Showtime
53 shows, 59 sequences, oldest first.
11 of these moved between networks during their run and appear under each one.
1 sequenceFaerie Tale Theatre
1982–1987ShowtimeDrama
Shelley Duvall's anthology of fairy tales, each directed by a different film-maker and cast from Hollywood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIt'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
2 sequencesTwin 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
1 sequenceThe Busy World of Richard Scarry
1994–1996ShowtimeAnimation
Busytown animated faithfully enough that the books' cutaway drawings survive intact.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequencePoltergeist: The Legacy
1996–1999Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelHorror
A secret society investigating the supernatural from a San Francisco island house.
- Season 1
4 sequencesStargate 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
1 sequenceTotal Recall 2070
1999Showtime / SpaceSci-Fi
A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.
- Season 1
1 sequenceQueer 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
1 sequenceThe Chris Isaak Show
2001–2004ShowtimeComedy
The musician playing himself and his band playing themselves, in a series about their own touring.
- Season 1
1 sequenceJeremiah
2002–2004ShowtimeSci-Fi
J. Michael Straczynski's series about a world where everyone over puberty died fifteen years ago.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOdyssey 5
2002ShowtimeSci-Fi
Five astronauts sent back five years to prevent the destruction of Earth, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDead 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
1 sequenceHuff
2004–2006ShowtimeDrama
A psychiatrist whose own life comes apart after a patient's suicide.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceMasters of Horror
2005–2007ShowtimeHorror
An anthology giving a different established horror director an hour each week.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSleeper Cell
2005–2006ShowtimeDrama
An FBI agent undercover in a Los Angeles terrorist cell, two seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWeeds
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
1 sequenceDexter
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
1 sequenceCalifornication
2007–2014ShowtimeComedy
Los Angeles from a convertible, with a writer who has not written anything in some years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMeadowlands
2007Showtime / Channel 4Drama
A family in witness protection on an estate where everyone else is hiding something too.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSecret Diary of a Call Girl
2007–2011ITV2 / ShowtimeDrama
Billie Piper addressing the camera between clients, adapted from the Belle de Jour blog.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tudors
2007–2010ShowtimeDrama
Henry VIII played young and handsome for four seasons, opened by a montage of everything the reign would cost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceNurse Jackie
2009–2015ShowtimeComedy
Hospital corridors and pills, filmed with the brightness of a pharmaceutical advertisement.
- Season 1
1 sequenceUnited States of Tara
2009–2011ShowtimeComedy
Diablo Cody's series about a woman with dissociative identity disorder, whose titles introduce every alter.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Big C
2010–2013ShowtimeComedy
Laura Linney given a terminal diagnosis and deciding to stop being polite about anything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceEpisodes
2011–2017Showtime / BBC TwoComedy
Two British writers watching their sitcom be remade badly in Los Angeles, with Matt LeBlanc as himself.
- Season 1
3 sequencesHomeland
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
1 sequenceShameless
2011–2021ShowtimeComedy
A bathroom door opening on each member of the family in turn — an entire household characterised through one room.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Borgias
2011–2013ShowtimeDrama
Neil Jordan's Renaissance papacy, opened in gilt and shadow.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWeb Therapy
2011–2015ShowtimeComedy
Lisa Kudrow's improvised therapist, conducting three-minute sessions by video call.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMasters of Sex
2013–2016ShowtimeDrama
Masters and Johnson's research, opened by a sequence of double meanings built out of 1950s stock footage.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRay Donovan
2013–2020ShowtimeCrime
Los Angeles at street level — a fixer's city, shot from the driver's seat rather than the hills.
- Season 4
1 sequencePenny 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
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceBillions
2016–2023ShowtimeDrama
Manhattan money photographed like weather — glass, helicopters and trading floors, with no people in any of it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceI'm Dying Up Here
2017–2018ShowtimeDrama
The 1970s Los Angeles stand-up scene, produced by Jim Carrey.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSMILF
2017–2019ShowtimeComedy
A single mother in South Boston, cancelled after two seasons.
- Season 1
1 sequenceKidding
2018–2020ShowtimeDrama
Jim Carrey as a children's television presenter coming apart, directed by Michel Gondry.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Chi
2018–ShowtimeDrama
Lena Waithe's South Side, following several lives that keep intersecting.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceCity on a Hill
2019–2022ShowtimeCrime
Boston in the early nineties, a corrupt FBI agent and the prosecutor trying to use him.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOn Becoming a God in Central Florida
2019ShowtimeDrama
Kirsten Dunst working her way up a pyramid scheme that destroyed her family.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Loudest Voice
2019ShowtimeDrama
Roger Ailes and the building of Fox News, one episode per significant year.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMoonbase 8
2020ShowtimeComedy
Three astronauts in an Arizona simulator, none of whom will ever go to the moon.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceYellowjackets
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
1 sequenceGeorge & Tammy
2022ShowtimeDrama
George Jones and Tammy Wynette, with both leads singing their own recordings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceSuper Pumped
2022ShowtimeDrama
The Uber story as the first season of an intended anthology about companies.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe First Lady
2022ShowtimeDrama
Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama told in parallel across one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceThe 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
1 sequenceA 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
1 sequenceDexter: 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