HBO opening titles
HBO accounts for 118 shows here, running from 1969 to the present, and 145 opening title sequences between them.
Drama leads with 49, then comedy with 36.
13 of them rebuilt their titles at least once.
118 shows · 145 sequences · oldest first
15 of these moved between networks during their run and appear under each one.
2 sequencesSesame Street
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 sequenceFraggle Rock
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 sequenceThe Hitchhiker
HBO's first original series: an anthology introduced by a man on a road who never explains himself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ray Bradbury Theater
Bradbury adapting himself, introduced each week from an office full of the objects the stories came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Kids in the Hall
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 sequenceBabar
De Brunhof's elephant king animated in Canada, and told mostly in flashback to his own children.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTales from the Crypt
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 sequenceDream On
A man whose inner life is old black-and-white television clips, which the titles establish before a word is said.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Larry Sanders Show
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 sequenceMr. Show with Bob and David
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 sequenceArli$$
A sports agent played by Robert Wuhl, running seven seasons on almost no critical goodwill.
- Season 1
2 sequencesOz
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 sequencesTodd McFarlane's Spawn
The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceFrom the Earth to the Moon
Tom Hanks's twelve-part Apollo history, opened by archive footage cut to Michael Kamen's march.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSex and the City
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 sequenceThe Sopranos
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 sequenceCurb Your Enthusiasm
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 sequenceDa Ali G Show
Sacha Baron Cohen's three characters interviewing people who did not know.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Corner
David Simon and David Mills's West Baltimore miniseries, made three years before The Wire took the same corner.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBand of Brothers
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 sequenceSix Feet Under
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 sequencesThe Wire
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 sequenceAngels in America
Kushner's play filmed by Mike Nichols, opened by a flight across America into a Manhattan fountain.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCarnivàle
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 sequenceDeadwood
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 sequenceEntourage
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 sequenceEmpire Falls
Richard Russo adapting his own novel about a Maine mill town that has already lost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRome
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 sequenceBig Love
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 sequenceFlight of the Conchords
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 sequenceJohn from Cincinnati
David Milch's surfing series, cancelled after one season and still argued about.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn Treatment
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 sequenceJohn Adams
The thirteen colonies' flags and founding documents animated into a single banner, over a fife-and-drum theme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Life & Times of Tim
A man in New York whose every conversation makes his situation worse, drawn as simply as possible.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrue Blood
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 sequenceBored to Death
A pulp-paperback cover come to life — Brooklyn drawn as a detective magazine by Dean Haspiel, panel by panel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHung
Detroit in decline, filmed with more sympathy than the premise would lead you to expect.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBoardwalk Empire
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 sequenceHow to Make It in America
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 sequenceThe Pacific
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 sequenceTreme
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 sequenceEnlightened
Nature footage of the sort used in wellness videos, played entirely straight — which becomes the joke the moment the show starts.
- Season 1
2 sequencesGame of Thrones
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 sequenceLuck
Milch and Michael Mann at a racetrack, ended after one season when horses died during production.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMildred Pierce
Todd Haynes's five-part Cain adaptation with Kate Winslet.
- Season 1
1 sequenceParade's End
Tom Stoppard adapting Ford Madox Ford across the First World War.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Newsroom
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 sequenceVeep
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 sequenceLast Week Tonight with John Oliver
A weekly half-hour whose animated globe-and-newsprint open has run essentially unchanged for a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOlive Kitteridge
Coastal Maine in muted colour, at the pace of a woman who has decided not to be pleased about anything.
- Season 1
5 sequencesSilicon Valley
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 sequencesThe Leftovers
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 sequencesTrue Detective
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 sequenceBallers
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 sequenceShow Me a Hero
David Simon on a Yonkers housing desegregation fight, opened by one of the longest title sequences on premium television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Jinx
Andrew Jarecki's Robert Durst films, opened by a sequence that tells you nothing and implies everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceInsecure
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 sequenceThe Night Of
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 sequenceThe Young Pope
Paolo Sorrentino's American pope, opened by a walk past papal portraits that come apart as he passes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceVice Principals
A school crest and a sting, over in twelve seconds — the institutional dignity the two leads spend the series destroying.
