NBC

187 shows, 205 sequences, oldest first.

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

1 sequence

Meet the Press

1947–NBCDocumentary

The longest-running programme in television history, and fifteen seconds of titles to show for seventy-seven years.

Season 77

1 sequence

The Life of Riley

1949–1958NBCComedy

A radio sitcom moved to television twice, the second time with William Bendix finally allowed to play the part he had on radio.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Colgate Comedy Hour

1950–1955NBCComedy

A live variety hour with a different star each week, made to take the audience off Ed Sullivan.

Season 4

1 sequence

Truth or Consequences

1950–1988CBS / NBC / SyndicationDocumentary

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Dragnet

1951–1959, 1967–1970NBCCrime

Four notes, a badge, and "the story you are about to see is true" — the opening that set the shape of the American police procedural.

Season 1

1 sequence

Search for Tomorrow

1951–1986CBS / NBCDrama

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Sky King

1951–1962NBC / ABCDrama

An Arizona rancher who catches criminals from a twin-engined aeroplane, out of the radio serial.

Season 1

1 sequence

Father Knows Best

1954–1960CBS / NBCComedy

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Wagon Train

1957–1965NBC / ABCDrama

A wagon company crossing to California, and the series Gene Roddenberry pitched Star Trek against.

Season 1

1 sequence

Bonanza

1959–1973NBCDrama

A burning map and four men riding out of it — one of the first title sequences designed to show off colour television, which is precisely why it looks like that.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Bullwinkle Show

1959–1964ABC / NBCAnimation

Jay Ward's squirrel and moose, which began as Rocky and His Friends and was renamed for the character who talked more.

Season 1

1 sequence

Car 54, Where Are You?

1961–1963NBCComedy

Two Bronx patrolmen, with a theme that lists everything going wrong in New York and then asks where the car is.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962–1992NBCComedy

A curtain, a rainbow arch and an announcer saying the two words — thirty years of the same entrance.

Season 18

1 sequence

The Virginian

1962–1971NBCDrama

The first ninety-minute western on American television, and the third longest-running of them all.

Season 1

1 sequence

Another World

1964–1999NBCDrama

The first American serial to run an hour, and the first to spin off another serial from itself.

Season 26

1 sequence

The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

1964–1968NBCDrama

Sixties spy graphics and a brass chart, in the register every subsequent spy show either copied or reacted against.

Season 1

1 sequence

Underdog

1964–1967NBC / CBSAnimation

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Days of Our Lives

1965–NBCDrama

"Like sands through the hourglass" — the same sentence, over the same hourglass, for sixty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Get Smart

1965–1970NBC / CBSComedy

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

I Dream of Jeannie

1965–1970NBCComedy

A full animated origin story every week — the bottle, the beach, the astronaut — told in sixty seconds so the episode never has to.

Season 1

1 sequence

I Spy

1965–1968NBCDrama

Two agents under cover as a tennis player and his trainer, and the first American drama to cast a Black actor as a lead.

Season 1

2 sequences

Star Trek

1966–1969NBCSci-Fi

The one that set the shape of every space-opera opening since: a ship crossing the frame, a captain narrating a mission statement, and a melody built to be hummed. Alexander Courage wrote it as a fanfare and a lounge tune at the same time.

Season 1
Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

The Monkees

1966–1968NBCComedy

A band assembled for a television series that then became an actual band, with the titles as their first single.

Season 1

1 sequence

Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In

1967–1973NBCComedy

Psychedelic panels opening onto one-liners, cut faster than anything else on 1960s television and directly responsible for the pacing of sketch comedy since.

Season 3

1 sequence

The High Chaparral

1967–1971NBCDrama

An Arizona cattle ranch and the Mexican family it marries into, from the producer of Bonanza.

Season 1

1 sequence

Adam-12

1968–1975NBCCrime

One patrol car, one shift, from the Dragnet producer.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Banana Splits Adventure Hour

1968–1970NBCComedy

Four costumed animals in a rock band, wrapped around cartoons and serials, with a theme that has outlived all of it.

Season 1

1 sequence

H.R. Pufnstuf

1969–1970NBCComedy

Sid and Marty Krofft's first series, and the reason a generation associates foam costumes with a talking flute.

Season 1

1 sequence

Night Gallery

1969–1973NBCHorror

Rod Serling walking through a gallery of paintings, each one introducing that week's story — a title sequence rebuilt around new artwork every episode.

