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CBS opening titles

CBS accounts for 191 shows here, running from 1948 to the present, and 208 opening title sequences between them.

Comedy leads with 63, then crime with 50.

14 of them rebuilt their titles at least once — most of all Young Sheldon, with four distinct sequences.

191 shows · 208 sequences · oldest first

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

Still from the opening titles of The Ed Sullivan Show1 sequence

The Ed Sullivan Show

1948–1971CBSDocumentary

Twenty-three years of Sunday nights, and the stage the Beatles and Elvis were introduced to America from.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show1 sequence

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show

1950–1958CBSComedy

A sitcom in which the husband watches the rest of the episode on a television in his study and comments on it — thirty years before anyone called that postmodern.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Truth or Consequences1 sequence

Truth or Consequences

1950–1988CBS / NBC / SyndicationDocumentary

A radio stunt show that reached television in 1950 and persuaded a New Mexico town to rename itself after it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of I Love Lucy1 sequence

I Love Lucy

1951–1957CBSComedy

A satin heart on a cigarette-brand backdrop — a title card that exists because the sponsor paid for it, and which outlived the sponsor by seventy years.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Search for Tomorrow1 sequence

Search for Tomorrow

1951–1986CBS / NBCDrama

Thirty-five years of American daytime, and the serial that was on air before most of the networks carrying it were.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Guiding Light2 sequences

Guiding Light

1952–2009CBSDrama

Seventy-two years on radio and television between them — the longest-running story ever told in any medium.

  • Season 44
  • Season 51
Still from the opening titles of Our Miss Brooks1 sequence

Our Miss Brooks

1952–1956CBSComedy

Eve Arden as a high-school English teacher, in a radio transfer that ran on both media at once.

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

The Danny Thomas Show

1953–1964ABC / CBSComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Father Knows Best1 sequence

Father Knows Best

1954–1960CBS / NBCComedy

The Anderson family of Springfield, and the series the phrase came from.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Alfred Hitchcock Presents1 sequence

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

1955–1962CBSCrime

Nine strokes of a pen, and then the man himself walks in from the right and stands inside his own outline. A director who had spent thirty years staying behind the camera made his silhouette the most recognisable thing on American television.

  • Seasons 1–7
Still from the opening titles of The Honeymooners1 sequence

The Honeymooners

1955–1956CBSComedy

A moon over Brooklyn and an orchestra — the sitcom that most American sitcoms since are a variation on, in thirty-nine episodes.

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

The Phil Silvers Show

1955–1959CBSComedy

A military march for a sergeant running every racket on the base — the ancestor of every workplace comedy about a charming fraud.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of As the World Turns2 sequences

As the World Turns

1956–2010CBSDrama

The turning globe that gave American daytime its most-copied image, over fifty-four years.

  • Season 41
  • Season 52
Still from the opening titles of Playhouse 901 sequence

Playhouse 90

1956–1960CBSDrama

Ninety minutes of live original drama every week, and the anthology from which Rod Serling, John Frankenheimer and most of the era's writers emerged.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of To Tell the Truth1 sequence

To Tell the Truth

1956–CBSDocumentary

Three people claiming to be the same person, and the line that ends it — will the real one please stand up.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Have Gun – Will Travel1 sequence

Have Gun – Will Travel

1957–1963CBSDrama

A gunfighter who advertises in the newspaper, and one of the first westerns to open on a business card.

  • Seasons 1–6
Still from the opening titles of Perry Mason (1957)1 sequence

Perry Mason (1957)

1957–1966CBSCrime

'Park Avenue Beat' — a jazz chart with a walking bass, over a courtroom drama that ran for nine years on almost nothing else.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Rawhide1 sequence

Rawhide

1959–1965CBSDrama

A cattle drive that never arrives, with Frankie Laine's theme and a young Clint Eastwood.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Twilight Zone3 sequences

The Twilight Zone

1959–1964CBSSci-Fi

Three different openings in five seasons, and the one everybody can hum arrived third. Rod Serling narrates the audience into another dimension over abstractions that were, for 1959, genuinely strange television.

