Channel 4

44 shows, 46 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

Brookside

1982–2003Channel 4Drama

Channel 4's launch-night serial, shot on a real close of houses the production company had bought.

Season 1

1 sequence

Countdown

1982–Channel 4Documentary

The first programme Channel 4 ever broadcast, and a clock sequence that has been recognisable to British afternoons for forty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

A Woman of Substance

1985Channel 4 / SyndicationDrama

Barbara Taylor Bradford's servant girl who builds a department store empire, across three nights.

Season 1

2 sequences

The Storyteller

1987–1988NBC / Channel 4Drama

European folk tales retold by John Hurt beside a fire, with Henson's creature shop doing the rest.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Drop the Dead Donkey

1990–1998Channel 4Comedy

A television newsroom recorded days before broadcast so that real headlines could be written in.

Season 5

1 sequence

The Crystal Maze

1990–Channel 4Documentary

Four themed zones and a warehouse in Essex, opened with an orchestral fanfare grander than any game show has earned before or since.

Season 5

1 sequence

Time Team

1994–2014Channel 4Documentary

Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Father Ted

1995–1998Channel 4Comedy

Three priests on a rock in the Atlantic, introduced by a whistle tune and some of the flattest scenery ever put in a title sequence.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hollyoaks

1995–Channel 4Drama

A Chester soap aimed at an audience twenty years younger than any other British serial's.

Season 14

1 sequence

Brass Eye

1997–2001Channel 4Comedy

The Day Today's successor, with a new themed opening built for each episode's subject — crime, drugs, science, sex.

Season 1

1 sequence

Grand Designs

1999–Channel 4Documentary

One self-build per episode, opening on drawings that assemble themselves into the house you are about to watch fail to be finished on time.

Season 20

1 sequence

Queer as Folk (UK)

1999–2000Channel 4Drama

Russell T Davies on Manchester's Canal Street, remade later in America and never bettered.

Season 1

1 sequence

Smack the Pony

1999–2003Channel 4Comedy

A sketch show written and performed by women, at a point when British television had decided that was a format rather than a fact.

Season 1

1 sequence

Spaced

1999–2001Channel 4Comedy

Freeze-frames and film-reference visual gags, cut at the speed the show quotes at — which is constant.

Season 2

1 sequence

A Place in the Sun

2000–Channel 4Documentary

British buyers shown three houses abroad, running daily for a quarter of a century.

Season 1

2 sequences

Big Brother (UK)

2000–Channel 4 / ITVDocumentary

The eye, and a theme built out of the sound of the house — the format that made surveillance into a light entertainment brand.

Season 1
Season 8

1 sequence

Black Books

2000–2004Channel 4Comedy

A bookshop run by a man who does not want customers, from Dylan Moran and Graham Linehan.

Season 1

1 sequence

Da Ali G Show

2000–2004Channel 4 / HBOComedy

Sacha Baron Cohen's three characters interviewing people who did not know.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teachers

2001–2004Channel 4Comedy

A Bristol comprehensive from the staff room's side, with Andrew Lincoln before The Walking Dead.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peep Show

2003–2015Channel 4Comedy

Nineteen seconds and a card, for a comedy shot almost entirely from inside its characters' heads.

Season 4

1 sequence

Wife Swap

2003–2009Channel 4Documentary

Two households exchanged for a fortnight, in ten seconds of titles that give away the whole premise.

Season 1

1 sequence

Garth Marenghi's Darkplace

2004Channel 4Comedy

A title sequence pretending to be a lost 1980s horror series, complete with the production faults the conceit requires.

Season 1

1 sequence

Green Wing

2004–2007Channel 4Comedy

A hospital comedy shot with speed-ramped transitions between every scene, which the titles establish first.

Season 1

1 sequence

Supernanny

2004–Channel 4Documentary

Jo Frost arriving by taxi to reorganise a household, every week, for twenty years.

Season 4

1 sequence

The Big Fat Quiz of the Year

2004–Channel 4Comedy

An annual quiz about the year just gone, running long past midnight and rebuilt from scratch each December.

Season 10

1 sequence

8 Out of 10 Cats

2005–Channel 4Comedy

A panel show about opinion polls, which spawned a Countdown crossover more popular than either parent.

Season 1

1 sequence

The IT Crowd

2006–2013Channel 4Comedy

Eight-bit pixel art and a chiptune, for a basement full of people nobody upstairs wants to think about.

Season 1

1 sequence

Meadowlands

2007Showtime / Channel 4Drama

A family in witness protection on an estate where everyone else is hiding something too.

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.

Season 1

1 sequence

Black Mirror

2011–Channel 4 / NetflixSci-Fi

A screen cracking, and that is the whole thing. Eighteen seconds of glitch and a fracture spreading across black glass — an anthology refusing to introduce anything, because each episode is a different show.