull-back over the Thames and the drum that answers it — thirty-two seconds that have barely changed in forty years.

• Season 1
• Season 41

1 sequence

Howards' Way

1985–1990·BBC One·Drama

Boatyards and money on the Solent, which the BBC ran opposite Dallas and Dynasty on purpose.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bread

1986–1991·BBC One·Comedy

Carla Lane's Liverpool family, signing on and eating together, in the decade that made both political.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brush Strokes

1986–1991·BBC One·Comedy

A painter and decorator who cannot stop flirting, written by the Birds of a Feather pair.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Casualty

1986–·BBC One·Drama

Holby City Hospital's emergency department, and the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world.

• Season 27

1 sequence

Dear John

1986–1987·BBC One·Comedy

A divorced man at a support group of the similarly abandoned, written by John Sullivan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Singing Detective

1986·BBC One·Drama

Dennis Potter's serial, in which a hospitalised writer's hallucinations arrive as 1940s dance numbers — and the titles set that up without explaining it.

• Season 1

2 sequences

ChuckleVision

1987–2009·BBC One·Comedy

Two brothers and a slapstick format that ran for twenty-one series on the strength of one exchange.

• Season 1
• Seasons 17–20

1 sequence

Fireman Sam

1987–·BBC One·Animation

A Welsh fire station in stop-motion, made in Welsh first and dubbed into English second.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Countryfile

1988–·BBC One·Documentary

Sunday evening rural affairs, and one of the most watched factual programmes in Britain.

• Season 24

1 sequence

The Chronicles of Narnia

1988–1990·BBC One·Drama

Lewis adapted across four serials, with costumes and matte paintings doing what the budget could not.

• Season 1

1 sequence

You Rang, M'Lord?

1988–1993·BBC One·Comedy

Croft and Perry's between-the-wars house, played at fifty minutes an episode rather than thirty.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin

1989·BBC One·Documentary

The Verne route without aircraft, and the series that turned a Python into Britain's travel presenter.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Birds of a Feather

1989–2020·BBC One / ITV·Comedy

Two sisters in Chigwell whose husbands are both in prison.

• Season 1
• Season 10

1 sequence

Byker Grove

1989–2006·BBC One·Drama

A Newcastle youth club, and the series Ant and Dec came out of.

• Season 11

1 sequence

Have I Got News for You

1990–·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Newspaper mastheads and printing presses, rebuilt periodically across thirty-five years of British political humiliation.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Keeping Up Appearances

1990–1995·BBC One·Comedy

Hyacinth Bucket, pronounced Bouquet, and the relatives she would rather nobody met.

• Season 1

1 sequence

One Foot in the Grave

1990–2000·BBC One·Comedy

Victor Meldrew, forcibly retired at sixty and furious about everything since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brum

1991–2002·BBC One·Comedy

A small yellow car loose in a city, told without dialogue — a preschool series that is closer to silent film than to television.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Noel's House Party

1991–1999·BBC One·Comedy

Saturday night from a fictional house in Crinkley Bottom, and the programme that dropped celebrities into gunge on purpose.

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Brittas Empire

1991–1997·BBC One·Comedy

A leisure centre run by the least suitable manager in British comedy.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Absolutely Fabulous

1992–2012·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Twenty-one seconds of Julie Driscoll's 'This Wheel's on Fire', re-recorded for the show by its own star.

• Season 1

1 sequence

As Time Goes By

1992–2005·BBC One·Comedy

Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer meeting again thirty-eight years after they lost touch.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Grace & Favour

1992–1993·BBC One·Comedy

The Are You Being Served? staff inheriting a country manor, with most of the original cast.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Men Behaving Badly

1992–1998·ITV / BBC One·Comedy

Two flatmates and the phrase the British press attached to a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Goodnight Sweetheart

1993–1999·BBC One·Comedy

A man who finds a London alley that leads back to 1940 and keeps a wife in each decade.

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

The Animals of Farthing Wood

1993–1995·BBC One·Animation

Animals leaving a destroyed wood for a nature reserve, and a children's series that killed off its cast as it went.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pie in the Sky

1994–1997·BBC One·Crime

A detective who would rather run his restaurant, and is not allowed to retire from either.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Vicar of Dibley

1994–2020·BBC One·Comedy

Dawn French as the first woman priest in a village that expected a man.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Oh, Doctor Beeching!

