Bones
Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.
Bones kept one opening title sequence, 30 seconds long, across season 2.
At 30 seconds, it opens well under the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Fox in 2005, when America's Most Wanted, The X-Files and MADtv were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 2
30sThe second season's opening theme.
More crime opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
Dexter
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
5 sequences
The 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
2 sequences
NCIS
Naval insignia, photographs and a snare roll, refreshed periodically as a cast that has now turned over almost completely came and went.
- Season 10
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Mentalist
A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Sons of Anarchy
Leather, chrome and a reaper patch, over a theme re-recorded by a different artist as the club's situation deteriorates.
- Season 1
- Season 7
1 sequence
Veronica Mars
The Dandy Warhols over surveillance photographs and a Californian beach town that is much worse than it looks.
- Season 1