Season 1

1 sequence

McCloud

1970–1977NBCCrime

A New Mexico marshal seconded to the NYPD, part of the rotating NBC Mystery Movie wheel.

Season 1

1 sequence

NBC Nightly News

1970–NBCDocumentary

Fourteen seconds of brass and a rotating globe, which is what a network evening bulletin has been reduced to.

Season 47

1 sequence

Columbo

1971–2003NBC / ABCCrime

Twenty-four seconds, and for much of the run no sequence at all — a series confident enough to open on the murder and let the detective arrive late.

Season 1

1 sequence

Circle of Fear

1972–1973NBCHorror

An anthology that began as Ghost Story with a host and a hotel, then dropped both and renamed itself halfway through.

Season 1

1 sequence

Emergency!

1972–1977NBCDrama

Los Angeles County paramedics, made with the fire department's cooperation and credited with popularising the profession.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sanford and Son

1972–1977NBCComedy

Quincy Jones writing a harmonica blues for a junkyard — one of the few sitcom themes composed by someone of that stature.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sigmund and the Sea Monsters

1973–1975NBCComedy

A sea monster thrown out by his family for being unable to frighten anyone, hidden in a beach clubhouse.

Season 1

1 sequence

Star Trek: The Animated Series

1973–1974NBCAnimation

Filmation's Saturday-morning continuation, with most of the original cast back on microphone duty. The theme is Courage's melody rescored for a cartoon orchestra, brighter and quicker than the live-action original.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Land of the Lost

1974–1976NBCSci-Fi

A raft over a waterfall into a closed pocket universe, written by Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold for Saturday mornings.

Season 1

1 sequence

Little House on the Prairie

1974–1983NBCDrama

Three girls running down a hill, one of whom falls — a shot kept in for nine years because it was better than the take where nobody did.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Rockford Files

1974–1980NBCCrime

A telephone rings, an answering machine picks up, and a stranger leaves a message that is usually bad news and occasionally a joke at Rockford's expense. Then the theme starts. The private detective is introduced by the people avoiding him.

Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Saturday Night Live

1975–NBCComedy

A new cast montage every single season for fifty years — New York at night, the current company photographed in it, and a band playing over the top. The longest-running rotating title sequence on television.

Season 1

1 sequence

Quincy, M.E.

1976–1983NBCCrime

A Los Angeles medical examiner who investigates, and the ancestor of every forensic procedural since.

Season 1

1 sequence

SCTV

1976–1984Global / NBCComedy

A sketch show shaped as a fictional television station, which let it parody the whole schedule rather than one programme at a time.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Bionic Woman

1976–1978ABC / NBCSci-Fi

The Six Million Dollar Man's spinoff, with the same narrated-reconstruction structure and a better theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

CHiPs

1977–1983NBCCrime

California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, filmed almost entirely on freeways.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams

1977–1978NBCDrama

A man wrongly accused who goes to live in the mountains with a bear, and NBC's biggest surprise of 1977.

Season 1

1 sequence

Diff'rent Strokes

1978–1985NBCComedy

Two boys from Harlem adopted by a Park Avenue widower, in the sitcom that turned a nine-year-old's disbelief into a catchphrase.

Season 1

1 sequence

Holocaust

1978NBCDrama

The miniseries that put the word into everyday use in Germany, where half the country watched it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Taxi

1978–1983ABC / NBCComedy

A single cab crossing the Queensboro Bridge to Bob James's electric piano — no cast, no jokes, and an unusually melancholy opening for a comedy.

Season 1

1 sequence

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century

1979–1981NBCSci-Fi

A disco-scored space opera that opens with a shuttle, a starfield and absolutely no embarrassment about either.

Season 1

3 sequences

The Facts of Life

1979–1988NBCComedy

A girls' boarding school in Peekskill, spun off from Diff'rent Strokes and running three years longer than it.

Season 1
Season 7
Season 8

1 sequence

Shōgun (1980)

1980NBCDrama

The Clavell miniseries that ran five nights and made a genre out of the Western sailor in feudal Japan.

Season 1

1 sequence

Gimme a Break!

1981–1987NBCComedy

Nell Carter keeping house for a widowed police chief, in a sitcom built entirely around her.

Season 1

1 sequence

Hill Street Blues

1981–1987NBCCrime

Mike Post's piano over squad cars pulling out into snow — the sequence that taught American drama an opening could be melancholy rather than exciting.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cheers

1982–1993NBCComedy

A minute of hand-tinted engravings and old photographs of strangers drinking, none of them from the show and none of them the cast. The bar you are about to spend eleven years in is introduced as the latest in a very long line of them.