1995–1997·BBC One·Comedy

A branch-line station waiting to be closed by the Beeching cuts, from the writers of Hi-de-Hi!

• Season 1

1 sequence

Pride and Prejudice

1995·BBC One·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Queen's Nose

1995–2003·BBC One·Comedy

A fifty pence piece that grants wishes, from the Dick King-Smith book.

• Season 1

2 sequences

Ballykissangel

1996–2001·BBC One·Drama

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

• Season 1
• Season 6

1 sequence

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

1996–1998·BBC One·Crime

A Lancashire pensioner who opens a detective agency because nobody will give her a job.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Silent Witness

1996–·BBC One·Crime

Forensic pathology rendered as abstraction — a thirty-year-old series whose titles have been redesigned repeatedly while the eye at the centre of them stayed.

• Season 21

1 sequence

The Demon Headmaster

1996–1998·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A headmaster who hypnotises through his spectacles, from the Gillian Cross books, and the most frightening thing CBBC put out in the 1990s.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bob the Builder

1999–2011·BBC One·Animation

Stop-motion construction with a call and response the programme never varies, and a number one Christmas single.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Holby City

1999–2022·BBC One·Drama

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

• Season 12

1 sequence

Walking with Dinosaurs

1999·BBC One·Documentary

A natural history series about animals nobody has filmed, shot as though somebody had.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doctors

2000–2024·BBC One·Drama

A Midlands surgery, twenty-four years of daytime, and one self-contained story an episode.

• Season 7

2 sequences

My Family

2000–2011·BBC One·Comedy

A Chiswick dentist and the relatives he cannot get out of the house, written by a rotating room on the American model.

• Season 3
• Season 6

1 sequence

The Blue Planet

2001·BBC One·Documentary

The first of the BBC's ocean series, and the template its sequel and the Planet Earth films all inherited.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Spooks

2002–2011·BBC One·Drama

Fast-cut surveillance imagery and a clock, from a series that made a habit of killing its leads without warning.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Still Game

2002–2019·BBC Scotland / BBC One·Comedy

Two Glasgow pensioners and the Craiglang high-rises, with titles built entirely from the scheme itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Little Britain

2003–2006·BBC Three / BBC One·Comedy

A radio series moved to television, narrated as though it were a documentary about a country nobody has heard of.

• Season 1

1 sequence

New Tricks

2003–2015·BBC One·Crime

Retired detectives reopening cold cases, with a theme song sung by Dennis Waterman about the premise.

• Season 1

1 sequence

QI

2003–·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Sepia illustration and a music-box theme, in a panel show that has changed almost nothing about its opening in two decades and two hosts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hustle

2004–2012·BBC One·Crime

Playing cards, sleight of hand and London — a con-artist series whose titles are themselves a piece of misdirection.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strictly Come Dancing

2004–·BBC One·Documentary

The BBC's ballroom format, sold to fifty-odd countries as Dancing with the Stars and kept at home under its own name.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Who Do You Think You Are?

2004–·BBC One·Documentary

One celebrity's ancestry per episode, opening on photographs that dissolve into each other backwards.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Bleak House

2005·BBC One·Drama

Dickens serialised the way he was published — half-hour instalments, twice a week — with a title sequence cut to match.

• Season 1

8 sequences

Doctor Who (2005)

2005–·BBC One·Sci-Fi

The revival kept the tunnel and the logo and threw out everything else, then carried on rebuilding — clouds, fire, clockwork — with a new arrangement of the same 1963 melody every few years.

• Season 1
• Seasons 2–4
• Seasons 5–6
• and 5 more

1 sequence

Wallander

2005–2016·SVT / BBC One·Crime

Henning Mankell's Ystad detective, filmed twice — in Swedish with Krister Henriksson, and in English with Kenneth Branagh.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Life on Mars

2006–2007·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A Manchester detective wakes in 1973 and cannot establish whether he is mad, in a coma, or back in time — the show's own summary, delivered as narration.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Not Going Out

2006–·BBC One·Comedy

Lee Mack's flat-share sitcom, written joke-first and the longest-running British studio comedy still in production.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Planet Earth

2006·BBC One·Documentary

George Fenton's orchestral swell over the planet from orbit — twenty-nine seconds that set the house style for every natural history series since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Torchwood

2006–2011·BBC Three / BBC One·Sci-Fi

The Doctor Who spinoff that wanted to be taken seriously, opening with Cardiff, a rift and a great deal of blue light.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Waterloo Road

2006–·BBC One·Drama

A failing comprehensive in Rochdale, and the successor to Grange Hill as British television's school of record.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cranford

2007–2009·BBC One·Drama

Elizabeth Gaskell's Cheshire town, with Judi Dench and most of the British stage.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Inspector George Gently

2007–2017·BBC One·Crime

A Northumberland detective in the 1960s, and a series that uses the decade for its politics rather than its clothes.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Outnumbered

2007–2016·BBC One·Comedy

Two parents and three children, with the children's dialogue largely improvised.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Would I Lie to You?

