HBO

118 shows, 145 sequences, oldest first.

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

Sesame Street

1969–PBS / HBOComedy

Children running through a New York street to a song asking how to get there — an opening that has been remade every decade for over fifty years.

Season 1
Seasons 24–25

1 sequence

Fraggle Rock

1983–1987HBOComedy

Jim Henson's series about three societies who cannot see each other properly, made to be co-produced in every country that bought it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Hitchhiker

1983–1991HBOHorror

HBO's first original series: an anthology introduced by a man on a road who never explains himself.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ray Bradbury Theater

1985–1992HBO / USA NetworkSci-Fi

Bradbury adapting himself, introduced each week from an office full of the objects the stories came from.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Kids in the Hall

1988–1995CBC / HBOComedy

Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet playing surf rock over five men in a doorway — a sketch show whose theme became more famous than most of its sketches.

Season 1

1 sequence

Babar

1989–1991HBOAnimation

De Brunhof's elephant king animated in Canada, and told mostly in flashback to his own children.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tales from the Crypt

1989–1996HBOHorror

A crawl through a derelict house towards a coffin, which opens — Danny Elfman's theme, and a host who was a puppet.

Season 1

1 sequence

Dream On

1990–1996HBOComedy

A man whose inner life is old black-and-white television clips, which the titles establish before a word is said.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Larry Sanders Show

1992–1998HBOComedy

A talk-show opening for a talk show that does not exist, performed with total conviction by a band and an announcer who are also characters.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mr. Show with Bob and David

1995–1998HBOComedy

The American sketch show that took Monty Python's structure — sketches flowing into one another rather than ending — and put it on cable.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arli$$

1996–2002HBOComedy

A sports agent played by Robert Wuhl, running seven seasons on almost no critical goodwill.

Season 1

2 sequences

Oz

1997–2003HBOCrime

HBO's first hour-long drama, and the opening that established what the network's title sequences would be for the next twenty years — narrated, tattooed, and entirely unwilling to reassure you.

Season 1
Season 4

2 sequences

Todd McFarlane's Spawn

1997–1999HBOAnimation

The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

From the Earth to the Moon

1998HBODrama

Tom Hanks's twelve-part Apollo history, opened by archive footage cut to Michael Kamen's march.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sex and the City

1998–2004HBOComedy

A tutu, a bus and a splash of dirty water — an opening whose entire joke is that New York does not care who you think you are.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Sopranos

1999–2007HBODrama

Ninety seconds of a man driving home from the Lincoln Tunnel to North Caldwell. No cast montage, no highlights — just the commute, which turns out to be the whole show.

Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Curb Your Enthusiasm

2000–2024HBOComedy

A tuba, a circus march, and nothing else. Twenty-four years and twelve seasons on a piece of production-library music picked because it sounded like a man walking into trouble.

Seasons 1–12

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

The Corner

2000HBODrama

David Simon and David Mills's West Baltimore miniseries, made three years before The Wire took the same corner.

Season 1

1 sequence

Band of Brothers

2001HBODrama

Michael Kamen's theme over pencil sketches of soldiers dissolving into photographs — two and a half minutes, and among the most imitated title sequences ever made for television.

Season 1

1 sequence

Six Feet Under

2001–2005HBODrama

Digital Kitchen's procession of small deaths: hands letting go, a crow on a wire, a hearse, feet on a mortuary table. It won the Emmy and set the template most prestige-drama openings still follow.

Seasons 1–5

5 sequences

The Wire

2002–2008HBOCrime

The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 2 more

1 sequence

Angels in America

2003HBODrama

Kushner's play filmed by Mike Nichols, opened by a flight across America into a Manhattan fountain.

