Casualty

Name: Casualty
Genre: Drama

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Holby City Hospital's emergency department, and the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world.

Casualty kept one opening title sequence, 33 seconds long, across season 27.

At 33 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on BBC One in 1986, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and This Is Your Life were also on the network.

The opening titles

33s

Fan upload dated 2012; counting a series per year from the September 1986 launch, that is the twenty-seventh.

1985–BBC OneDrama

An aerial pull-back over the Thames and the drum that answers it — thirty-two seconds that have barely changed in forty years.

1989–2001NBC / SyndicationDrama

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

1989CBSDrama

Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.

1985–2025Seven / Ten (Australia)Drama

Ramsay Street across forty years, and a theme song that survived every cast, network and cancellation.

1987–CBSDrama

Los Angeles fashion houses, and the most widely watched daytime serial in the world.

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.