2007–·BBC One·Comedy

A panel show built on whether a story about a guest is true, which turns out to be an unusually durable format.

• Season 4

1 sequence

Apparitions

2008·BBC One·Horror

A Catholic priest working as an exorcist in modern London, and one of the most complained-about dramas the BBC has run.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lark Rise to Candleford

2008–2011·BBC One·Drama

Flora Thompson's hamlet and its market town, adapted into four years of BBC Sunday evenings.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Little Dorrit

2008·BBC One·Drama

Dickens serialised across fourteen parts, opened by ink and engraving that assemble the Marshalsea.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Merlin

2008–2012·BBC One·Drama

Camelot rendered in gold and firelight, with a narration establishing a prophecy in about the time it takes to say one.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sense and Sensibility

2008·BBC One·Drama

Andrew Davies adapting Austen across three parts, a decade after he did Pride and Prejudice.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Miranda

2009–2015·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Miranda Hart addressing the camera in a joke shop, in eleven seconds of open.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Occupation

2009·BBC One·Drama

Three soldiers from one Manchester regiment and the years after Basra.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Small Island

2009·BBC One·Drama

Andrea Levy's Windrush novel in two parts, moving between Jamaica and a Earls Court boarding house.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Luther

2010–2019·BBC One·Crime

Massive Attack's 'Paradise Circus' over a city at night, with a detective who is already losing before the episode starts.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Sherlock

2010–2017·BBC One·Crime

London shot as data — maps, magnification and chemical traces, cut to a violin figure that never quite settles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Death in Paradise

2011–·BBC One·Crime

Caribbean colour and a calypso theme, for a murder series that has never once let its setting look threatening.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Frozen Planet

2011·BBC One·Documentary

Ice filmed as architecture, and George Fenton again — twenty-six seconds with no animal in them at all.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Great Expectations

2011·BBC One·Drama

The Dickens novel in three parts, with Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Human Planet

2011·BBC One·Documentary

The BBC natural-history unit turning its cameras on people, one habitat per episode.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mrs. Brown's Boys

2011–·BBC One / RTÉ One·Comedy

A Dublin matriarch played by the man who writes her, taped with the crew, the corpsing and the fluffed lines all left in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Outcasts

2011·BBC One·Sci-Fi

A human settlement on Carpathia five years after Earth stopped answering.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Young James Herriot

2011·BBC One·Drama

The veterinary student years, three episodes long, from the same books All Creatures Great & Small comes from.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Call the Midwife

2012–·BBC One·Drama

Poplar's district nurses through the fifties and sixties, opened the same way for well over a decade.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Good Cop

2012·BBC One·Crime

A Liverpool response officer who stops waiting for the system to work.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Last Tango in Halifax

2012–2020·BBC One·Drama

Two people who were sweethearts at school meeting again in their seventies, and the families that have accumulated since.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Line of Duty

2012–2021·BBC Two / BBC One·Crime

Redaction as a design language — evidence bags, case files and blocks of black covering the parts you are not cleared for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ripper Street

2012–2016·BBC One / Prime Video·Crime

Whitechapel in the years after the murders, policed by men the murders made famous.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Atlantis

2013–2015·BBC One·Sci-Fi

The BBC's Saturday teatime myth series after Merlin, with the same job to do and the same slot to do it in.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Count Arthur Strong

2013–2017·BBC Two / BBC One·Comedy

Steve Delaney's radio character given a sitcom around him, co-written by Graham Linehan.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Father Brown

2013–·BBC One·Crime

Chesterton's priest detective moved to the 1950s Cotswolds, and the most durable daytime drama the BBC has.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hinterland

2013–2016·S4C / BBC One·Crime

Aberystwyth and the country behind it, shot twice over - once in Welsh as Y Gwyll, once in English.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mayday

