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Showtime opening titles

Showtime accounts for 53 shows here, running from 1982 to the present, and 59 opening title sequences between them.

Drama leads with 24, then comedy with 14.

Three of them rebuilt their titles at least once — most of all Stargate SG-1, with four distinct sequences.

53 shows · 59 sequences · oldest first

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

Still from the opening titles of Faerie Tale Theatre1 sequence

Faerie Tale Theatre

1982–1987ShowtimeDrama

Shelley Duvall's anthology of fairy tales, each directed by a different film-maker and cast from Hollywood.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of It's Garry Shandling's Show1 sequence

It's Garry Shandling's Show

1986–1990ShowtimeComedy

A sitcom whose theme song is about being a sitcom theme song, six years before The Larry Sanders Show.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Twin Peaks2 sequences

Twin Peaks

1990–1991, 2017ABC / ShowtimeDrama

A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.

  • Seasons 1–2
  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of The Busy World of Richard Scarry1 sequence

The Busy World of Richard Scarry

1994–1996ShowtimeAnimation

Busytown animated faithfully enough that the books' cutaway drawings survive intact.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Outer Limits (1995)1 sequence

The Outer Limits (1995)

1995–2002Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The revival, which keeps the control-voice conceit and rebuilds the imagery around nineties computer graphics.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Poltergeist: The Legacy1 sequence

Poltergeist: The Legacy

1996–1999Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelHorror

A secret society investigating the supernatural from a San Francisco island house.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Stargate SG-14 sequences

Stargate SG-1

1997–2007Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

The gate opening, every week, for ten years — David Arnold's film theme rearranged for television and a sequence that never stopped being about one piece of hardware.

  • Season 1
  • Season 6
  • Season 9
  • and 1 more
Still from the opening titles of Total Recall 20701 sequence

Total Recall 2070

1999Showtime / SpaceSci-Fi

A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Queer as Folk (US)1 sequence

Queer as Folk (US)

2000–2005ShowtimeDrama

The Russell T Davies series remade in Pittsburgh and run for five seasons — four more than the original managed.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Chris Isaak Show1 sequence

The Chris Isaak Show

2001–2004ShowtimeComedy

The musician playing himself and his band playing themselves, in a series about their own touring.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Jeremiah1 sequence

Jeremiah

2002–2004ShowtimeSci-Fi

J. Michael Straczynski's series about a world where everyone over puberty died fifteen years ago.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Odyssey 51 sequence

Odyssey 5

2002ShowtimeSci-Fi

Five astronauts sent back five years to prevent the destruction of Earth, cancelled after one season.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dead Like Me1 sequence

Dead Like Me

2003–2004ShowtimeComedy

Reapers, toast and small municipal death — an opening that treats the afterlife as clerical work, which is the joke the series runs on.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Huff1 sequence

Huff

2004–2006ShowtimeDrama

A psychiatrist whose own life comes apart after a patient's suicide.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The L Word1 sequence

The L Word

2004–2009ShowtimeDrama

A circle of women in West Hollywood, and a theme song that lists what the show is about out loud.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Masters of Horror1 sequence

Masters of Horror

2005–2007ShowtimeHorror

An anthology giving a different established horror director an hour each week.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Sleeper Cell1 sequence

Sleeper Cell

2005–2006ShowtimeDrama

An FBI agent undercover in a Los Angeles terrorist cell, two seasons long.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Weeds1 sequence

Weeds

2005–2012ShowtimeComedy

'Little Boxes' over identical suburban houses — and from the third season the song is re-recorded by a different artist every episode, which makes this one of the most varied openings in television.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of Dexter1 sequence

Dexter

2006–2013ShowtimeCrime

Breakfast filmed as though it were a murder. A mosquito swatted, a blood orange crushed, a shaving nick, a steak sliced, floss drawn tight — every shot of an ordinary morning framed exactly as the violence the show never puts on screen this early.

  • Seasons 1–8
Still from the opening titles of Californication1 sequence

Californication

2007–2014ShowtimeComedy

Los Angeles from a convertible, with a writer who has not written anything in some years.

  • 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 Secret Diary of a Call Girl1 sequence

Secret Diary of a Call Girl

2007–2011ITV2 / ShowtimeDrama

Billie Piper addressing the camera between clients, adapted from the Belle de Jour blog.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Tudors1 sequence

The Tudors

2007–2010ShowtimeDrama

Henry VIII played young and handsome for four seasons, opened by a montage of everything the reign would cost.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Nurse Jackie1 sequence

Nurse Jackie

2009–2015ShowtimeComedy

Hospital corridors and pills, filmed with the brightness of a pharmaceutical advertisement.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of United States of Tara1 sequence

United States of Tara

2009–2011ShowtimeComedy

Diablo Cody's series about a woman with dissociative identity disorder, whose titles introduce every alter.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Big C1 sequence

The Big C

2010–2013ShowtimeComedy

Laura Linney given a terminal diagnosis and deciding to stop being polite about anything.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Episodes1 sequence

Episodes

2011–2017Showtime / BBC TwoComedy

Two British writers watching their sitcom be remade badly in Los Angeles, with Matt LeBlanc as himself.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Homeland3 sequences

Homeland

2011–2020ShowtimeDrama

Jazz, archive news audio and a child in a lion mask — a fever dream assembled from half a century of American foreign policy, recut every season with that year's crisis in it.

