CBS

190 shows, 206 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

The Ed Sullivan Show

1948–1971·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show

1950–1958·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Truth or Consequences

1950–1988·CBS / NBC / Syndication·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

I Love Lucy

1951–1957·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Search for Tomorrow

1951–1986·CBS / NBC·Drama

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Guiding Light

1952–2009·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 44
• Season 51

1 sequence

Our Miss Brooks

1952–1956·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Danny Thomas Show

1953–1964·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Father Knows Best

1954–1960·CBS / NBC·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

1955–1962·CBS·Crime

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

1 sequence

The Honeymooners

1955–1956·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Phil Silvers Show

1955–1959·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

As the World Turns

1956–2010·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 41
• Season 52

1 sequence

Playhouse 90

1956–1960·CBS·Drama

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

1 sequence

To Tell the Truth

1956–·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Have Gun – Will Travel

1957–1963·CBS·Drama

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

• Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Perry Mason (1957)

1957–1966·CBS·Crime

'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

1 sequence

Rawhide

1959–1965·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

3 sequences

The Twilight Zone

1959–1964·CBS·Sci-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

1 sequence

My Three Sons

1960–1972·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Andy Griffith Show

1960–1968·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Bugs Bunny Show

1960–2000·ABC / CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Defenders

1961–1965·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Dick Van Dyke Show

1961–1966·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Beverly Hillbillies

1962–1971·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Petticoat Junction

1963–1970·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales

1963–1966·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Gilligan's Island

1964–1967·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Munsters

1964–1966·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Underdog

1964–1967·NBC / CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Get Smart

1965–1970·NBC / CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Green Acres

1965–1971·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hogan's Heroes

1965–1971·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lost in Space

1965–1968·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Wild Wild West

1965–1969·CBS·Drama

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

1 sequence

Mission: Impossible

1966–1973·CBS·Drama

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

1 sequence

The Carol Burnett Show

1967–1978·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Herculoids

1967–1969·CBS·Animation

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

1 sequence

60 Minutes

1968–·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 23

1 sequence

Hawaii Five-O

1968–1980·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Archie Show

1968–1969·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wacky Races

1968–1969·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Hee Haw

1969–1993·CBS / Syndication·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!

1969–1970·CBS·Animation

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

1 sequence

Josie and the Pussycats

1970–1971·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

All in the Family

1971–1979·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Cannon

1971–1976·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour

1971–1974·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids

1972–1985·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

M*A*S*H

1972–1983·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Maude

1972–1978·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Bob Newhart Show

1972–1978·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Price Is Right

1972–·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 1
• Season 36

1 sequence

The Waltons

1972–1981·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Barnaby Jones

1973–1980·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kojak

1973–1978·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Young and the Restless

1973–·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 16
• Season 45

1 sequence

Good Times

1974–1979·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Rhoda

1974–1978·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Jeffersons

1975–1985·CBS·Comedy

'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

1 sequence

Wonder Woman

1975–1979·ABC / CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Logan's Run

1977–1978·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lou Grant

1977–1982·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Spider-Man

1977–1979·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Incredible Hulk

1977–1982·CBS·Sci-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

1 sequence

Dallas

1978–1991·CBS·Drama

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

1 sequence

The White Shadow

1978–1981·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

WKRP in Cincinnati

1978–1982·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Archie Bunker's Place

1979–1983·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Knots Landing

1979–1993·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Dukes of Hazzard

1979–1985·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Trapper John, M.D.

1979–1986·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 6

1 sequence

Magnum, P.I.

1980–1988·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cagney & Lacey

1981–1988·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Falcon Crest

1981–1990·CBS·Drama

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

1 sequence

Simon & Simon

1981–1989·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Newhart

1982–1990·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Square Pegs

1982–1983·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986·ABC / CBS·Crime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dungeons & Dragons

1983–1985·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Press Your Luck

1983–1986·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scarecrow and Mrs. King

1983–1987·CBS·Drama

A divorced housewife recruited into intelligence work by accident.

