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BBC One opening titles

BBC One accounts for 175 shows here, running from 1953 to the present, and 204 opening title sequences between them.

Comedy leads with 55, then drama with 39.

13 of them rebuilt their titles at least once — most of all Doctor Who, with ten distinct sequences.

175 shows · 204 sequences · oldest first

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

Still from the opening titles of Panorama1 sequence

Panorama

1953–BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 30
Still from the opening titles of The Sky at Night1 sequence

The Sky at Night

1957–BBC One / BBC FourDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Blue Peter2 sequences

Blue Peter

1958–BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 45
  • Season 64
Still from the opening titles of Grandstand2 sequences

Grandstand

1958–2007BBC OneDocumentary

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
Still from the opening titles of Ivor the Engine1 sequence

Ivor the Engine

1959–1977ITV / BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Noggin the Nog1 sequence

Noggin the Nog

1959–1965BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Steptoe and Son1 sequence

Steptoe and Son

1962–1974BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doctor Who10 sequences

Doctor Who

1963–1989BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Match of the Day2 sequences

Match of the Day

1964–BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 7
  • Season 62
Still from the opening titles of Top of the Pops2 sequences

Top of the Pops

1964–2006BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 18–20
Still from the opening titles of Jackanory1 sequence

Jackanory

1965–1996BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Magic Roundabout1 sequence

The Magic Roundabout

1965–1977BBC OneAnimation

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
Still from the opening titles of Till Death Us Do Part1 sequence

Till Death Us Do Part

1965–1975BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Tomorrow's World1 sequence

Tomorrow's World

1965–2003BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 29
Still from the opening titles of Camberwick Green1 sequence

Camberwick Green

1966BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Trumpton1 sequence

Trumpton

1967BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dad's Army1 sequence

Dad's Army

1968–1977BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sportsnight1 sequence

Sportsnight

1968–1997BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 26
Still from the opening titles of Monty Python's Flying Circus1 sequence

Monty Python's Flying Circus

1969–1974BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Clangers1 sequence

The Clangers

1969–1974BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Question of Sport1 sequence

A Question of Sport

1970–2023BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 20
Still from the opening titles of Doomwatch1 sequence

Doomwatch

1970–1972BBC OneSci-Fi

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mr Benn1 sequence

Mr Benn

1971–1972BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Two Ronnies1 sequence

The Two Ronnies

1971–1987BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Are You Being Served?1 sequence

Are You Being Served?

1972–1985BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em1 sequence

Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em

1973–1978BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Wombles1 sequence

The Wombles

1973–1975BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?1 sequence

Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?

1973–1974BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Bagpuss1 sequence

Bagpuss

1974BBC OneAnimation

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
Still from the opening titles of It Ain't Half Hot Mum1 sequence

It Ain't Half Hot Mum

1974–1981BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Porridge1 sequence

Porridge

1974–1977BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Roobarb1 sequence

Roobarb

1974BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Survivors1 sequence

Survivors

1975–1977BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of The Good Life1 sequence

The Good Life

1975–1978BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Open All Hours1 sequence

Open All Hours

1976–1985BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Rentaghost1 sequence

Rentaghost

1976–1984BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin1 sequence

The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin

1976–1979BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Citizen Smith1 sequence

Citizen Smith

1977–1980BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Secret Army1 sequence

Secret Army

1977–1979BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Blake's 71 sequence

Blake's 7

1978–1981BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Connections1 sequence

Connections

1978BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Going Straight1 sequence

Going Straight

1978BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Grange Hill2 sequences

Grange Hill

1978–2008BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 13–16
Still from the opening titles of Blankety Blank1 sequence

Blankety Blank

1979–1990BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Terry and June1 sequence

Terry and June

1979–1987BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of To the Manor Born1 sequence

To the Manor Born

1979–1981BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hi-de-Hi!1 sequence

Hi-de-Hi!

1980–1988BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Only Fools and Horses1 sequence

Only Fools and Horses

1981–2003BBC OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of Pigeon Street1 sequence

Pigeon Street

1981BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Postman Pat1 sequence

Postman Pat

1981–2017BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Willo the Wisp1 sequence

Willo the Wisp

1981BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of 'Allo 'Allo!1 sequence

'Allo 'Allo!