- Season 2
1 sequenceVinyl
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 sequencesWestworld
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 sequenceBig Little Lies
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 sequenceCrashing
Pete Holmes sleeping on other comedians' sofas after his marriage ends, opened in eighteen seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Deuce
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 sequenceBarry
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 sequenceMy Brilliant Friend
Naples in the fifties rendered in faded photography, for an adaptation that spans fifty years of two lives.
- Season 2
1 sequenceSharp Objects
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 sequencesSuccession
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 sequenceA Black Lady Sketch Show
Robin Thede's sketch series, opened by a title sequence with more production value than most of the sketches.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCatherine the Great
Helen Mirren as the empress in her last decades, in four parts.
- Season 1
1 sequenceChernobyl
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 sequencesEuphoria
No opening sequence as such. Each episode runs a cold open, often one character's history told in narration, and only then cuts to the title card.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceGentleman Jack
Anne Lister's coded diaries dramatised by Sally Wainwright, with Suranne Jones addressing the camera directly.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHis Dark Materials
Pullman's trilogy adapted with a title sequence that opens a window between worlds and keeps going through it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLos Espookys
Handmade horror props filmed lovingly and badly on purpose — fake blood, rubber and fog, exactly the standard the characters work to.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Righteous Gemstones
Eleven seconds of gold-plated megachurch branding, delivered with exactly the sincerity the family would want.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWatchmen
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 sequenceYears and Years
Russell T Davies following one Manchester family fifteen years into a future that arrives faster than they do.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAvenue 5
A cruise-line logo in space, thirteen seconds long, with all the confidence of a company about to be sued.
- Season 2
1 sequenceBetty
A group of women skateboarding in New York, expanded from the film Skate Kitchen.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow To with John Wilson
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 sequenceI'll Be Gone in the Dark
Michelle McNamara's search for the Golden State Killer, finished by other people after she died.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIndustry
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 sequenceLovecraft Country
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 sequenceMcMillions
The man who stole every winning piece in the McDonald's Monopoly game for twelve years.
- Season 1
1 sequencePerry Mason
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 sequenceRun
Two people who agreed years ago that either could send one word and the other would drop everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe New Pope
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 sequenceThe Outsider
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 sequenceThe Plot Against America
David Simon's Roth adaptation, opened by American stamps and postmarks turning quietly wrong.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Third Day
An island off the Essex coast with its own rules, told in two halves and a live broadcast between them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Undoing
A child's drawing of a family, animated and slowly disassembled, over Nicole Kidman singing 'Dream a Little Dream of Me'.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Vow
NXIVM told largely through footage its own members shot while they were still inside it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWe Are Who We Are
Luca Guadagnino's only television series, on an American army base in Veneto, opened in ten seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMare of Easttown
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 sequenceStation Eleven
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 sequencesThe White Lotus
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 sequencesHouse of the Dragon
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 sequenceIrma Vep
Olivier Assayas remaking his own film as a series about remaking a film, with silent-era titles to match.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSomebody Somewhere
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 sequenceThe Gilded Age
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 sequenceThe Rehearsal
Constructed sets and blueprints presented with total sincerity, which is the only register the show ever uses.
- Season 2
1 sequenceThe Time Traveler's Wife
Steven Moffat's adaptation of the Niffenegger novel, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWe Own This City
Baltimore again, from the makers of The Wire, but shot as surveillance and body-camera footage rather than drama.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWinning Time
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 sequenceThe Idol
Studio lighting, mirrors and pop-star iconography, presented without irony.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last of Us
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 sequenceWhite House Plumbers
Eleven seconds of period government typography, played as though the men behind it were competent.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDune: Prophecy
The Bene Gesserit ten thousand years before the films, with a title sequence built from spice and sand.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Franchise
The crew of a failing superhero film, from Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Penguin
A flooded, ruined Gotham shot like a crime photograph — standing water, wet brick, no heroics anywhere in it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Regime
Palace portraiture and state iconography assembled into propaganda for a country that does not exist.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Sympathizer
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.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIt: Welcome to Derry
The King adaptation's prequel series, set in the 1960s cycle.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTask
An FBI task force in the Philadelphia suburbs, from the writer of Mare of Easttown.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Chair Company
Tim Robinson on a man who will not let a collapsing office chair go.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDTF St. Louis
A local weatherman in slow motion for a minute and a half, gold serif credits laid over him, to the back half of the Fifth Dimension's 'Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In'.
- Season 1