Inspector George Gently
A Northumberland detective in the 1960s, and a series that uses the decade for its politics rather than its clothes.
Inspector George Gently kept one opening title sequence, 43 seconds long, across season 2.
It arrived on BBC One in 2007, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and Last of the Summer Wine were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 2
43sFan upload of the second series' credits, 2009.
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.
- Seasons 1–8
5 sequences
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.
- Season 10
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Mentalist
A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.
- Season 1
2 sequences
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
- Season 7
1 sequence
Bones
Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.
- Season 2