  • Season 1
  • Season 2
  • Seasons 3–5
Still from the opening titles of My Three Sons1 sequence

My Three Sons

1960–1972ABC / CBSComedy

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

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

The Andy Griffith Show

1960–1968CBSComedy

A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.

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

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000ABC / CBSAnimation

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Defenders1 sequence

The Defenders

1961–1965CBSDrama

A father-and-son legal practice taking cases the era's networks were not supposed to broadcast — abortion, blacklisting, euthanasia.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Dick Van Dyke Show2 sequences

The Dick Van Dyke Show

1961–1966CBSComedy

A man walking into his own living room and either tripping over the ottoman or stepping neatly around it — two versions shot, and the network alternated them.

  • Season 1
  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Beverly Hillbillies1 sequence

The Beverly Hillbillies

1962–1971CBSComedy

"The Ballad of Jed Clampett" — a bluegrass number that reached number one on the country chart while the series was running.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Petticoat Junction1 sequence

Petticoat Junction

1963–1970CBSComedy

The Shady Rest Hotel, sharing a universe with Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales1 sequence

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales

1963–1966CBSAnimation

A zoo penguin with a walrus and a professor who explains how things work, which made it educational enough to keep.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Gilligan's Island1 sequence

Gilligan's Island

1964–1967CBSComedy

A theme song that narrates the entire premise, names every castaway, and was rewritten after the first season to stop leaving two of them out.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of The Munsters1 sequence

The Munsters

1964–1966CBSComedy

The rival monster sitcom, launched the same year, opening with a surf-rock instrumental and a family filing out of a house at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Underdog1 sequence

Underdog

1964–1967NBC / CBSAnimation

A superhero who rhymes, and one of the last title sequences built around its sponsor's product.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Get Smart1 sequence

Get Smart

1965–1970NBC / CBSComedy

A man walking through a corridor of doors that each slam behind him, ending in a phone box that drops him into headquarters. The joke is the length of it.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Green Acres1 sequence

Green Acres

1965–1971CBSComedy

A duet in which husband and wife argue about the move the series is built on, sung directly to camera.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hogan's Heroes1 sequence

Hogan's Heroes

1965–1971CBSComedy

A prisoner-of-war camp run as a sabotage operation, opened by a march whistled rather than sung.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lost in Space1 sequence

Lost in Space

1965–1968CBSSci-Fi

John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Wild Wild West1 sequence

The Wild Wild West

1965–1969CBSDrama

An animated frontier vignette that pauses on four panels of a comic strip — a western opening built like a title card for a serial.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mission: Impossible1 sequence

Mission: Impossible

1966–1973CBSDrama

A lit fuse crossing the screen while clips from the episode ahead flash past it — a title sequence recut every week from the show it introduces.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Carol Burnett Show1 sequence

The Carol Burnett Show

1967–1978CBSComedy

Twenty-three seconds and a Bob Mackie gown, from the variety show that taught American television how a sketch ensemble should work.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Herculoids1 sequence

The Herculoids

1967–1969CBSAnimation

Alex Toth designs on an alien planet, in the run of Hanna-Barbera action shows that got them banned from Saturday mornings for violence.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of 60 Minutes1 sequence

60 Minutes

1968–CBSDocumentary

A stopwatch and a ticking sound, and nothing else — the shortest argument any programme has made for its own title.

  • Season 23
Still from the opening titles of Hawaii Five-O1 sequence

Hawaii Five-O

1968–1980CBSCrime

The wave, the zoom onto the hotel balcony, and one of the four or five most recognisable television themes ever recorded.

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

The Archie Show

1968–1969CBSAnimation

The cartoon whose fictional band had a real number one single, which is a thing that has happened once.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Wacky Races1 sequence

Wacky Races

1968–1969CBSAnimation

Eleven cars introduced one at a time by a narrator, which is a title sequence that is also the entire premise.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Hee Haw1 sequence

Hee Haw

1969–1993CBS / SyndicationComedy

Country music and cornfield jokes, cancelled by CBS in the rural purge and then outliving it in syndication by twenty years.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!1 sequence

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

1969–1970CBSAnimation

A theme that asks the title as a question, over a van and five characters who have been drawn the same way for fifty-five years.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Josie and the Pussycats1 sequence