1982–1992BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Bananaman1 sequence

Bananaman

1983–1986BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Blackadder4 sequences

Blackadder

1983–1989BBC OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of Ever Decreasing Circles1 sequence

Ever Decreasing Circles

1984–1989BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Living Planet1 sequence

The Living Planet

1984BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Tripods1 sequence

The Tripods

1984–1985BBC OneSci-Fi

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of EastEnders2 sequences

EastEnders

1985–BBC OneDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of Howards' Way1 sequence

Howards' Way

1985–1990BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Bread1 sequence

Bread

1986–1991BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Brush Strokes1 sequence

Brush Strokes

1986–1991BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Casualty1 sequence

Casualty

1986–BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 27
Still from the opening titles of Dear John1 sequence

Dear John

1986–1987BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Singing Detective1 sequence

The Singing Detective

1986BBC OneDrama

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
Still from the opening titles of ChuckleVision2 sequences

ChuckleVision

1987–2009BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 17–20
Still from the opening titles of Fireman Sam1 sequence

Fireman Sam

1987–BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Countryfile1 sequence

Countryfile

1988–BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 24
Still from the opening titles of The Chronicles of Narnia1 sequence

The Chronicles of Narnia

1988–1990BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of You Rang, M'Lord?1 sequence

You Rang, M'Lord?

1988–1993BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin1 sequence

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin

1989BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Birds of a Feather2 sequences

Birds of a Feather

1989–2020BBC One / ITVComedy

Two sisters in Chigwell whose husbands are both in prison.

  • Season 1
  • Season 10
Still from the opening titles of Byker Grove1 sequence

Byker Grove

1989–2006BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 11
Still from the opening titles of Have I Got News for You1 sequence

Have I Got News for You

1990–BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Keeping Up Appearances1 sequence

Keeping Up Appearances

1990–1995BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of One Foot in the Grave1 sequence

One Foot in the Grave

1990–2000BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Brum1 sequence

Brum

1991–2002BBC OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of Noel's House Party1 sequence

Noel's House Party

1991–1999BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Brittas Empire1 sequence

The Brittas Empire

1991–1997BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Absolutely Fabulous1 sequence

Absolutely Fabulous

1992–2012BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of As Time Goes By1 sequence

As Time Goes By

1992–2005BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Grace & Favour1 sequence

Grace & Favour

1992–1993BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Men Behaving Badly1 sequence

Men Behaving Badly

1992–1998ITV / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Goodnight Sweetheart1 sequence

Goodnight Sweetheart

1993–1999BBC OneComedy

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

  • Seasons 1–6
Still from the opening titles of The Animals of Farthing Wood1 sequence

The Animals of Farthing Wood

1993–1995BBC OneAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pie in the Sky1 sequence

Pie in the Sky

1994–1997BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Vicar of Dibley1 sequence

The Vicar of Dibley

1994–2020BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Oh, Doctor Beeching!1 sequence

Oh, Doctor Beeching!

1995–1997BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Pride and Prejudice1 sequence

Pride and Prejudice

1995BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Queen's Nose1 sequence

The Queen's Nose

1995–2003BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ballykissangel2 sequences

Ballykissangel

1996–2001BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
  • Season 6
Still from the opening titles of Hetty Wainthropp Investigates1 sequence

Hetty Wainthropp Investigates

1996–1998BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Silent Witness1 sequence

Silent Witness

1996–BBC OneCrime

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
Still from the opening titles of The Demon Headmaster1 sequence

The Demon Headmaster

1996–1998BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Bob the Builder1 sequence

Bob the Builder

1999–2011BBC OneAnimation

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

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

Holby City

1999–2022BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 12
Still from the opening titles of Walking with Dinosaurs1 sequence

Walking with Dinosaurs

1999BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doctors1 sequence

Doctors

2000–2024BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 7
Still from the opening titles of My Family2 sequences

My Family

2000–2011BBC OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of The Blue Planet1 sequence

The Blue Planet

2001BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Spooks1 sequence

Spooks

2002–2011BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Still Game1 sequence

Still Game

2002–2019BBC Scotland / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Little Britain1 sequence

Little Britain

2003–2006BBC Three / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of New Tricks1 sequence

New Tricks

2003–2015BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of QI1 sequence

QI

2003–BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of Hustle1 sequence

Hustle

2004–2012BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Strictly Come Dancing1 sequence

Strictly Come Dancing

2004–BBC OneDocumentary

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
Still from the opening titles of Who Do You Think You Are?1 sequence

Who Do You Think You Are?

