Cheers
A minute of hand-tinted engravings and old photographs of strangers drinking, none of them from the show and none of them the cast. The bar you are about to spend eleven years in is introduced as the latest in a very long line of them.
One opening sequence is catalogued for Cheers, covering seasons 1–11.
It arrived on NBC in 1982, when Truth or Consequences, Another World and Search for Tomorrow were also on the network.
The opening titles
Seasons 1–11
Unchanged across all eleven seasons, which is the more remarkable half: a sitcom that ran a decade and replaced most of its leads never once updated its opening, because the opening was never about them. Castle/Bryant/Johnsen assembled it from archive — books, private collections, historical societies — and Gary Portnoy's theme does the introducing instead.
More comedy opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequence
The Golden Girls
'Thank You for Being a Friend' over four women and a Miami kitchen — a theme so tied to the show that the original songwriter's version is now the obscure one.
- Season 7
1 sequence
Seinfeld
A slap bass figure and a stand-up set — an opening that is literally the comedian's act, which is what the show was sold as.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMarried... with Children
Sinatra's 'Love and Marriage' over a Chicago family who demonstrably have neither — one of television's earliest deliberately sarcastic openings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOnly Fools and Horses
A theme sung by the show's own writer, explaining the premise in verse — and one of the very few British sitcom openings to have charted.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Roseanne
A family at a kitchen table, laughing at something you cannot hear, rebuilt for every season across twenty years and a thirty-year gap.
- Season 1
- Season 10
4 sequences
Blackadder
Four series, four centuries, and a theme re-orchestrated each time to suit the period — lute, harpsichord, military band.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more