A

150 shows169 sequences

1 sequence

A.N.T. Farm

2011–2014Disney ChannelComedy

Gifted children fast-tracked into a high school that does not want them there.

Season 1

1 sequence

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters

1994–1997NickelodeonAnimation

Monsters at school under a city dump, learning to frighten people as a trade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Abbott Elementary

2021–ABCComedy

A Philadelphia public school shot as a documentary, and the first network comedy in years to become a hit on its own terms.

Season 1

1 sequence

ABC's Wide World of Sports

1961–1998ABCDocumentary

"The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat" — a narration so well known that the ski-jumper who supplied the agony became famous for falling over.

Season 20

1 sequence

Absolutely Fabulous

1992–2012BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

Twenty-one seconds of Julie Driscoll's 'This Wheel's on Fire', re-recorded for the show by its own star.

Season 1

1 sequence

Abstract: The Art of Design

2017–2019NetflixDocumentary

One designer an episode, with a title sequence rebuilt each time in that designer's own idiom — the rare series whose titles are the argument.

Season 1

1 sequence

According to Jim

2001–2009ABCComedy

Eight seasons of a Chicago family sitcom that critics ignored and audiences kept renewing.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Acolyte

2024Disney+Sci-Fi

A Jedi murder mystery a century before the prequels, with ten seconds of titles for a franchise that opened on a crawl.

Season 1

1 sequence

Adam Ruins Everything

2015–2019truTVDocumentary

A comedian interrupting people to explain, with citations on screen, why what they believe is wrong.

Season 1

1 sequence

Adam-12

1968–1975NBCCrime

One patrol car, one shift, from the Dragnet producer.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Addams Family

1964–1966ABCComedy

Harpsichord, bass clarinet, and two finger snaps that half a century of television has never managed to shake off. The family assemble for a portrait while Lurch supplies the only three adjectives the song needs.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Adolescence

2025NetflixDrama

A quiet card over domestic detail, for a series shot in single unbroken takes — the only cut in some episodes arrives in the titles.

Season 1

1 sequence

Adults

2025FXComedy

Five friends sharing a Queens house and failing at adulthood.

Season 1

1 sequence

Adventure Time

2010–2018Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Twenty-five seconds of a candy world that turns out to be a post-apocalyptic one, sung by a boy and a dog who have not noticed.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr.

1993–1994FoxSci-Fi

A bounty hunter in 1893 chasing a device from the future, cancelled after one season and quoted ever since.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius

2002–2006NickelodeonAnimation

One of the first fully CG series made for American television week to week.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet

1952–1966ABCComedy

A real family playing themselves for fourteen years, which is the longest-running live-action sitcom in American television.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Pete & Pete

1993–1996NickelodeonComedy

Two brothers with the same name in a suburb tuned slightly wrong, scored by Polaris.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

1984–1994ITV (Granada)Crime

Jeremy Brett's Holmes, and the Victorian-illustration open Granada reused across every retitled run of the series.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

The Adventures of Superman

1952–1958SyndicationSci-Fi

"Faster than a speeding bullet" — the narration that defined the character for a generation before any film did.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Affair

2014–2019ShowtimeDrama

Fiona Apple's 'Container' over water and doubled imagery — two accounts of the same events, said in pictures before the show says it in structure.

Season 1

1 sequence

After Life

2019–2022NetflixComedy

Ricky Gervais on grief, in the smallest register he has ever worked in.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Afterparty

2022–2023Apple TV+Comedy

A different genre pastiche for every episode's narrator, which makes the titles the most honest summary the show could give of itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Agatha All Along

2024Disney+Horror

The WandaVision villain given a witches' road to walk down, and a theme that was a joke song first.

