Dragnet
Four notes, a badge, and "the story you are about to see is true" — the opening that set the shape of the American police procedural.
Dragnet opens with a main title sequence of 32 seconds.
At 32 seconds, it opens well under the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1951, when Truth or Consequences, Search for Tomorrow and Kraft Television Theatre were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
32sFan upload of the 1967 revival's open. The first search returned an opening-and-closing bundle spanning both runs; a second query found this alone.
More crime opening titles from the 1950s
1 sequencePerry Mason (1957)
'Park Avenue Beat' — a jazz chart with a walking bass, over a courtroom drama that ran for nine years on almost nothing else.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Untouchables
Walter Winchell narrating over Prohibition Chicago at a clip that makes the whole thing sound like a news bulletin — which was the intention.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHighway Patrol
Broderick Crawford saying "Ten-four" into a car radio, which entered the language from here.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAlfred Hitchcock Presents
Nine strokes of a pen, and then the man himself walks in from the right and stands inside his own outline. A director who had spent thirty years staying behind the camera made his silhouette the most recognisable thing on American television.
- Seasons 1–7
1 sequence
The Office
Scranton, a car park and a filing cabinet, shot like stock footage for a regional business — twenty-two seconds that promise nothing will happen.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit
The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.
- Season 1
- Season 15