Seasons 1–11

1 sequence

Fame

1982–1987NBC / SyndicationDrama

The film continued at the High School of Performing Arts, with a cast who did their own dancing.

Season 1

1 sequence

Family Ties

1982–1989NBCComedy

A family portrait being drawn and redrawn, over a duet about what would happen without you — sixties parents and a Reagan-voting son.

Season 1

1 sequence

Knight Rider

1982–1986NBCDrama

A narrated premise, a scanning red light and a synth arpeggio — the most efficient piece of eighties television branding after the A-Team's.

Season 1

1 sequence

Late Night with David Letterman

1982–1993NBCComedy

New York at night shot from a moving car, over a jazz-organ theme — the opening that decided what a late-night talk show looks like.

Season 1

1 sequence

Remington Steele

1982–1987NBCCrime

A narrated premise about a detective agency with an invented boss, delivered by the woman who invented him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Silver Spoons

1982–1986NBCComedy

A boy sent to live with the father who never grew up, and the model train he rides through the house.

Season 1

1 sequence

St. Elsewhere

1982–1988NBCDrama

A Boston hospital and another Dave Grusin-adjacent piano theme, from the network and era that produced Hill Street Blues and shared its restraint.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mama's Family

1983–1990NBC / SyndicationComedy

A Carol Burnett Show sketch given its own house, dropped by NBC and then run for four more years in syndication.

Season 1

1 sequence

Miami Vice

1984–1990NBCCrime

Flamingos, jai alai and pastel architecture over Jan Hammer — a title sequence that sold an entire aesthetic and arguably a city.

Season 1

1 sequence

Night Court

1984–1992NBCComedy

Eighteen seconds of bass guitar and a Manhattan courthouse at night.

Season 1

1 sequence

Punky Brewster

1984–1986NBCComedy

A girl abandoned in a Chicago apartment building and raised by the man who manages it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Riptide

1984–1986NBCCrime

Two Vietnam veterans running a detective agency from a boat, with a helicopter called the Screaming Mimi.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cosby Show

1984–1992NBCComedy

A family dancing to a new arrangement of the same theme every season — jazz, big band, calypso — which makes it one of the earliest American sitcoms to treat its opening as something to redo annually.

Season 1

1 sequence

V

1984–1985NBCSci-Fi

Visitor iconography and a red banner, borrowing its design language from twentieth-century propaganda quite deliberately.

Season 1

1 sequence

V: The Final Battle

1984NBCSci-Fi

The sequel miniseries to V, three nights long, and the point the story stopped being an allegory and became a war.

Season 1

1 sequence

227

1985–1990NBCComedy

A Washington apartment block told almost entirely from its front steps, where most of the cast spends most of the programme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Amazing Stories

1985–1987NBCSci-Fi

John Williams scoring an animated history of storytelling — cave paintings to campfires to television — for Spielberg's anthology.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Golden Girls

1985–1992NBCComedy

'Thank You for Being a Friend' over four women and a Miami kitchen — a theme so tied to the show that the original songwriter's version is now the obscure one.

Season 7

2 sequences

ALF

1986–1990NBCComedy

A sitcom built around a puppet the cast could not see, worked from a trench cut into the set floor.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

L.A. Law

1986–1994NBCDrama

A car boot slamming on a personalised numberplate, and Mike Post again — the legal drama that defined the form for a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Matlock

1986–1995NBC / ABCCrime

Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Hogan Family

1986–1990NBCComedy

A sitcom that changed its name twice while on the air, from Valerie to Valerie's Family to this one.

Season 1

1 sequence

A Different World

1987–1993NBCComedy

A historically Black college rendered in bold graphic design, with the theme re-recorded by a different artist across the run — Aretha Franklin among them.

Season 2

1 sequence

Good Morning, Miss Bliss

1987–1989NBC / Disney ChannelComedy

The series Saved by the Bell was rebuilt out of, with Hayley Mills teaching in Indiana.

Season 1

1 sequence

My Two Dads

1987–1990NBCComedy

A girl left to two men, either of whom might be her father, by a court that declines to establish which.

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

The Tortellis

1987NBCComedy

Carla's ex-husband and his family moved to Las Vegas, and the shortest-lived thing Cheers produced.

Season 1

1 sequence

Unsolved Mysteries

1987–2002NBCDocumentary

Robert Stack in a trench coat, a synthesiser and a fog machine — the most frightening thing on American television that was not fiction.