2004–BBC OneDocumentary

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

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

Bleak House

2005BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doctor Who (2005)8 sequences

Doctor Who (2005)

2005–BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Wallander1 sequence

Wallander

2005–2016SVT / BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Life on Mars1 sequence

Life on Mars

2006–2007BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Not Going Out1 sequence

Not Going Out

2006–BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Planet Earth1 sequence

Planet Earth

2006BBC OneDocumentary

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
Still from the opening titles of Torchwood1 sequence

Torchwood

2006–2011BBC Three / BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Waterloo Road1 sequence

Waterloo Road

2006–BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cranford1 sequence

Cranford

2007–2009BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Inspector George Gently1 sequence

Inspector George Gently

2007–2017BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Outnumbered1 sequence

Outnumbered

2007–2016BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Would I Lie to You?1 sequence

Would I Lie to You?

2007–BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Apparitions1 sequence

Apparitions

2008BBC OneHorror

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lark Rise to Candleford1 sequence

Lark Rise to Candleford

2008–2011BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Little Dorrit1 sequence

Little Dorrit

2008BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Merlin1 sequence

Merlin

2008–2012BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sense and Sensibility1 sequence

Sense and Sensibility

2008BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Miranda1 sequence

Miranda

2009–2015BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Occupation1 sequence

Occupation

2009BBC OneDrama

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

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

Small Island

2009BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Luther1 sequence

Luther

2010–2019BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sherlock1 sequence

Sherlock

2010–2017BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Death in Paradise1 sequence

Death in Paradise

2011–BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Frozen Planet1 sequence

Frozen Planet

2011BBC OneDocumentary

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Great Expectations1 sequence

Great Expectations

2011BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mrs. Brown's Boys1 sequence

Mrs. Brown's Boys

2011–BBC One / RTÉ OneComedy

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
Still from the opening titles of Outcasts1 sequence

Outcasts

2011BBC OneSci-Fi

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Young James Herriot1 sequence

Young James Herriot

2011BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Call the Midwife1 sequence

Call the Midwife

2012–BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Good Cop1 sequence

Good Cop

2012BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Last Tango in Halifax1 sequence

Last Tango in Halifax

2012–2020BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Line of Duty1 sequence

Line of Duty

2012–2021BBC Two / BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ripper Street1 sequence

Ripper Street

2012–2016BBC One / Prime VideoCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Atlantis1 sequence

Atlantis

2013–2015BBC OneSci-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
Still from the opening titles of Count Arthur Strong1 sequence

Count Arthur Strong

2013–2017BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Father Brown1 sequence

Father Brown

2013–BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hinterland1 sequence

Hinterland

2013–2016S4C / BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mayday1 sequence

Mayday

2013BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Our Girl1 sequence

Our Girl

2013–2020BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Peaky Blinders1 sequence

Peaky Blinders

2013–2022BBC Two / BBC OneCrime

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
Still from the opening titles of Shetland1 sequence

Shetland

2013–BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The White Queen1 sequence

The White Queen

2013Starz / BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Happy Valley1 sequence

Happy Valley

2014–2023BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Missing1 sequence

The Missing

2014–2016BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Musketeers1 sequence

The Musketeers

2014–2016BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of And Then There Were None1 sequence

And Then There Were None

2015BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Doctor Foster1 sequence

Doctor Foster

2015–BBC OneDrama

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

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

Poldark (2015)

2015–2019BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Night Manager1 sequence

The Night Manager

2016–2025BBC One / AMCDrama

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Blue Planet II1 sequence

Blue Planet II

2017BBC OneDocumentary

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
Still from the opening titles of Howards End1 sequence

Howards End

2017BBC One / StarzDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Little Women1 sequence

Little Women

2017BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Rellik1 sequence

Rellik

2017BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Strike1 sequence

Strike

2017–BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Very English Scandal1 sequence

A Very English Scandal

2018BBC OneDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Killing Eve1 sequence

Killing Eve

2018–2022BBC America / BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of McMafia1 sequence

McMafia

2018BBC One / AMCCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Requiem1 sequence

Requiem

2018BBC OneHorror

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Little Drummer Girl1 sequence

The Little Drummer Girl

2018BBC One / AMCDrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dublin Murders1 sequence

Dublin Murders

2019BBC One / StarzCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Gentleman Jack1 sequence

Gentleman Jack

2019–2022BBC One / HBODrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ghosts1 sequence

Ghosts

2019–2023BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of His Dark Materials1 sequence

His Dark Materials

2019–2022BBC One / HBOSci-Fi

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Years and Years1 sequence

Years and Years

2019BBC One / HBODrama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dracula1 sequence

Dracula

2020BBC OneHorror

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Vigil1 sequence

Vigil

2021–2023BBC OneCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Beyond Paradise1 sequence

Beyond Paradise

2023–BBC One / BritBoxCrime

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Amandaland1 sequence

Amandaland

2025–BBC OneComedy

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

  • Season 1