Season 1

1 sequence

Carnivàle

2003–2005HBOHorror

Tarot cards dissolving into Depression-era photographs and newsreel, so the reading and the history become the same footage. Another Emmy winner, and still one of the strangest things a network put in front of a drama.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Deadwood

2004–2006HBODrama

A horse, mud, and a camp being built out of both. The sequence is almost entirely animals and construction — the town assembling itself while nobody is watching.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Entourage

2004–2011HBOComedy

Los Angeles from a moving car, and Jane's Addiction — an opening that is essentially an advertisement for the lifestyle the show is about.

Season 1

1 sequence

Empire Falls

2005HBODrama

Richard Russo adapting his own novel about a Maine mill town that has already lost.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rome

2005–2007HBODrama

Graffiti coming alive on Roman walls — painted figures fighting, coupling and marching across plaster while the camera tracks past. The city's own scrawl doing the work a montage usually does.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Big Love

2006–2011HBODrama

A family skating on ice that ends, over 'God Only Knows' — a marriage held up by something visibly about to give way.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Flight of the Conchords

2007–2009HBOComedy

Cut-paper animation of two New Zealanders failing to make it in New York, assembled with the same handmade cheapness as the band it is about.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

John from Cincinnati

2007HBODrama

David Milch's surfing series, cancelled after one season and still argued about.

Season 1

1 sequence

In Treatment

2008–2021HBODrama

Nineteen seconds and a chair. For a show that is entirely two people talking in one room, the titles decline to leave it.

Season 1

1 sequence

John Adams

2008HBODrama

The thirteen colonies' flags and founding documents animated into a single banner, over a fife-and-drum theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Life & Times of Tim

2008–2012HBOAnimation

A man in New York whose every conversation makes his situation worse, drawn as simply as possible.

Season 1

1 sequence

True Blood

2008–2014HBOHorror

Digital Kitchen again, and their nastiest work: swamp water, roadkill, a revival tent, a child in a Klan hood, all cut to Jace Everett's 'Bad Things'. It promises a show about the South rather than a show about vampires.

Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Bored to Death

2009–2011HBOComedy

A pulp-paperback cover come to life — Brooklyn drawn as a detective magazine by Dean Haspiel, panel by panel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hung

2009–2011HBOComedy

Detroit in decline, filmed with more sympathy than the premise would lead you to expect.

Season 1

1 sequence

Boardwalk Empire

2010–2014HBOCrime

One man on a beach while the tide brings him bottles. No montage, no cast — just Nucky Thompson standing still as Prohibition washes up around his shoes, to The Brian Jonestown Massacre.

Seasons 1–5

1 sequence

How to Make It in America

2010–2011HBOComedy

New York street fashion and hustle, cut to Aloe Blacc — the East Coast answer to Entourage, and a better title sequence than the show got credit for.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pacific

2010HBODrama

The companion piece to Band of Brothers, with charcoal drawings taking the place of the pencil sketches and Hans Zimmer taking the place of Michael Kamen.

Season 1

1 sequence

Treme

2010–2013HBODrama

Water stains, peeling paint and brass — post-Katrina New Orleans read off its own damaged walls, over John Boutté's title song.

Season 1

1 sequence

Enlightened

2011–2013HBOComedy

Nature footage of the sort used in wellness videos, played entirely straight — which becomes the joke the moment the show starts.

Season 1

2 sequences

Game of Thrones

2011–2019HBODrama

A map that rebuilds itself each week. The clockwork cities shown change with the locations the episode visits, which makes it the rare title sequence carrying actual information.

Season 1
Season 8

1 sequence

Luck

2011–2012HBODrama

Milch and Michael Mann at a racetrack, ended after one season when horses died during production.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mildred Pierce

2011HBODrama

Todd Haynes's five-part Cain adaptation with Kate Winslet.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parade's End

2012BBC Two / HBODrama

Tom Stoppard adapting Ford Madox Ford across the First World War.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Newsroom

2012–2014HBODrama

Broadcast news history as a procession of anchors, presses and control rooms, scored by Thomas Newman with more reverence than the show it introduces ever quite earns.