Season 1

1 sequence

Empty Nest

1988–1995NBCComedy

The Golden Girls' neighbour given his own house, two grown daughters and a conspicuously large dog.

Season 1

1 sequence

In the Heat of the Night

1988–1995NBC / CBSCrime

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

Season 1

1 sequence

Midnight Caller

1988–1991NBCDrama

A former policeman taking calls on late-night radio, and one of the first American dramas to write about AIDS.

Season 1

1 sequence

Noble House

1988NBCDrama

Four nights of Hong Kong boardroom warfare, from the James Clavell novel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Baywatch

1989–2001NBC / SyndicationDrama

Los Angeles County lifeguards, and at its peak the most-watched television programme on Earth.

Season 1

1 sequence

Father Dowling Mysteries

1989–1991NBC / ABCCrime

A Chicago priest and a nun solving murders, cancelled by NBC and picked up by ABC.

Season 1

2 sequences

Quantum Leap

1989–1993NBCSci-Fi

Narration explaining a premise too complicated to infer, over a theme by Mike Post — the anthology format's problem solved in sixty seconds every week.

Season 1
Season 4

1 sequence

Saved by the Bell

1989–1993NBCComedy

Freeze-frames of six teenagers over a theme about being late — Saturday morning television's most durable export.

Season 1

1 sequence

Seinfeld

1989–1998NBCComedy

A slap bass figure and a stand-up set — an opening that is literally the comedian's act, which is what the show was sold as.

Season 1

1 sequence

Blossom

1990–1995NBCComedy

A teenager narrating her own life to camera in a house otherwise entirely male, opening on a dance she performs herself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ferris Bueller

1990–1991NBCComedy

The film adapted for television without its star, and remembered mostly for opening with a joke about that.

Season 1

2 sequences

Law & Order

1990–NBCCrime

The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.

Season 1
Season 20

1 sequence

NBA on NBC

1990–2002NBCDocumentary

Roundball Rock, written by John Tesh and hummed into an answering machine because he had no way to record it — the most fondly remembered sports theme in America.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

1990–1996NBCComedy

An entire origin story rapped over an animated title card — the longest opening of its era, cut down substantially after the first season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Wings

1990–1997NBCComedy

A Nantucket airline run by two brothers, opened by Schubert.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eerie, Indiana

1991–1993NBCHorror

A boy who works out that his new town is the centre of every strange thing in America.

Season 1

1 sequence

Sisters

1991–1996NBCDrama

Four sisters in Illinois, in a network drama that let all four of them be difficult.

Season 1

1 sequence

Super Mario World

1991NBCAnimation

The last of the Mario cartoons, made for one autumn after the game of the same name.

Season 1

2 sequences

California Dreams

1992–1996NBCComedy

A Californian high school band, made by the Saved by the Bell producers for the same Saturday morning block.

Season 1
Seasons 3–5

1 sequence

Dateline NBC

1992–NBCDocumentary

NBC's newsmagazine, which outlasted every other network attempt at the form by turning into a true-crime hour.

Season 1

1 sequence

Mad About You

1992–2019NBCComedy

A married couple in New York, over a theme that was re-recorded repeatedly and once sung by the show's own stars.

Season 1

1 sequence

Frasier

1993–2004NBCComedy

A skyline drawn in simple lines while a man sings about tossed salads and scrambled eggs, and declines to explain either.

Season 1

1 sequence

Late Night with Conan O'Brien

1993–2009NBCComedy

An unknown writer handed the 12.30 slot, and sixteen years to grow into it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Saved by the Bell: The College Years

1993–1994NBCComedy

The Bayside cast moved to a university for one season, in prime time rather than Saturday morning.

Season 1

2 sequences

Saved by the Bell: The New Class

1993–2000NBCComedy

Bayside kept and the pupils replaced, for seven seasons rather more than anyone had expected.

Season 1
Seasons 6–7

1 sequence

seaQuest DSV

1993–1996NBCSci-Fi

A submarine, an orchestral fanfare and a narrated mission statement — Spielberg's answer to Star Trek, set downwards.

Season 1

1 sequence

The John Larroquette Show

1993–1996NBCComedy

A recovering alcoholic managing a bus terminal at night, in a sitcom NBC steadily made lighter against its writers' wishes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Earth 2

1994–1995NBCSci-Fi

Colonists on a planet that turns out to be alive, cancelled on a cliffhanger after twenty-one episodes.