  • Season 1
  • Season 6
  • Season 8
Still from the opening titles of Shameless1 sequence

Shameless

2011–2021ShowtimeComedy

A bathroom door opening on each member of the family in turn — an entire household characterised through one room.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Borgias1 sequence

The Borgias

2011–2013ShowtimeDrama

Neil Jordan's Renaissance papacy, opened in gilt and shadow.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Web Therapy1 sequence

Web Therapy

2011–2015ShowtimeComedy

Lisa Kudrow's improvised therapist, conducting three-minute sessions by video call.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Masters of Sex1 sequence

Masters of Sex

2013–2016ShowtimeDrama

Masters and Johnson's research, opened by a sequence of double meanings built out of 1950s stock footage.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Ray Donovan1 sequence

Ray Donovan

2013–2020ShowtimeCrime

Los Angeles at street level — a fixer's city, shot from the driver's seat rather than the hills.

  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Penny Dreadful1 sequence

Penny Dreadful

2014–2016ShowtimeHorror

Victorian specimen jars, insects and anatomical plates, filmed with the patience of a museum catalogue and none of its detachment.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Affair1 sequence

The Affair

2014–2019ShowtimeDrama

Fiona Apple's 'Container' over water and doubled imagery — two accounts of the same events, said in pictures before the show says it in structure.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Billions1 sequence

Billions

2016–2023ShowtimeDrama

Manhattan money photographed like weather — glass, helicopters and trading floors, with no people in any of it.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of I'm Dying Up Here1 sequence

I'm Dying Up Here

2017–2018ShowtimeDrama

The 1970s Los Angeles stand-up scene, produced by Jim Carrey.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of SMILF1 sequence

SMILF

2017–2019ShowtimeComedy

A single mother in South Boston, cancelled after two seasons.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Kidding1 sequence

Kidding

2018–2020ShowtimeDrama

Jim Carrey as a children's television presenter coming apart, directed by Michel Gondry.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Chi1 sequence

The Chi

2018–ShowtimeDrama

Lena Waithe's South Side, following several lives that keep intersecting.

  • Seasons 1–3
Still from the opening titles of City on a Hill1 sequence

City on a Hill

2019–2022ShowtimeCrime

Boston in the early nineties, a corrupt FBI agent and the prosecutor trying to use him.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of On Becoming a God in Central Florida1 sequence

On Becoming a God in Central Florida

2019ShowtimeDrama

Kirsten Dunst working her way up a pyramid scheme that destroyed her family.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Loudest Voice1 sequence

The Loudest Voice

2019ShowtimeDrama

Roger Ailes and the building of Fox News, one episode per significant year.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Moonbase 81 sequence

Moonbase 8

2020ShowtimeComedy

Three astronauts in an Arizona simulator, none of whom will ever go to the moon.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Good Lord Bird1 sequence

The Good Lord Bird

2020ShowtimeDrama

John Brown's raid told by a boy he mistakes for a girl, opened in the idiom of a nineteenth-century woodcut.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Yellowjackets1 sequence

Yellowjackets

2021–ShowtimeHorror

Home-video and yearbook imagery cut with things that should not be in a yearbook, and a new needle-drop each season.

  • Season 2
Still from the opening titles of George & Tammy1 sequence

George & Tammy

2022ShowtimeDrama

George Jones and Tammy Wynette, with both leads singing their own recordings.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Super Pumped1 sequence

Super Pumped

2022ShowtimeDrama

The Uber story as the first season of an intended anthology about companies.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The First Lady1 sequence

The First Lady

2022ShowtimeDrama

Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama told in parallel across one season.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Man Who Fell to Earth1 sequence

The Man Who Fell to Earth

2022Showtime / Paramount+Sci-Fi

The Tevis novel continued rather than remade, with Chiwetel Ejiofor as a second visitor.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of The Curse1 sequence

The Curse

2023Showtime / A24Comedy

Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie's series about a house-flipping couple, whose opening credits are different in every single episode.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of A Gentleman in Moscow1 sequence

A Gentleman in Moscow

2024Showtime / Paramount+Drama

A count sentenced to house arrest in a Moscow hotel for thirty years, from the Amor Towles novel.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Dexter: Resurrection1 sequence

Dexter: Resurrection

2025ShowtimeCrime

The continuation that throws away the two-minute breakfast ritual the original was famous for and replaces it with a six-second card.

  • Season 1