BBC Two

62 shows, 66 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

University Challenge

1962–ITV / BBC TwoDocumentary

College Boy by Derek New, and a split screen that has stacked two teams on top of each other since 1962.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Morecambe & Wise Show

1968–1983BBC Two / ThamesComedy

Bring Me Sunshine and a skip off stage, in front of the largest audience British television has ever had.

Season 2

1 sequence

The Goodies

1970–1982BBC TwoComedy

Three men on a trandem who will do anything, anytime — sketch comedy shot like a silent film.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Old Grey Whistle Test

1971–1988BBC TwoDocumentary

The serious music programme to Top of the Pops' singles chart, with a harmonica riff and a star-kicker cartoon.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ascent of Man

1973BBC TwoDocumentary

Jacob Bronowski on science as a human activity, made as the BBC's answer to its own Civilisation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fawlty Towers

1975–1979BBC TwoComedy

A hotel sign whose letters are rearranged into a different rude anagram every episode — the earliest running title gag in this catalogue by two decades.

Season 1

1 sequence

I, Claudius

1976BBC TwoDrama

A snake crossing a Roman mosaic — one image, held for forty-five seconds, and among the most efficient title sequences ever made.

Season 1

1 sequence

Butterflies

1978–1983BBC TwoComedy

Carla Lane's series about a housewife considering an affair and never quite having one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ski Sunday

1978–BBC TwoDocumentary

A downhill run cut to Pop Looks Bach, and a theme that in Britain means winter rather than skiing.

Season 43

1 sequence

Life on Earth

1979BBC TwoDocumentary

The series that invented the modern natural history film, and the template for everything Attenborough made afterwards.

Season 1

1 sequence

Not the Nine O'Clock News

1979–1982BBC TwoComedy

The sketch show that launched Rowan Atkinson and Mel Smith, opening on a parody of the bulletin it was scheduled against.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

1979BBC TwoDrama

A Russian nesting doll opening onto a blank face, over Geoffrey Burgon's setting of the Nunc Dimittis — the most quietly devastating title sequence the BBC has made.

Season 1

1 sequence

Great Railway Journeys

1980–1999BBC TwoDocumentary

A writer and a railway line, one country per episode, in the strand that gave Michael Palin his second career.

Season 1

1 sequence

Newsnight

1980–BBC TwoDocumentary

The BBC's late analysis programme, opening on a rotating globe of headlines rather than a presenter.

Season 1

1 sequence

Yes Minister

1980–1984BBC TwoComedy

Whitehall obstructing its own minister, opened by Gerald Scarfe caricatures drawing themselves.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

The Young Ones

1982–1984BBC TwoComedy

Four students in a condemned house, and the series that ended the British sitcom's post-war manners in one go.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alas Smith and Jones

1984–1998BBC TwoComedy

Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones after Not the Nine O'Clock News, with a title that puns on a western.

Season 1

1 sequence

Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV

1985–1987BBC TwoComedy

Sketches, songs at a piano, and the soap parody Acorn Antiques, which outlived the programme around it.

Season 1

1 sequence

A Very Peculiar Practice

1986–1992BBC TwoDrama

A campus medical practice used as a way of writing about what was happening to universities.

Season 1

2 sequences

Yes, Prime Minister

1986–1988, 2013BBC Two / GoldComedy

The sequel that promotes Hacker to Number Ten, and the 2013 revival that recast the whole thing.

Seasons 1–2
Season 3

1 sequence

A Bit of Fry & Laurie

1987–1995BBC TwoComedy

Sketches written and performed by two people who had just left Cambridge and sounded like it.

Season 2

1 sequence

French and Saunders

1987–2007BBC TwoComedy

Twenty years of film parodies, and the double act that came out of the Comic Strip.

Season 1

2 sequences

Red Dwarf

1988–BBC Two / DaveComedy

The last human alive, three million years from Earth, introduced with a mining ship the size of a city and a theme sung over the end of it.

Season 1
Season 10

1 sequence

Harry Enfield & Chums

1990–1992BBC TwoComedy

Enfield's characters given a series each week, and most of British catchphrase comedy for a decade after.

Season 1

1 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

1 sequence

Bottom

1991–1995BBC TwoComedy

Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson in a Hammersmith flat, hitting each other.

Season 1

1 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

1 sequence

Come Outside

1993–1997BBC TwoDocumentary

Auntie Mabel and her dog Pippin flying a spotted aeroplane to find out where one ordinary thing comes from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge

1994–1995BBC TwoComedy

The radio chat show moved to television, opening on a title sequence that is itself the character's idea of a good one.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Day Today

1994BBC TwoComedy

News-graphics bombast pushed just past the point of sense — a parody so accurate that actual bulletins caught up with it within a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Game On

1995–1998BBC TwoComedy

Three flatmates and an agoraphobic landlord, recast in the middle and carried on regardless.

Season 1

1 sequence

Never Mind the Buzzcocks

1996–2015BBC TwoComedy

A music panel game whose identity parade round outlasted most of the acts standing in it.

Season 1

1 sequence

This Life

1996–2007BBC TwoDrama

Five law graduates sharing a house in Southwark, shot handheld and stopped after two series while it was still growing.

Season 1

1 sequence

I'm Alan Partridge

1997–2002BBC TwoComedy

A theme with all the brass of a chat show its subject is no longer allowed to host, over a Travel Tavern car park.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teletubbies

1997–2001BBC TwoComedy

A baby's face in the sun, four aerials and a narrator counting them in — over two minutes of titles for a programme aimed at people under three.

Season 1

1 sequence

Big Train

1998–2002BBC TwoComedy

Graham Linehan and Arthur Mathews' sketch show, which opens on nothing explaining itself and never does.

Season 1

1 sequence

Goodness Gracious Me

1998–2001BBC TwoComedy

A radio sketch show that transferred to television and gave British comedy going for an English one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends

1998–2000BBC TwoDocumentary

Theroux embedding himself with American subcultures and letting the awkwardness do the work.

Season 1

1 sequence

Robot Wars

1998–2018BBC TwoDocumentary

Twenty-one seconds of sparks and industrial metal, for a programme in which people destroyed their own hardware for sport.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

The League of Gentlemen

1999–2017BBC TwoHorror

Royston Vasey, a local shop, and a radio series that arrived on television already knowing exactly what it looked like.

Season 1

1 sequence

Coupling

2000–2004BBC TwoComedy

Six friends in a bar, structured as farce rather than warmth — the British sitcom most often, and most unfairly, compared to Friends.

Season 1

2 sequences

Top Gear

2002–BBC TwoDocumentary

Twenty-one seconds of engine noise and a rock riff — a motoring programme that opens like a trailer for itself.

Season 1
Season 23

1 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

1 sequence

Dragons' Den

2005–BBC TwoDocumentary

The Japanese format Britain took and exported again, opening on money stacked in front of five people who are not going to give you any.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mock the Week

2005–2022BBC TwoComedy

A topical panel show whose titles cut the week's news into a strobing collage before anyone speaks.

Season 1

1 sequence

That Mitchell and Webb Look

2006–2010BBC TwoComedy

The sketch show out of the radio series That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and the home of Numberwang.

Season 1

1 sequence

Only Connect

2008–BBC Four / BBC TwoDocumentary

A quiz whose easiest round asks what four things have in common, and whose hardest does not admit there is a connection at all.

Season 1

1 sequence

Miranda

2009–2015BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

The Great British Bake Off

2010–BBC Two / Channel 4Documentary

Bunting, a tent and a xylophone — twenty seconds of deliberate gentleness, and one of the most effective pieces of format branding on British television.