2013·BBC One·Crime

A May Queen vanishing on the morning of the procession, and a village that suspects itself.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Our Girl

2013–2020·BBC One·Drama

An army medic on tour, in a drama that recast its lead and kept going.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Peaky Blinders

2013–2022·BBC Two / BBC One·Crime

Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand' over Birmingham furnaces and a man walking away from a fire — a period drama scored entirely out of period.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Shetland

2013–·BBC One·Crime

North Atlantic weather over islands where everyone already knows everyone, which is the constraint the series runs on.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The White Queen

2013·Starz / BBC One·Drama

Roses, water and heraldry — the Wars of the Roses introduced through the emblems both sides died for.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Happy Valley

2014–2023·BBC One·Crime

Sally Wainwright's Calder Valley series, which opens with almost nothing and is all the bleaker for it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Missing

2014–2016·BBC One·Crime

A child vanishing in France and the two timelines that follow it, eight years apart.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Musketeers

2014–2016·BBC One·Drama

Dumas serialised for Sunday evenings, with ink and gunpowder titles to match.

• Season 1

1 sequence

And Then There Were None

2015·BBC One·Crime

Christie's island novel adapted straight, with a title sequence that counts the cast down as the story does.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Doctor Foster

2015–·BBC One·Drama

A GP who works out that her husband is having an affair, and then takes it apart methodically.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Poldark (2015)

2015–2019·BBC One·Drama

Winston Graham's Cornish captain home from the American war to find his father dead and his fiancée engaged to his cousin.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Night Manager

2016–2025·BBC One / AMC·Drama

Le Carré's arms dealer and the hotelier sent in after him, opened by weapons assembling out of luxury.

• Season 2

1 sequence

Blue Planet II

2017·BBC One·Documentary

Hans Zimmer and Radiohead scoring the ocean — the first natural history series to hire a film composer and a rock band for its titles.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Howards End

2017·BBC One / Starz·Drama

Kenneth Lonergan's Forster adaptation, with titles built from cut-paper Edwardian silhouettes.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Little Women

2017·BBC One·Drama

Alcott in three parts, with a title sequence made of cut paper and pressed flowers.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rellik

2017·BBC One·Crime

A murder investigation told backwards — the title is killer reversed, and so is the series.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Strike

2017–·BBC One·Crime

Galbraith's one-legged private detective and the assistant who turns out to be better at it than he expected.

• Season 1

1 sequence

A Very English Scandal

2018·BBC One·Drama

Russell T Davies and Stephen Frears on the Thorpe affair, opened in the graphic register of a 1970s political cartoon.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Killing Eve

2018–2022·BBC America / BBC One·Crime

Hand-drawn ink over a chase across Europe, in the register of a fashion illustration rather than a thriller.

• Season 1

1 sequence

McMafia

2018·BBC One / AMC·Crime

A banker pulled back into his family's Russian organised-crime money.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Requiem

2018·BBC One·Horror

A cellist in a Welsh village that remembers a disappearance she does not.

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Little Drummer Girl

2018·BBC One / AMC·Drama

Park Chan-wook directing le Carré, in the most controlled colour palette on television that year.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dublin Murders

2019·BBC One / Starz·Crime

Tana French's first two novels braided into one eight-part case.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gentleman Jack

2019–2022·BBC One / HBO·Drama

Anne Lister's coded diaries dramatised by Sally Wainwright, with Suranne Jones addressing the camera directly.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Ghosts

2019–2023·BBC One·Comedy

The Horrible Histories troupe as the dead of one country house, opened by all of them at once.

• Season 1

1 sequence

His Dark Materials

2019–2022·BBC One / HBO·Sci-Fi

Pullman's trilogy adapted with a title sequence that opens a window between worlds and keeps going through it.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Years and Years

2019·BBC One / HBO·Drama

Russell T Davies following one Manchester family fifteen years into a future that arrives faster than they do.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dracula

2020·BBC One·Horror

Moffat and Gatiss after Sherlock, with three feature-length episodes and a different idea in each.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Vigil

2021–2023·BBC One·Crime

A death aboard a Trident submarine, investigated by a detective who cannot leave the boat.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beyond Paradise

2023–·BBC One / BritBox·Crime

Death in Paradise's detective moved to Devon, where the weather is the joke.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Amandaland

2025–·BBC One·Comedy

The Motherland spin-off, following the one character everybody else in it could not stand.

• Season 1