Season 1

2 sequences

ER

1994–2009NBCDrama

James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.

Season 1
Season 10

1 sequence

Friends

1994–2004NBCComedy

A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.

Season 6

1 sequence

Viper

1994–1999NBC / SyndicationCrime

A car that converts into an armoured attack vehicle, cancelled by NBC and revived for syndication.

Season 1

2 sequences

Caroline in the City

1995–1999NBCComedy

A Manhattan cartoonist drawing a strip about her own life, and the colourist who is in love with her.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

Hang Time

1995–2000NBCComedy

A girl on a boys' high school basketball team, made for the Saturday morning block.

Season 2

2 sequences

Hope & Gloria

1995–1996NBCComedy

A talk show producer and a hairdresser sharing a Pittsburgh apartment building.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

JAG

1995–2005NBC / CBSDrama

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

Season 9

1 sequence

Minor Adjustments

1995NBCComedy

A child psychologist who is markedly better with other people's children than with his own.

Season 1

1 sequence

NewsRadio

1995–1999NBCComedy

Thirty seconds of a radio newsroom and a horn riff, from a workplace sitcom that never quite got the audience it deserved.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Single Guy

1995–1997NBCComedy

A novelist whose friends are all married, scheduled by NBC between Friends and Seinfeld and never forgiven for it.

Season 1

1 sequence

3rd Rock from the Sun

1996–2001NBCComedy

Aliens observing suburban Ohio, opened with the brightness of a travel advertisement for a planet.

Season 6

1 sequence

Boston Common

1996–1997NBCComedy

A Virginian who follows a woman to Boston and takes a job at the university she attends.

Season 1

1 sequence

Profiler

1996–2000NBCCrime

Crime-scene imagery rendered as a mind reconstructing it — the visual grammar every profiler series has used since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Something So Right

1996–1997NBCComedy

A remarried couple with children from three previous marriages between them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Suddenly Susan

1996–2000NBCComedy

A columnist who leaves her fiancé at the altar and then has to write about it every week.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pretender

1996–2000NBCDrama

A man raised in a laboratory who can become any professional he reads about, running from the people who made him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fired Up

1997–1998NBCComedy

Two women sacked from a public relations firm who start their own out of a spare room.

Season 1

2 sequences

Just Shoot Me!

1997–2003NBCComedy

A fashion magazine staffed by people who should not be near one. The titles start as a full sequence and end as a logo.

Season 1
Seasons 3–5

1 sequence

Sunset Beach

1997–1999NBCDrama

Aaron Spelling's daytime serial, which NBC ran for three years and then replaced with Passions.

Season 1

1 sequence

Union Square

1997–1998NBCComedy

A New York diner and the people in it, taken off after fifteen episodes.

Season 1

2 sequences

Veronica's Closet

1997–2000NBCComedy

A lingerie magnate whose marriage collapses in public, in one of NBC's Thursday night bets after Seinfeld.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

Working

1997–1999NBCComedy

A graduate's first office job, narrated by him straight to camera.

Season 1

1 sequence

Jesse

1998–2000NBCComedy

A single mother working in her father's Buffalo bar while training as a nurse.

Season 1

2 sequences

Will & Grace

1998–2020NBCComedy

Thirteen seconds and a piano vamp, from a sitcom confident enough not to explain itself.

Season 1
Season 9

1 sequence

Freaks and Geeks

1999–2000NBCComedy

School photographs taken one at a time, with each cast member visibly hating the process — Joan Jett over the least flattering portraits anyone would agree to.

Season 1

2 sequences

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

1999–NBCCrime

The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.

Season 1
Season 15

1 sequence

Passions

1999–2008NBCDrama

A daytime serial that ran witchcraft, a living doll and an orangutan nurse alongside the usual, and was the last new one American network daytime commissioned.

Season 1

1 sequence

Providence

1999–2002NBCDrama

A plastic surgeon returning to Rhode Island, advised by her dead mother.

Season 1

2 sequences

The West Wing

1999–2006NBCDrama

Oil portraits, flags and W.G. Snuffy Walden's brass — an opening that treats the executive branch as a cathedral, which is the show's entire register.

Season 1
Season 5

1 sequence

Third Watch

1999–2005NBCDrama

Police, paramedics and firefighters on the same New York shift, from the ER producers.

