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Channel 4 opening titles

Channel 4 accounts for 44 shows here, running from 1982 to the present, and 46 opening title sequences between them.

Comedy leads with 21, then documentary with ten.

Two of them rebuilt their titles at least once.

44 shows · 46 sequences · oldest first

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

Still from the opening titles of Brookside1 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
Still from the opening titles of Countdown1 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
Still from the opening titles of A Woman of Substance1 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
Still from the opening titles of The Storyteller2 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
Still from the opening titles of Drop the Dead Donkey1 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
Still from the opening titles of The Crystal Maze1 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
Still from the opening titles of Time Team1 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
Still from the opening titles of Father Ted1 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
Still from the opening titles of Hollyoaks1 sequence

Hollyoaks

1995–Channel 4Drama

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

  • Season 14
Still from the opening titles of Brass Eye1 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
Still from the opening titles of Grand Designs1 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
Still from the opening titles of Queer as Folk (UK)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
Still from the opening titles of Smack the Pony1 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
Still from the opening titles of Spaced1 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
Still from the opening titles of A Place in the Sun1 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
Still from the opening titles of Big Brother (UK)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
Still from the opening titles of Black Books1 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
Still from the opening titles of Da Ali G Show1 sequence

Da Ali G Show

2000–2004Channel 4 / HBOComedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Teachers1 sequence

Teachers

2001–2004Channel 4Comedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Peep Show1 sequence

Peep Show

2003–2015Channel 4Comedy

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

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Wife Swap1 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
Still from the opening titles of Garth Marenghi's Darkplace1 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
Still from the opening titles of Green Wing1 sequence

Green Wing

2004–2007Channel 4Comedy

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Supernanny1 sequence

Supernanny

2004–Channel 4Documentary

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

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of The Big Fat Quiz of the Year1 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
Still from the opening titles of 8 Out of 10 Cats1 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
Still from the opening titles of The IT Crowd1 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
Still from the opening titles of Meadowlands1 sequence

Meadowlands

2007Showtime / Channel 4Drama

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

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Great British Bake Off1 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
Still from the opening titles of Black Mirror1 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.

  • Seasons 1–7
Still from the opening titles of Fresh Meat1 sequence

Fresh Meat

2011–2016Channel 4Comedy

Six students sharing a Manchester house, from the Peep Show writers.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Friday Night Dinner1 sequence

Friday Night Dinner

2011–2020Channel 4Comedy

The same family, the same meal, every week, for six series.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Top Boy1 sequence

Top Boy

2011–2023Channel 4 / NetflixCrime

A Hackney estate shot from within rather than above, over Brian Eno's score — which is not the collaboration anyone predicted.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Toast of London1 sequence

Toast of London

2012–2015Channel 4Comedy

Matt Berry as a voiceover actor with an unshakeable opinion of himself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Gogglebox1 sequence

Gogglebox

2013–Channel 4Documentary

People watching television, filmed watching television, which turned out to be the format of the decade.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Man Down1 sequence

Man Down

2013–2017Channel 4Comedy

Greg Davies as a teacher whose life is a sustained emergency, with Rik Mayall as his father.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Humans1 sequence

Humans

2015–2018Channel 4 / AMCSci-Fi

Domestic synths in an England that already has them, opened by faces that hold still a beat too long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of No Offence1 sequence

No Offence

2015–2018Channel 4Crime

Paul Abbott's Manchester police series, opened in eighteen seconds by Peter Anderson Studio.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Taskmaster1 sequence

Taskmaster

2015–Dave / Channel 4Comedy

A bust of the host's head and a fanfare, in the register of a much grander programme than the one that follows.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Crazyhead1 sequence

Crazyhead

2016Channel 4Horror

Two women who can see demons, from the writer of Misfits, and cancelled after six episodes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The End of the F***ing World1 sequence

The End of the F***ing World

2017–2019Channel 4 / NetflixDrama

Sixties pop over two teenagers on a road trip that is going to end badly — an opening that is much sweeter than anything it introduces.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Stath Lets Flats1 sequence

Stath Lets Flats

2018–2021Channel 4Comedy

Jamie Demetriou as a lettings agent with no aptitude for letting flats.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Big Boys1 sequence

Big Boys

2022–2025Channel 4Comedy

Jack Rooke's university comedy, which uses short animated stings rather than one fixed opening.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Couple Next Door1 sequence

The Couple Next Door

2023–Channel 4 / StarzDrama

Two couples in a Leeds cul-de-sac, and what starts once one of them looks over the fence.

  • Season 1