Season 1

1 sequence

Veep

2012–2019HBOComedy

Fourteen seconds of seal, fanfare and a card. The brevity is the joke — an office with all the pomp of the presidency and none of the power.

Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

2014–HBOComedy

A weekly half-hour whose animated globe-and-newsprint open has run essentially unchanged for a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Olive Kitteridge

2014HBODrama

Coastal Maine in muted colour, at the pace of a woman who has decided not to be pleased about anything.

Season 1

5 sequences

Silicon Valley

2014–2019HBOComedy

An animated Bay Area skyline of tech-company headquarters, rebuilt every season to match who was winning that year. The joke only works because it kept being updated — logos appear, get acquired, and vanish between seasons.

Season 1
Season 3
Season 4
and 2 more

3 sequences

The Leftovers

2014–2017HBODrama

The rare show that threw out a perfectly good title sequence and replaced it with its opposite. One season of grief painted as a Renaissance ceiling, then a complete reversal into snapshots and a country song.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

4 sequences

True Detective

2014–HBOCrime

Double-exposure portraits where the landscape is projected onto the people. Every season is reshot from scratch, so the titles change as completely as the cast does.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 1 more

1 sequence

Ballers

2015–2019HBOComedy

Miami, money and slow motion, cut to Big K.R.I.T. — an opening entirely comfortable with what the show is selling.

Season 1

1 sequence

Show Me a Hero

2015HBODrama

David Simon on a Yonkers housing desegregation fight, opened by one of the longest title sequences on premium television.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Jinx

2015–2024HBODocumentary

Andrew Jarecki's Robert Durst films, opened by a sequence that tells you nothing and implies everything.

Season 1

1 sequence

High Maintenance

2016–2020HBOComedy

A weed delivery cyclist as the only connection between otherwise unrelated New York stories.

Season 1

1 sequence

Insecure

2016–2021HBOComedy

Twenty-one seconds of South Los Angeles and a beat, changing its track from season to season while the shape of the thing stays identical.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Night Of

2016HBOCrime

New York at night from inside a cab, the city sliding past in sodium light, cut so that nothing quite resolves — which is the state of the evidence for the entire series.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Young Pope

2016HBO / Sky AtlanticDrama

Paolo Sorrentino's American pope, opened by a walk past papal portraits that come apart as he passes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Vice Principals

2016–2017HBOComedy

A school crest and a sting, over in twelve seconds — the institutional dignity the two leads spend the series destroying.

Season 2

1 sequence

Vinyl

2016HBODrama

Record sleeves, needles and 1970s New York cut at the speed of the drug the show is about. One season only, so the titles outlived the series by a fortnight.

Season 1

4 sequences

Westworld

2016–2022HBOSci-Fi

Things being manufactured, filmed as though it were tender: a horse and rider printed strand by strand, hands assembled out of white thread, a player piano working the theme out by itself. Rebuilt every season as the show's idea of what is being made changes.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 1 more

1 sequence

Big Little Lies

2017–2019HBODrama

The school run, filmed like a threat. Mothers driving the coast road to Monterey with children in the back seat, over Michael Kiwanuka's 'Cold Little Heart'.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crashing

2017–2019HBOComedy

Pete Holmes sleeping on other comedians' sofas after his marriage ends, opened in eighteen seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Deuce

2017–2019HBODrama

Forty-second Street as a marquee — neon, peep-show signage and the traffic of a block being monetised, assembled from the era's own advertising.

Season 1

1 sequence

Barry

2018–2023HBOComedy

A plain card and a held shot, gone in under half a minute. The show's whole comic method — refusing to signal what kind of scene you are in — starts with its titles refusing to signal anything at all.

Season 2

1 sequence

My Brilliant Friend

2018–2024HBO / RAIDrama

Naples in the fifties rendered in faded photography, for an adaptation that spans fifty years of two lives.