Season 1

1 sequence

Agatha Christie's Marple

2004–2013ITVCrime

The ITV Marple, which adapted novels Miss Marple was never in by writing her into them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Agatha Christie's Poirot

1989–2013ITVCrime

Art Deco geometry and Christopher Gunning's theme — a title sequence that establishes the period, the register and the fastidiousness of the detective in one gesture.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Agency

2024–Paramount+ with ShowtimeDrama

The American adaptation of The Bureau, which this catalogue could not find footage of in its original French.

Season 1

1 sequence

Agent Carter

2015–2016ABCDrama

Post-war period design and a big-band arrangement, for the best-looking title sequence Marvel has put on television.

Season 1

1 sequence

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

2013–2020ABCSci-Fi

Marvel's first television series, opening with agency insignia and a brass sting rather than any of the heroes it is adjacent to.

Season 1

1 sequence

Aggretsuko

2018–2023NetflixAnimation

Sanrio character design and death metal, in an opening that switches between the two exactly as the protagonist does.

Season 5

1 sequence

Ahsoka

2023–Disney+Sci-Fi

The animated character brought into live action, in the branch of the franchise that assumes you watched the cartoons.

Season 1

1 sequence

Airwolf

1984–1987CBS / USADrama

A helicopter emerging from a desert mesa to a synth fanfare, at a level of self-seriousness the decade rewarded.

Season 1

1 sequence

Akame ga Kill!

2014Tokyo MXAnimation

An assassin's guild against an empire, in a series that kills its cast far faster than the genre allows.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alas Smith and Jones

1984–1998BBC TwoComedy

Mel Smith and Griff Rhys Jones after Not the Nine O'Clock News, with a title that puns on a western.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alchemy of Souls

2022–2023tvNDrama

Souls swapped between bodies in a fictional kingdom, from the Hong sisters.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alex Haley's Queen

1993CBSDrama

Haley's last book filmed as three nights on CBS, following his own paternal grandmother.

Season 1

2 sequences

ALF

1986–1990NBCComedy

A sitcom built around a puppet the cast could not see, worked from a trench cut into the set floor.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

Alfred Hitchcock Presents

1955–1962CBSCrime

Nine strokes of a pen, and then the man himself walks in from the right and stands inside his own outline. A director who had spent thirty years staying behind the camera made his silhouette the most recognisable thing on American television.

Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Alias

2001–2006ABCDrama

Rapid-cut disguises and wigs, rebuilt every season as the show's premise was torn up and restarted — which happened more often than most series manage in a decade.

Seasons 1–5

1 sequence

Alias Grace

2017NetflixDrama

Quilt patterns assembling and unpicking themselves — the needlework the narrator hides behind, used as the structure of the telling.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alias Smith and Jones

1971–1973ABCDrama

Two outlaws promised an amnesty they have to stay out of trouble for twenty months to collect.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alice in Borderland

2020–NetflixSci-Fi

An emptied Tokyo shot as architecture — Shibuya with nobody in it, which is more unsettling than anything the games do.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alien Nation

1989–1990FoxSci-Fi

The film continued as a series, with a buddy-cop format used to work through immigration and prejudice week by week.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alien: Earth

2025FXSci-Fi

Noah Hawley's Alien series, whose titles rebuild the slow-assembling wordmark of the 1979 film for television.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Alienist

2018–2020TNTCrime

An 1896 New York murder investigation using methods the police do not yet have a word for.

Season 1

1 sequence

All American

2018–2025The CWDrama

A South Los Angeles footballer recruited to a Beverly Hills school, from Spencer Paysinger's life.

Season 1

1 sequence

All Creatures Great & Small

2020–Channel 5 / PBSDrama

The Yorkshire vet stories remade, with a title sequence that is largely just the Dales.

Season 1

1 sequence

All in the Family

1971–1979CBSComedy

Two people at an upright piano singing about how things used to be — an opening performed live by the cast rather than scored.

Season 1

2 sequences

All My Children

1970–2011ABCDrama

Pine Valley, Agnes Nixon's serial, and the first American soap to put issue storylines in daytime.

Season 23
Season 41

1 sequence

All of Us

2003–2007UPN / The CWComedy

A blended family sitcom produced by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, out of their own circumstances.