• Season 1

1 sequence

Airwolf

1984–1987·CBS / USA·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Charles in Charge

1984–1990·CBS / Syndication·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cover Up

1984–1985·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Kate & Allie

1984–1989·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Muppet Babies

1984–1991·CBS·Animation

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murder, She Wrote

1984–1996·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Equalizer (1985)

1985–1989·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Twilight Zone (1985)

1985–1989·CBS·Sci-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

1 sequence

Designing Women

1986–1993·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 6

1 sequence

Pee-wee's Playhouse

1986–1990·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Jake and the Fatman

1987–1992·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Bold and the Beautiful

1987–·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1
• Season 38

1 sequence

Tour of Duty

1987–1990·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Wiseguy

1987–1990·CBS·Crime

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

1 sequence

In the Heat of the Night

1988–1995·NBC / CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Murphy Brown

1988–2018·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Family Matters

1989–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Lonesome Dove

1989·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Northern Exposure

1990–1995·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Bradys

1990·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Brooklyn Bridge

1991–1993·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Silk Stalkings

1991–1999·CBS / USA Network·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Step by Step

1991–1998·ABC / CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Royal Family

1991–1992·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Beakman's World

1992–1998·TLC / CBS·Documentary

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

1 sequence

Forever Knight

1992–1996·CBS / Syndication·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Picket Fences

1992–1996·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

The Golden Palace

1992–1993·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Alex Haley's Queen

1993·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dave's World

1993–1997·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Diagnosis: Murder

1993–2001·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

1993–1998·CBS·Drama

A Boston doctor practising in 1860s Colorado Springs.

• Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

Late Show with David Letterman

1993–2015·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Nanny

1993–1999·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Walker, Texas Ranger

1993–2001·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 3

1 sequence

Chicago Hope

1994–2000·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 5

1 sequence

Touched by an Angel

1994–2003·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

American Gothic (1995)

1995–1996·CBS·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cybill

1995–1998·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

JAG

1995–2005·NBC / CBS·Drama

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

• Season 9

1 sequence

Early Edition

1996–2000·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Everybody Loves Raymond

1996–2005·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

EZ Streets

1996–1997·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Nash Bridges

1996–2001·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Becker

1998–2004·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Martial Law

1998–2000·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The King of Queens

1998–2007·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Judging Amy

1999–2005·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

2000–2015·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

Survivor

2000–·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 1
• Season 50

1 sequence

The District

2000–2004·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Yes, Dear

2000–2006·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Race

2001–·CBS·Documentary

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

• Season 10

2 sequences

The Guardian

2001–2004·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1
• Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

CSI: Miami

2002–2012·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Without a Trace

2002–2009·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Cold Case

2003–2010·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Joan of Arcadia

2003–2005·CBS·Drama

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

2 sequences

NCIS

2003–·CBS·Crime

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

1 sequence

Two and a Half Men

2003–2015·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 6

1 sequence

CSI: NY

2004–2013·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 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

1 sequence

Ghost Whisperer

2005–2010·CBS·Horror

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

How I Met Your Mother

2005–2014·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Medium

2005–2011·NBC / CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Numb3rs

2005–2010·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Threshold

2005–2006·CBS·Sci-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

1 sequence

Jericho

2006–2008·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The New Adventures of Old Christine

2006–2010·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

2 sequences

The Unit

2006–2009·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1
• Season 3

1 sequence

Rules of Engagement

2007–2013·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Big Bang Theory

2007–2019·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Flashpoint

2008–2012·CTV / CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

The Mentalist

2008–2015·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

NCIS: Los Angeles

2009–2023·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 5

1 sequence

The Good Wife

2009–2016·CBS·Drama

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

• Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Blue Bloods

2010–2024·CBS·Crime

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

• Seasons 10–12

1 sequence

Hawaii Five-0 (2010)

2010–2020·CBS·Crime

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

2 sequences

Mike & Molly

2010–2016·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1
• Seasons 4–6

1 sequence

2 Broke Girls

2011–2017·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Person of Interest

2011–2016·CBS·Sci-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

1 sequence

Unforgettable

2011–2016·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elementary

2012–2019·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Mom

2013–2021·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 8

1 sequence

Under the Dome

2013–2015·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Madam Secretary

2014–2019·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

NCIS: New Orleans

2014–2021·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Scorpion

2014–2018·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Battle Creek

2015·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Code Black

2015–2018·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Cyber

2015–2016·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 2

1 sequence

Life in Pieces

2015–2019·CBS·Comedy

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Limitless

2015–2016·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Supergirl

2015–2021·CBS / The CW·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 3

1 sequence

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

2016–2017·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

S.W.A.T. (2017)

2017–2025·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Salvation

2017–2018·CBS·Sci-Fi

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

• Season 1

4 sequences

Young Sheldon

2017–2024·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

The Neighborhood

2018–2026·CBS·Comedy

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

1 sequence

Evil

2019–2024·CBS / 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

1 sequence

FBI: Most Wanted

2020–2025·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Vegas

2021–2024·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

FBI: International

2021–2025·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

NCIS: Hawai'i

2021–2024·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Fire Country

2022–·CBS·Drama

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Elsbeth

2024–·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

NCIS: Origins

2024–·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1

1 sequence

Boston Blue

2025–·CBS·Crime

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

• Season 1