Josie and the Pussycats

1970–1971CBSAnimation

An Archie Comics spin-off built around a band, with records released under the characters' names.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of All in the Family1 sequence

All in the Family

1971–1979CBSComedy

Two people at an upright piano singing about how things used to be — an opening performed live by the cast rather than scored.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cannon1 sequence

Cannon

1971–1976CBSCrime

William Conrad as a private investigator, the first Quinn Martin series built around a heavy-set lead.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour1 sequence

The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour

1971–1974CBSComedy

A married double act insulting each other between songs, in the variety hour that made Cher a television star.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids1 sequence

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

1972–1985CBSAnimation

A North Philadelphia junkyard, with a moral at the end and a live-action introduction at the start.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of M*A*S*H1 sequence

M*A*S*H

1972–1983CBSComedy

A comedy that opens every week with casualties being carried off a helicopter. Nurses and surgeons run for the landing pad while the theme plays underneath — an instrumental of a song the network would not let anyone sing, because of what its chorus says.

  • Seasons 1–11
Still from the opening titles of Maude1 sequence

Maude

1972–1978CBSComedy

The All in the Family spin-off, with a theme song that lists historical women and lands on Maude.

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

The Bob Newhart Show

1972–1978CBSComedy

A psychologist commuting through Chicago, filmed at the pace of a man who is not looking forward to his day.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Price Is Right2 sequences

The Price Is Right

1972–CBSDocumentary

"Come on down" — the longest-running game show in American television, opening the same way for fifty years.

  • Season 1
  • Season 36
Still from the opening titles of The Waltons1 sequence

The Waltons

1972–1981CBSDrama

A Virginia mountain homestead in the Depression, introduced with a warmth the decade's other dramas had no interest in.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Barnaby Jones1 sequence

Barnaby Jones

1973–1980CBSCrime

Buddy Ebsen as a retired investigator who comes back to work after his son is killed.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Kojak1 sequence

Kojak

1973–1978CBSCrime

New York in the seventies, a lollipop, and a brass theme that has aged considerably better than the decade around it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Young and the Restless2 sequences

The Young and the Restless

1973–CBSDrama

Genoa City, and the daytime ratings leader in America for more than thirty-five consecutive years.

  • Season 16
  • Season 45
Still from the opening titles of Good Times1 sequence

Good Times

1974–1979CBSComedy

A Chicago housing project and a gospel-inflected theme whose lyrics nobody has ever fully agreed on.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Rhoda1 sequence

Rhoda

1974–1978CBSComedy

The first Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, following Rhoda Morgenstern back to New York.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Jeffersons1 sequence

The Jeffersons

1975–1985CBSComedy

'Movin' On Up' over a family arriving at a Manhattan apartment — a theme that functions as a plot summary and a thesis at once.

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

Wonder Woman

1975–1979ABC / CBSSci-Fi

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

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Logan's Run1 sequence

Logan's Run

1977–1978CBSSci-Fi

The film continued as a series, running fourteen episodes before CBS stopped it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lou Grant1 sequence

Lou Grant

1977–1982CBSDrama

The Mary Tyler Moore Show character moved into an hour-long newspaper drama — the only American series to make that jump.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Amazing Spider-Man1 sequence

The Amazing Spider-Man

1977–1979CBSSci-Fi

CBS's live-action Spider-Man, dropped in part because the network did not want to be known for comic books.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Incredible Hulk1 sequence

The Incredible Hulk

1977–1982CBSSci-Fi

A narrated origin, a green transformation, and a piano coda so sad it became the show's real signature — though that plays over the closing credits, not these.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dallas1 sequence

Dallas

1978–1991CBSDrama

A three-panel split screen over the Dallas skyline, and the theme that defined what a primetime soap was allowed to sound like.

