French and Saunders
Twenty years of film parodies, and the double act that came out of the Comic Strip.
French and Saunders opens with a main title sequence of 28 seconds.
At 28 seconds, it opens well under the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on BBC Two in 1987, when Yes, Prime Minister, Great Railway Journeys and The Old Grey Whistle Test were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
28sThe BBC Two opening titles, dated by the uploader to 9 March 1987. Something of the titles has been posted after all; it took naming the broadcaster to find it.
More comedy opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequenceThe 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 sequenceSeinfeld
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 sequenceCheers
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.
- Seasons 1–11
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 sequencesRoseanne
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