Heartbreak High
1994–1999TenABC (Australia)Drama
A Sydney comprehensive, revived by Netflix thirty years later.
Heartbreak High opens with a main title sequence of 61 seconds.
It arrived on Ten in 1994, when Mr Squiggle, Mother and Son and Bananas in Pyjamas were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
61sFan upload of the 1994 original's first season. The 2022 Netflix revival uses a different sequence and is not catalogued here.
More drama opening titles from the 1990s
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Ninety seconds of a man driving home from the Lincoln Tunnel to North Caldwell. No cast montage, no highlights — just the commute, which turns out to be the whole show.
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A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.
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James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.
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Paula Cole over a Massachusetts creek — a theme so tied to the show that its absence from the streaming release became a story in itself.
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2 sequencesThe West Wing
Oil portraits, flags and W.G. Snuffy Walden's brass — an opening that treats the executive branch as a cathedral, which is the show's entire register.
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1 sequenceBeverly Hills, 90210
Freeze-frames of a cast grinning at the camera over a synth-brass hook — the template every teen drama of the decade copied.
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