Hustle
Playing cards, sleight of hand and London — a con-artist series whose titles are themselves a piece of misdirection.
Hustle opens with a main title sequence of 47 seconds.
It arrived on BBC One in 2004, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and Top of the Pops were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
47sThe opening.
More crime opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
Dexter
Breakfast filmed as though it were a murder. A mosquito swatted, a blood orange crushed, a shaving nick, a steak sliced, floss drawn tight — every shot of an ordinary morning framed exactly as the violence the show never puts on screen this early.
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The Wire
The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 2 more
2 sequences
NCIS
Naval insignia, photographs and a snare roll, refreshed periodically as a cast that has now turned over almost completely came and went.
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1 sequence
The Mentalist
A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.
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Sons of Anarchy
Leather, chrome and a reaper patch, over a theme re-recorded by a different artist as the club's situation deteriorates.
- Season 1
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1 sequence
Bones
Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.
- Season 2