  • Season 10
Still from the opening titles of The White Shadow1 sequence

The White Shadow

1978–1981CBSDrama

A white ex-professional coaching basketball at a mostly black Los Angeles high school.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of WKRP in Cincinnati1 sequence

WKRP in Cincinnati

1978–1982CBSComedy

A radio-station sitcom whose theme was written to sound like a record the station would actually play.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Archie Bunker's Place1 sequence

Archie Bunker's Place

1979–1983CBSComedy

All in the Family continued as a bar, four more years after the series that made Archie famous had finished.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Knots Landing1 sequence

Knots Landing

1979–1993CBSDrama

A cul-de-sac shot from above, with the neighbours' houses laid out like a diagram of everyone's business.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Dukes of Hazzard1 sequence

The Dukes of Hazzard

1979–1985CBSComedy

A Georgia county run by the man who owns it, and a car that spends a good part of every hour off the ground.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Trapper John, M.D.1 sequence

Trapper John, M.D.

1979–1986CBSDrama

The MASH surgeon twenty-eight years later, running a San Francisco hospital.

  • Season 6
Still from the opening titles of Magnum, P.I.1 sequence

Magnum, P.I.

1980–1988CBSCrime

Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cagney & Lacey1 sequence

Cagney & Lacey

1981–1988CBSCrime

Two detectives introduced as colleagues rather than as a novelty, which in 1981 was itself the statement.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Falcon Crest1 sequence

Falcon Crest

1981–1990CBSDrama

Napa vineyards filmed like an estate agent's brochure, for a family who spend nine seasons trying to take it from each other.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Simon & Simon1 sequence

Simon & Simon

1981–1989CBSCrime

Two brothers running a San Diego detective agency with opposite methods.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Newhart1 sequence

Newhart

1982–1990CBSComedy

The Vermont inn sitcom, and the source of what is still widely held to be the best final scene in American television.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Square Pegs1 sequence

Square Pegs

1982–1983CBSComedy

Two girls trying to be popular at a Californian high school, one season long and much imitated since.

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

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986ABC / CBSCrime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dungeons & Dragons1 sequence

Dungeons & Dragons

1983–1985CBSAnimation

Six children pulled off a fairground ride into the game, with the ride itself doing the work of the title sequence.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Press Your Luck1 sequence

Press Your Luck

1983–1986CBSDocumentary

A quiz built around a board that could take everything back, and a contestant who memorised its patterns.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Scarecrow and Mrs. King1 sequence

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

1983–1987CBSDrama

A divorced housewife recruited into intelligence work by accident.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Airwolf1 sequence

Airwolf

1984–1987CBS / USADrama

A helicopter emerging from a desert mesa to a synth fanfare, at a level of self-seriousness the decade rewarded.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Charles in Charge1 sequence

Charles in Charge

1984–1990CBS / SyndicationComedy

A student paying his rent by minding somebody else's children, in a sitcom CBS cancelled and syndication brought back.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cover Up1 sequence

Cover Up

1984–1985CBSDrama

A fashion photographer and her model working as agents, and the series remembered for how its lead died.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Kate & Allie1 sequence

Kate & Allie

1984–1989CBSComedy

Two divorced friends sharing a Greenwich Village apartment and bringing up their children in it together.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Muppet Babies1 sequence

Muppet Babies

1984–1991CBSAnimation

The Muppets as toddlers in a nursery, spun out of a dream sequence in The Muppets Take Manhattan.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Murder, She Wrote1 sequence

Murder, She Wrote

1984–1996CBSCrime

A typewriter, a bicycle and Cabot Cove — twelve seasons of the most reassuring opening ever attached to a programme about repeated homicide.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Equalizer (1985)1 sequence

The Equalizer (1985)

1985–1989CBSCrime

A retired intelligence officer advertising his services in the classifieds, scored by Stewart Copeland the year after the Police stopped.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Twilight Zone (1985)1 sequence

The Twilight Zone (1985)

1985–1989CBSSci-Fi

The first revival, with the Grateful Dead re-recording Marius Constant's motif — the middle of three attempts at the same idea, all of which are now in this catalogue.

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

Designing Women

1986–1993CBSComedy

Georgia On My Mind over an Atlanta design firm, with the cast photographed like a society page.

  • Season 6
Still from the opening titles of Pee-wee's Playhouse1 sequence

Pee-wee's Playhouse

1986–1990CBSComedy

A Saturday morning show designed by artists from the New York gallery scene, with a theme sung by Cyndi Lauper under a pseudonym.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Jake and the Fatman1 sequence

Jake and the Fatman

1987–1992CBSCrime

A Hawaii prosecutor and his investigator, spun out of a single episode of Matlock.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bold and the Beautiful2 sequences

The Bold and the Beautiful

1987–CBSDrama

Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.