Season 2

1 sequence

Sharp Objects

2018HBOCrime

Wind Gap seen at speed from a car window, with words hidden in the frame — the same trick the show plays for eight episodes, put in the titles from the first minute.

Season 1

3 sequences

Succession

2018–2023HBODrama

Home video of rich children, degraded and half-legible, cut against helicopter shots of towers they will inherit. Nicholas Britell's piano stumbles deliberately, like something played badly on purpose.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

1 sequence

A Black Lady Sketch Show

2019–2023HBOComedy

Robin Thede's sketch series, opened by a title sequence with more production value than most of the sketches.

Season 1

1 sequence

Catherine the Great

2019HBO / Sky AtlanticDrama

Helen Mirren as the empress in her last decades, in four parts.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chernobyl

2019HBODrama

No montage and no metaphor — the camera simply moves through the plant's corridors and control rooms while Hildur Guðnadóttir's score, built from recordings made inside a power station, does the rest.

Season 1

2 sequences

Euphoria

2019–HBODrama

Bodies, water and neon shot at the point where a party stops being fun, over Labrinth. Beautiful in a way that is deliberately hard to enjoy.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Gentleman Jack

2019–2022BBC One / HBODrama

Anne Lister's coded diaries dramatised by Sally Wainwright, with Suranne Jones addressing the camera directly.

Season 1

1 sequence

His Dark Materials

2019–2022BBC One / HBOSci-Fi

Pullman's trilogy adapted with a title sequence that opens a window between worlds and keeps going through it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Los Espookys

2019–2022HBOComedy

Handmade horror props filmed lovingly and badly on purpose — fake blood, rubber and fog, exactly the standard the characters work to.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Righteous Gemstones

2019–2025HBOComedy

Eleven seconds of gold-plated megachurch branding, delivered with exactly the sincerity the family would want.

Season 1

1 sequence

Watchmen

2019HBODrama

Damon Lindelof's sequel to the comic, scored by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and the hardest entry in this catalogue to find footage of.

Season 1

1 sequence

Years and Years

2019BBC One / HBODrama

Russell T Davies following one Manchester family fifteen years into a future that arrives faster than they do.

Season 1

1 sequence

Avenue 5

2020–2022HBOComedy

A cruise-line logo in space, thirteen seconds long, with all the confidence of a company about to be sued.

Season 2

1 sequence

Betty

2020–2021HBOComedy

A group of women skateboarding in New York, expanded from the film Skate Kitchen.

Season 1

1 sequence

How To with John Wilson

2020–2023HBODocumentary

New York filmed on the street by one man with a camera, and titles assembled from the same accidental footage the series is made of.

Season 1

1 sequence

I'll Be Gone in the Dark

2020HBODocumentary

Michelle McNamara's search for the Golden State Killer, finished by other people after she died.

Season 1

1 sequence

Industry

2020–HBODrama

Twenty-two seconds of type and glass. A trading-floor show whose opening is over before you have settled, which is roughly how the job is depicted.

Season 1

1 sequence

Lovecraft Country

2020HBOHorror

Twelve seconds — a card, a horn stab, and straight into an episode that will not be the same genre as the last one.

Season 1

1 sequence

McMillions

2020HBODocumentary

The man who stole every winning piece in the McDonald's Monopoly game for twelve years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Perry Mason

2020–2023HBOCrime

Depression-era Los Angeles rendered in ink and light leaks, over in twenty-one seconds — a deliberately curt opening for a show about a very slow investigation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Run

2020HBO / Sky ComedyComedy

Two people who agreed years ago that either could send one word and the other would drop everything.

