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TVTitles

Law & Order

1990–NBCCrime

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The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.

Law & Order rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1 and 20, running between 45 and 78 seconds.

At 78 seconds at its longest, it opens well above the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on NBC in 1990, when Another World, Columbo and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson were also on the network.

Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Law & Order did so once.

2 sequences14th most looked up of 409 in the 1990sIMDb ↗Official site ↗
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All 2 opening title sequences

Season 1

78s

The first season's opening titles. It took several attempts to find: Special Victims Unit outranks the parent series on almost every search, including from the franchise's own channel.

Season 20

45s

The twentieth season. Nineteen years on, the same narration and the same two-note sting, over graphics rebuilt for high definition.

More crime opening titles from the 1990s

Still from the opening titles of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit2 sequences

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

1999–NBCCrime

The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.

  • Season 1
  • Season 15
Still from the opening titles of Midsomer Murders1 sequence

Midsomer Murders

1997–ITVCrime

A theremin over English villages — the single most incongruous pairing of instrument and setting in television, and the reason the show is recognisable in four notes.

  • Season 1
Still from the opening titles of Oz2 sequences

Oz

1997–2003HBOCrime

HBO's first hour-long drama, and the opening that established what the network's title sequences would be for the next twenty years — narrated, tattooed, and entirely unwilling to reassure you.

  • Season 1
  • Season 4
Still from the opening titles of Silent Witness1 sequence

Silent Witness

1996–BBC OneCrime

Forensic pathology rendered as abstraction — a thirty-year-old series whose titles have been redesigned repeatedly while the eye at the centre of them stayed.

  • Season 21
Still from the opening titles of Walker, Texas Ranger1 sequence

Walker, Texas Ranger

1993–2001CBSCrime

Chuck Norris as a Ranger, with a theme song he sings himself from the third season on.

  • Season 3
Still from the opening titles of NYPD Blue1 sequence

NYPD Blue

1993–2005ABCCrime

Mike Post's theme over a New York shot with the handheld looseness that got the show its reputation before anyone had seen an episode.

  • Season 1