  • Season 1
  • Season 38
Still from the opening titles of Tour of Duty1 sequence

Tour of Duty

1987–1990CBSDrama

An infantry platoon in Vietnam, and the first American drama series to be set there.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Wiseguy1 sequence

Wiseguy

1987–1990CBSCrime

An undercover agent left inside one organisation for a whole arc at a time, which is roughly where American television learned to serialise.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of In the Heat of the Night1 sequence

In the Heat of the Night

1988–1995NBC / CBSCrime

The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.

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

Murphy Brown

1988–2018CBSComedy

A Washington newsroom and a Motown needle-drop that changed every episode — the theme was a different soul record each week.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Family Matters1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998ABC / CBSComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Lonesome Dove1 sequence

Lonesome Dove

1989CBSDrama

Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Northern Exposure1 sequence

Northern Exposure

1990–1995CBSComedy

A moose walking through an empty Alaskan town, which is the entire opening and remains one of television's best jokes about scale.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Bradys1 sequence

The Bradys

1990CBSDrama

The Brady children as adults, played as an hour-long drama, which lasted six weeks.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Brooklyn Bridge1 sequence

Brooklyn Bridge

1991–1993CBSComedy

Gary David Goldberg's memory of a 1950s Jewish family in Bensonhurst.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Silk Stalkings1 sequence

Silk Stalkings

1991–1999CBS / USA NetworkCrime

Palm Beach sex-crimes detectives, and the show that effectively invented USA Network's original programming.

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

Step by Step

1991–1998ABC / CBSComedy

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

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

The Royal Family

1991–1992CBSComedy

Redd Foxx and Della Reese as a couple whose children move back in, and the series Foxx died making.

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

Beakman's World

1992–1998TLC / CBSDocumentary

Science explained by a man in a green coat and a person in a rat suit, which is more rigorous than it sounds.

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Forever Knight1 sequence

Forever Knight

1992–1996CBS / SyndicationHorror

A vampire working homicide nights in Toronto, introduced with narration explaining the arrangement every week.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Picket Fences1 sequence

Picket Fences

1992–1996CBSDrama

Small-town Wisconsin filmed as pastoral before every episode demonstrates it is anything but.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of The Golden Palace1 sequence

The Golden Palace

1992–1993CBSComedy

The Golden Girls minus one, running a Miami hotel for a single season before CBS stopped.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Alex Haley's Queen1 sequence

Alex Haley's Queen

1993CBSDrama

Haley's last book filmed as three nights on CBS, following his own paternal grandmother.

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

Dave's World

1993–1997CBSComedy

Dave Barry's columns turned into a sitcom, with the household drawn rather than filmed in the titles.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Diagnosis: Murder1 sequence

Diagnosis: Murder

1993–2001CBSCrime

Dick Van Dyke as a doctor who solves murders, spun off from Jake and the Fatman.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman1 sequence

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

1993–1998CBSDrama

A Boston doctor practising in 1860s Colorado Springs.

  • Seasons 2–3
Still from the opening titles of Late Show with David Letterman1 sequence

Late Show with David Letterman

1993–2015CBSComedy

Letterman moved to CBS and to a theatre on Broadway, which the titles put on screen every night for twenty-two years.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Nanny1 sequence

The Nanny

1993–1999CBSComedy

Cartoon animation narrating how a woman from Flushing ended up in a Manhattan townhouse — a premise delivered entirely in the titles.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Walker, Texas Ranger1 sequence

Walker, Texas Ranger

1993–2001CBSCrime

Chuck Norris as a Ranger, with a theme song he sings himself from the third season on.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Chicago Hope1 sequence

Chicago Hope

1994–2000CBSDrama

The medical drama that premiered the same week as ER and spent six years being the other one.