Season 1

1 sequence

The New Pope

2020HBO / Sky AtlanticDrama

Nuns dancing in front of a neon crucifix to a house track, for two and a half minutes, entirely straight-faced. Paolo Sorrentino's sequel keeps the sequence that made the first series notorious and makes it longer.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Outsider

2020HBOHorror

Twenty seconds of smeared, doubled imagery — a face that will not resolve into one face, which is the entire mystery stated up front.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Plot Against America

2020HBODrama

David Simon's Roth adaptation, opened by American stamps and postmarks turning quietly wrong.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Third Day

2020HBO / Sky AtlanticHorror

An island off the Essex coast with its own rules, told in two halves and a live broadcast between them.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Undoing

2020HBOCrime

A child's drawing of a family, animated and slowly disassembled, over Nicole Kidman singing 'Dream a Little Dream of Me'.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Vow

2020–2022HBODocumentary

NXIVM told largely through footage its own members shot while they were still inside it.

Season 1

1 sequence

We Are Who We Are

2020HBO / Sky AtlanticDrama

Luca Guadagnino's only television series, on an American army base in Veneto, opened in ten seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mare of Easttown

2021HBOCrime

Delaware County in winter — vinyl siding, chain-link, a quarry — over Lucius's 'Drunk'. Thirty-four seconds that refuse to make the place look like anything but itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Station Eleven

2021HBOSci-Fi

Hand-drawn comic panels from the book within the book, animated just enough to move — the artefact the survivors carry, doing the introducing.

Season 1

3 sequences

The White Lotus

2021–HBODrama

Colonial wallpaper that will not behave — painted paradise curdling into something predatory while the resort's guests are nowhere in it. Rebuilt from scratch for each new location, with a new theme every time.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

3 sequences

House of the Dragon

2022–HBODrama

The parent show mapped a continent; this one traces a bloodline. Where Game of Thrones built cities, these titles follow blood running through stone channels and a tapestry recording who killed whom.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

1 sequence

Irma Vep

2022HBODrama

Olivier Assayas remaking his own film as a series about remaking a film, with silent-era titles to match.

Season 1

1 sequence

Somebody Somewhere

2022–2024HBOComedy

Kansas roads and grain elevators, filmed without a trace of irony — a small show that declines to make its setting a joke.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Gilded Age

2022–HBODrama

Gold leaf, marble and needlework assembling into Fifth Avenue interiors — new money buying its way into an old frame, told entirely through surfaces.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Rehearsal

2022–HBOComedy

Constructed sets and blueprints presented with total sincerity, which is the only register the show ever uses.

Season 2

1 sequence

The Time Traveler's Wife

2022HBODrama

Steven Moffat's adaptation of the Niffenegger novel, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

We Own This City

2022HBOCrime

Baltimore again, from the makers of The Wire, but shot as surveillance and body-camera footage rather than drama.

Season 1

1 sequence

Winning Time

2022–2023HBODrama

Grainy 16mm, video tape and film stock shuffled together so the show looks like footage of the era rather than a reconstruction of it, over a disco horn line.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Idol

2023HBODrama

Studio lighting, mirrors and pop-star iconography, presented without irony.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Last of Us

2023–HBODrama

Cordyceps growing across a map — mould spreading through a continent in time-lapse until the shapes it leaves behind resolve into two figures. Gustavo Santaolalla's guitar, carried over from the game.

Season 1

1 sequence

White House Plumbers

2023HBOComedy

Eleven seconds of period government typography, played as though the men behind it were competent.

Season 1

1 sequence

Dune: Prophecy

2024–HBOSci-Fi

The Bene Gesserit ten thousand years before the films, with a title sequence built from spice and sand.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Franchise

2024HBOComedy

The crew of a failing superhero film, from Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Penguin

2024HBOCrime

A flooded, ruined Gotham shot like a crime photograph — standing water, wet brick, no heroics anywhere in it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Regime

2024HBODrama

Palace portraiture and state iconography assembled into propaganda for a country that does not exist.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Sympathizer

2024HBODrama

Propaganda poster art, film leader and Saigon footage cut together so that the two sides' imagery becomes one reel — which is the narrator's problem exactly.