Car 54, Where Are You?
Two Bronx patrolmen, with a theme that lists everything going wrong in New York and then asks where the car is.
Car 54, Where Are You? opens with a main title sequence of 29 seconds.
It arrived on NBC in 1961, when Truth or Consequences, Search for Tomorrow and Dragnet were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
29sFan upload of the first season, 1961.
More comedy opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Sesame 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 sequenceThe Addams Family
Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceThe Brady Bunch
A three-by-three grid of faces all looking at each other — a title sequence so structurally famous that the grid alone is the reference.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBewitched
Animated witches and a swing arrangement — a live-action sitcom that opens as a cartoon, which was the only way to show the magic on a 1964 budget.
- Season 1
1 sequenceGilligan's Island
A theme song that narrates the entire premise, names every castaway, and was rewritten after the first season to stop leaving two of them out.
- Season 3
1 sequenceThe Andy Griffith Show
A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.
- Season 1