  • Season 5
Still from the opening titles of Touched by an Angel1 sequence

Touched by an Angel

1994–2003CBSDrama

Angels sent to intervene in ordinary American lives, nine seasons long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of American Gothic (1995)1 sequence

American Gothic (1995)

1995–1996CBSHorror

A South Carolina sheriff who is something worse than corrupt, created by Shaun Cassidy and produced by Sam Raimi.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cybill1 sequence

Cybill

1995–1998CBSComedy

An actress whose career never quite happened, written closely around the one its star actually had.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of JAG1 sequence

JAG

1995–2005NBC / CBSDrama

Navy lawyers across ten seasons, and the series NCIS was spun out of.

  • Season 9
Still from the opening titles of Early Edition1 sequence

Early Edition

1996–2000CBSDrama

A man who receives tomorrow's newspaper today, delivered by a cat.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Everybody Loves Raymond1 sequence

Everybody Loves Raymond

1996–2005CBSComedy

A brass sting and a family photograph, in forty-eight seconds that promise nothing more complicated than what you are about to get.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of EZ Streets1 sequence

EZ Streets

1996–1997CBSCrime

Paul Haggis's crime drama, cancelled in nine episodes and cited ever since as an ancestor of the prestige era.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Nash Bridges1 sequence

Nash Bridges

1996–2001CBSCrime

Don Johnson in San Francisco with a yellow Barracuda, after Miami Vice.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Becker1 sequence

Becker

1998–2004CBSComedy

A Bronx doctor with no patience for his patients, and a diner where nobody is much happier.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Martial Law1 sequence

Martial Law

1998–2000CBSCrime

Sammo Hung as a Chinese detective in Los Angeles, doing his own stunts at forty-six.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The King of Queens1 sequence

The King of Queens

1998–2007CBSComedy

A delivery driver, his wife and her father in Rego Park, nine seasons long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Judging Amy1 sequence

Judging Amy

1999–2005CBSDrama

A family court judge and her social worker mother, built from the creator's own mother's career.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation1 sequence

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

2000–2015CBSCrime

The Who over forensic macro photography, and the sequence that turned laboratory work into prime-time spectacle for a decade.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Survivor2 sequences

Survivor

2000–CBSDocumentary

The competition format that rebuilt American primetime, and rebuilds its titles for every location.

  • Season 1
  • Season 50
Still from the opening titles of The District1 sequence

The District

2000–2004CBSCrime

A police chief running Washington on statistics, loosely modelled on the man who did it in New York.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Yes, Dear1 sequence

Yes, Dear

2000–2006CBSComedy

Two couples raising children in the same Los Angeles house, one of them anxious about it and one not.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Amazing Race1 sequence

The Amazing Race

2001–CBSDocumentary

A race around the world, opening on a map and a countdown that has won ten Emmys for its programme.

  • Season 10
Still from the opening titles of The Guardian2 sequences

The Guardian

2001–2004CBSDrama

A corporate lawyer sentenced to community service in child advocacy, which turns out to be the real job.

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 2–3
Still from the opening titles of CSI: Miami1 sequence

CSI: Miami

2002–2012CBSCrime

The first CSI spin-off, opened by The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Without a Trace1 sequence

Without a Trace

2002–2009CBSCrime

Missing-person photographs and a clock, in thirty-two seconds that state the format precisely.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Cold Case1 sequence

Cold Case

2003–2010CBSCrime

Evidence boxes and faded photographs, for a procedural whose whole method is that the past is filed somewhere.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Joan of Arcadia1 sequence

Joan of Arcadia

2003–2005CBSDrama

A teenager who talks to God, introduced by a Joan Osborne song that asks what if God were one of us — the rare case of a theme predating and defining the premise.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of NCIS2 sequences

NCIS

2003–CBSCrime

Naval insignia, photographs and a snare roll, refreshed periodically as a cast that has now turned over almost completely came and went.

  • Season 10
  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Two and a Half Men1 sequence

Two and a Half Men

2003–2015CBSComedy

Twelve seasons on a Malibu beach house, opened by four sung syllables.

  • Season 6
Still from the opening titles of CSI: NY1 sequence

CSI: NY

2004–2013CBSCrime

The third CSI, opened by "Baba O'Riley".

