Department S

Name: Department S
Genre: Drama

1969–1970ITVDrama

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An Interpol unit for cases nobody else can explain, which gave Jason King his own spin-off.

Department S opens with a main title sequence of 69 seconds.

At 69 seconds, it opens well above the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on ITV in 1969, when The Sooty Show, The Big Match and World of Sport were also on the network.

The opening titles

69s

Fan upload.

1960–ITVDrama

The longest-running television soap in the world, opening on rooftops and a cornet ever since 1960.

1965–NBCDrama

"Like sands through the hourglass" — the same sentence, over the same hourglass, for sixty years.

1964–1968NBCDrama

Sixties spy graphics and a brass chart, in the register every subsequent spy show either copied or reacted against.

1965–1969CBSDrama

An animated frontier vignette that pauses on four panels of a comic strip — a western opening built like a title card for a serial.

1962–1971NBCDrama

The first ninety-minute western on American television, and the third longest-running of them all.

1968–2012ABCDrama

Llanview, and the first American daytime serial written around class and ethnicity rather than around a hospital.