Grand Designs
1999–Channel 4Documentary
One self-build per episode, opening on drawings that assemble themselves into the house you are about to watch fail to be finished on time.
Grand Designs kept one opening title sequence, 22 seconds long, across season 20.
At 22 seconds, it opens well under the 37-second median for documentary sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on Channel 4 in 1999, when Brookside, Time Team and Brass Eye were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 20
22sFan upload of the 2018 titles; counting a season per year from the 1999 launch, that is the twentieth.
More documentary opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequenceThe Real World
"This is the true story of seven strangers" — the narration that invented the reality format, and the one every parody since has copied.
- Season 1
1 sequenceDateline NBC
NBC's newsmagazine, which outlasted every other network attempt at the form by turning into a true-crime hour.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTime Team
Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceWho Wants to Be a Millionaire?
Keith and Matthew Strachan's music, which unusually runs continuously under the questions rather than only over the titles — one of the few game shows scored like a thriller.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Beatles Anthology
The band's own account of itself, assembled with the three surviving members.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBill Nye the Science Guy
Science for children at the speed of a music video, with a theme that shouts the presenter's name.
- Season 1