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Criminal Minds1 sequence

Criminal Minds

2005–CBS / Paramount+Crime

Case files and profiler jargon in thirty-one seconds, from a procedural that has now run for two decades.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ghost Whisperer1 sequence

Ghost Whisperer

2005–2010CBSHorror

Jennifer Love Hewitt talking to the dead in a small Maryland town.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of How I Met Your Mother1 sequence

How I Met Your Mother

2005–2014CBSComedy

Fourteen seconds of photographs and a ukulele — a nine-year story introduced by a handful of snapshots.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Medium1 sequence

Medium

2005–2011NBC / CBSCrime

Patricia Arquette as a consultant to the district attorney who dreams the cases.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Numb3rs1 sequence

Numb3rs

2005–2010CBSCrime

An FBI agent and his mathematician brother, with the equations drawn over the city in the titles.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Threshold1 sequence

Threshold

2005–2006CBSSci-Fi

Geometric contact imagery and a rising tone, from one of three first-contact series the American networks launched in the same season.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Jericho1 sequence

Jericho

2006–2008CBSDrama

Thirteen seconds and a mushroom cloud on the horizon, seen from a Kansas town that has no idea what happened.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The New Adventures of Old Christine1 sequence

The New Adventures of Old Christine

2006–2010CBSComedy

A divorced mother whose former husband's new girlfriend is also called Christine, which is where the title comes from.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Unit2 sequences

The Unit

2006–2009CBSDrama

Delta Force at work and their wives at home on the base, developed for television by David Mamet.

  • Season 1
  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of Rules of Engagement1 sequence

Rules of Engagement

2007–2013CBSComedy

Two couples at opposite ends of a relationship and one man at neither, in the sitcom CBS used for years as a gap-filler.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of The Big Bang Theory1 sequence

The Big Bang Theory

2007–2019CBSComedy

Fourteen billion years of natural history in twenty-three seconds, flashing past at one image per beat.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Flashpoint1 sequence

Flashpoint

2008–2012CTV / CBSCrime

A Toronto tactical unit, and the first Canadian drama to air simultaneously on an American network.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Mentalist1 sequence

The Mentalist

2008–2015CBSCrime

A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of NCIS: Los Angeles1 sequence

NCIS: Los Angeles

2009–2023CBSCrime

The first NCIS spin-off, fourteen seasons of undercover work.

  • Season 5
Still from the opening titles of The Good Wife1 sequence

The Good Wife

2009–2016CBSDrama

Chicago legal iconography in thirty-nine seconds, from the network drama most often argued to be the best of its era.

  • Seasons 1–2
Still from the opening titles of Blue Bloods1 sequence

Blue Bloods

2010–2024CBSCrime

Three generations of one New York police family, fourteen seasons long.

  • Seasons 10–12
Still from the opening titles of Hawaii Five-0 (2010)1 sequence

Hawaii Five-0 (2010)

2010–2020CBSCrime

The reboot, which keeps the 1968 theme almost note for note and rebuilds the wave and the zoom around it in high definition.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mike & Molly2 sequences

Mike & Molly

2010–2016CBSComedy

Two people who meet at an overeaters group on the north side of Chicago.

  • Season 1
  • Seasons 4–6
Still from the opening titles of 2 Broke Girls1 sequence

2 Broke Girls

2011–2017CBSComedy

Two waitresses in Williamsburg saving towards a cupcake business, with the running total printed on screen at the end of every episode.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Person of Interest1 sequence

Person of Interest

2011–2016CBSSci-Fi

Surveillance footage narrated by the machine watching it — an opening delivered from the point of view of the software, years before that was a common idea.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Unforgettable1 sequence

Unforgettable

2011–2016CBSCrime

A detective who remembers every day of her life except the one that matters.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Elementary1 sequence

Elementary

2012–2019CBSCrime

Holmes and a female Watson in New York, opened by a Rube Goldberg machine assembling itself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Mom1 sequence

Mom

2013–2021CBSComedy

A newly sober mother and her newly sober mother, in a Chuck Lorre sitcom that got steadily less comfortable on purpose.

