Law & Order: Criminal Intent
2001–2011NBCUSA NetworkCrime
The franchise entry that follows the criminal rather than the case, and so has to break the format's own rule about not showing you the answer.
Law & Order: Criminal Intent opens with a main title sequence of 47 seconds.
It arrived on NBC in 2001, when Columbo, Mad About You and Will & Grace were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
47sFan upload of the first season's intro.
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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- 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.
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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