Season 5

1 sequence

The 10th Kingdom

2000NBCSci-Fi

Ten hours of fairy tale in which Manhattan and the Nine Kingdoms turn out to share a mirror.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crossing Jordan

2001–2007NBCCrime

A Boston medical examiner who investigates her own cases against instruction.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fear Factor

2001–2012NBCDocumentary

The Dutch format that asked contestants to eat things, opening on a montage of them regretting it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Law & Order: Criminal Intent

2001–2011NBC / USA NetworkCrime

The franchise entry that follows the criminal rather than the case, and so has to break the format's own rule about not showing you the answer.

Season 1

1 sequence

Scrubs

2001–2010NBC / ABCComedy

Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Dreams

2002–2005NBCDrama

A Philadelphia family in the mid-1960s, built around American Bandstand.

Season 1

1 sequence

Boomtown

2002–2003NBCCrime

A Los Angeles crime series that told each case from five points of view, and opened with the device stated up front.

Season 1

1 sequence

Las Vegas

2003–2008NBCDrama

Casino surveillance as an ensemble drama, opening on the Strip at the hour it looks best.

Season 1

1 sequence

Joey

2004–2006NBCComedy

The Friends spin-off, moving one character to Los Angeles and finding out how much of the show had been the other five.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Apprentice

2004–NBCDocumentary

Manhattan from a helicopter over the O'Jays' For the Love of Money, which is the whole thesis of the programme in one sample.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Biggest Loser

2004–2020NBCDocumentary

A weight-loss competition whose titles were rebuilt around whichever pairing the season had chosen.

Season 5

1 sequence

Law & Order: Trial by Jury

2005–2006NBCCrime

The shortest-lived Law & Order, cancelled after thirteen episodes, covering the half of the format the parent series skipped.

Season 1

1 sequence

Medium

2005–2011NBC / CBSCrime

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

Season 1

1 sequence

My Name Is Earl

2005–2009NBCComedy

A petty criminal working through a written list of everything he has done wrong, one item an episode.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Office

2005–2013NBCComedy

Scranton, a car park and a filing cabinet, shot like stock footage for a regional business — twenty-two seconds that promise nothing will happen.

Season 1

1 sequence

30 Rock

2006–2013NBCComedy

Nineteen seconds of Art Deco signage and a brass sting, moving at roughly the speed the show's dialogue does.

Season 1

1 sequence

Friday Night Lights

2006–2011NBCDrama

Explosions in the Sky over Texas fields and floodlights — a football show whose titles are almost entirely landscape and weather.

Season 1

1 sequence

Heroes

2006–2010NBCSci-Fi

An eclipse and a card, in twelve seconds. The restraint is the point — a superhero show refusing to open like one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

2006–2007NBCDrama

Sorkin backstage at a sketch show, cancelled after one season while another series took the same premise and survived.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chuck

2007–2012NBCComedy

Consumer electronics and spy hardware cut together at the same speed, for a show that could never decide which it was about — correctly.

Season 1

1 sequence

Life (2007)

2007–2009NBCCrime

A detective released after twelve years for a crime he did not commit, handed back his badge and a very large settlement.

Season 1

1 sequence

Fear Itself

2008NBCHorror

Masters of Horror moved to a broadcast network and cut to fit it, which is most of what went wrong.

Season 1

1 sequence

Community

2009–2015NBC / YahooComedy

Study-group detritus on a table, in a show that spent six seasons abandoning its own format for whatever genre it fancied that week.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parks and Recreation

2009–2020NBCComedy

Pawnee's municipal signage and a brass fanfare, pitched at exactly the level of civic pride the show's protagonist has for a mid-sized Indiana town.

Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Southland

2009–2013NBC / TNTCrime

Los Angeles patrol work shot like documentary, dropped by NBC and picked up by TNT.

Season 1

1 sequence

Grimm

2011–2017NBCHorror

A Portland detective who can see the creatures the fairy tales were written about, opened in eleven seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Fire

2012–NBCDrama

The first of Dick Wolf's Chicago series, and the one the other two were built out from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Revolution

2012–2014NBCSci-Fi

Fifteen years after all electricity stopped working, from Eric Kripke and J. J. Abrams.

Season 1

2 sequences

Brooklyn Nine-Nine

2013–2021Fox / NBCComedy

Precinct signage and a horn line in twenty-one seconds — a cop show opening with no sirens in it.

Seasons 1–5
Seasons 6–8

1 sequence

Hannibal

2013–2015NBCHorror

A figure forming out of blood in water, on network television at ten o'clock. Twenty-one seconds, and among the most beautiful things any broadcast network has aired.