  • Season 8
Still from the opening titles of Under the Dome1 sequence

Under the Dome

2013–2015CBSSci-Fi

A Stephen King novel stretched across three summers, and eleven seconds of a town under glass.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Madam Secretary1 sequence

Madam Secretary

2014–2019CBSDrama

A CIA analyst made Secretary of State, in the political drama CBS ran opposite prestige cable.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of NCIS: New Orleans1 sequence

NCIS: New Orleans

2014–2021CBSCrime

The franchise moved to a city with a soundtrack, which the titles spend all twenty-one seconds on.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Scorpion1 sequence

Scorpion

2014–2018CBSDrama

A team of geniuses contracted by Homeland Security, very loosely based on a real consultant's account of himself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Battle Creek1 sequence

Battle Creek

2015CBSCrime

Vince Gilligan's script from a decade earlier, finally made, and cancelled after thirteen episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Code Black1 sequence

Code Black

2015–2018CBSDrama

The busiest emergency room in America, named for the state it spends most of its time in.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of CSI: Cyber1 sequence

CSI: Cyber

2015–2016CBSCrime

The last CSI, moving the forensics from bodies to hard drives, and the one the franchise ended on.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Life in Pieces1 sequence

Life in Pieces

2015–2019CBSComedy

One family across four short stories an episode, told out of order and cut together at the end.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Limitless1 sequence

Limitless

2015–2016CBSSci-Fi

The film's premise as a procedural, opened by Prologue in twenty-two seconds of chemical bloom.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Supergirl1 sequence

Supergirl

2015–2021CBS / The CWSci-Fi

The narrated-premise formula again, this time with a first-person introduction that ran for six seasons.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert2 sequences

The Late Show with Stephen Colbert

2015–2026CBSComedy

Two openings across eleven years: Manhattan shot in tilt-shift so the city reads as a model, then a drone run through the Ed Sullivan Theater and its backstage.

  • Seasons 1–6
  • Seasons 7–11
Still from the opening titles of Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders1 sequence

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

2016–2017CBSCrime

The spin-off that moved the profiling unit to crimes against Americans abroad.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of S.W.A.T. (2017)1 sequence

S.W.A.T. (2017)

2017–2025CBSCrime

The reboot, which ran eight seasons to the original's two and rebuilt the theme rather than dropping it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Salvation1 sequence

Salvation

2017–2018CBSSci-Fi

An asteroid six months from Earth and a government that would rather not say so.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Young Sheldon4 sequences

Young Sheldon

2017–2024CBSComedy

The Big Bang Theory prequel, narrated by the adult Sheldon it never shows. Its titles are one family portrait in the West Texas hills, reshot every couple of seasons as the children outgrow the last version of it.

  • Seasons 1–2
  • Seasons 3–4
  • Seasons 5–6
  • and 1 more
Still from the opening titles of The Neighborhood1 sequence

The Neighborhood

2018–2026CBSComedy

A relentlessly friendly Midwestern family moving into a Black neighbourhood in Pasadena, and the man next door who would rather they had not.

  • Season 8
Still from the opening titles of Evil1 sequence

Evil

2019–2024CBS / Paramount+Horror

Religious iconography and clinical diagrams intercut, so that possession and psychiatry are presented with equal weight — which is the show's entire method.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of FBI: Most Wanted1 sequence

FBI: Most Wanted

2020–2025CBSCrime

The first FBI spin-off, following the fugitive task force, in nine seconds of title card.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of CSI: Vegas1 sequence

CSI: Vegas

2021–2024CBSCrime

The franchise returned to the city it started in, with two of the original cast and the same Who song.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of FBI: International1 sequence

FBI: International

2021–2025CBSCrime

The franchise's Budapest-based Fly Team, covering American interests across Europe.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of NCIS: Hawai'i1 sequence

NCIS: Hawai'i

2021–2024CBSCrime

The first NCIS led by a woman, and eleven seconds of titles to say so.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Fire Country1 sequence

Fire Country

2022–CBSDrama

A convict on a Northern California firefighting crew, working off his sentence.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Elsbeth1 sequence

Elsbeth

2024–CBSCrime

The Good Wife's oddest lawyer given a Columbo format of her own, and nine seconds to introduce it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of NCIS: Origins1 sequence

NCIS: Origins

2024–CBSCrime

Gibbs in 1991, twenty-one years before the parent series began.

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

Boston Blue

2025–CBSCrime

The Blue Bloods spin-off, moving a Reagan to Boston and a different police family's dinner table.

  • Season 1