Season 1

1 sequence

All of Us Are Dead

2022–NetflixHorror

School notebooks, corridors and lab equipment, cut fast enough that the outbreak reads as timetabled.

Season 1

1 sequence

All Saints

1998–2009Seven NetworkDrama

An emergency ward in Sydney, running twelve years and outlasting most of its cast.

Season 1

1 sequence

All That

1994–2005NickelodeonComedy

A sketch show for children that launched Kenan Thompson, Amanda Bynes and Nick Cannon.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ally McBeal

1997–2002FoxComedy

Vonda Shepard singing over a lawyer walking through Boston — a theme so tied to the show that the singer became a recurring character.

Season 1

1 sequence

Almost Human

2013–2014FoxSci-Fi

A detective partnered with an android in 2048, cancelled after thirteen episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Alphas

2011–2012SyfySci-Fi

People with abilities that each cost them something, run as a case-of-the-week team show.

Season 1

1 sequence

Altered Carbon

2018–2020NetflixSci-Fi

Bodies printed, sleeved and discarded in fluid — the show's premise, that a person is software and flesh is hardware, shown rather than explained.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Amanda Show

1999–2002NickelodeonComedy

Amanda Bynes given her own sketch show out of All That, at seventeen.

Seasons 2–3

1 sequence

Amandaland

2025–BBC OneComedy

The Motherland spin-off, following the one character everybody else in it could not stand.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Race

2001–CBSDocumentary

A race around the world, opening on a map and a countdown that has won ten Emmys for its programme.

Season 10

1 sequence

The Amazing Race Canada

2013–CTVDocumentary

The format run entirely inside one country, which turns out to be quite large enough for it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing Spider-Man

1977–1979CBSSci-Fi

CBS's live-action Spider-Man, dropped in part because the network did not want to be known for comic books.

Season 1

1 sequence

Amazing Stories

1985–1987NBCSci-Fi

John Williams scoring an animated history of storytelling — cave paintings to campfires to television — for Spielberg's anthology.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Amazing World of Gumball

2011–2019Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A cat, a goldfish with legs, and a suburb assembled by layering drawn animation, models and live-action photography in the same shot.

Season 1

1 sequence

America's Funniest Home Videos

1989–ABCDocumentary

A clip show assembled entirely from what the audience sent in, and the longest-running entertainment programme ABC has.

Season 1

1 sequence

America's Most Wanted

1988–2013FoxDocumentary

The programme Fox launched itself on, and the one that turned a network into a switchboard.

Season 1

1 sequence

America's Next Top Model

2003–2018UPN / The CWDocumentary

The format that ran for twenty-four cycles and rebuilt its titles for most of them.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Dad!

2005–Fox / TBSAnimation

A CIA agent singing about his morning routine, in a sequence that varies its final line to suit the episode.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Dragon: Jake Long

2005–2007Disney ChannelAnimation

A New York teenager who is also the American Dragon, and the only one.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Dreams

2002–2005NBCDrama

A Philadelphia family in the mid-1960s, built around American Bandstand.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Gladiators

1989–1996SyndicationDocumentary

Members of the public running an assault course against professional athletes in lycra, in a format that outlived its own slot by decades.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Gods

2017–2021StarzDrama

A totem pole of clashing worship — neon crosses, satellite dishes, astronauts and idols stacked into one object, which is the novel's argument compressed into ninety seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Gothic (1995)

1995–1996CBSHorror

A South Carolina sheriff who is something worse than corrupt, created by Shaun Cassidy and produced by Sam Raimi.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Horror Stories

2021–FXHorror

The American Horror Story spin-off, one self-contained hour at a time instead of one story a season.

Season 1

11 sequences

American Horror Story

2011–FXHorror

An anthology, so there is no returning sequence to protect: Kyle Cooper builds a new one from scratch every season and the only thing carried across is the lettering. The sixth season is absent below because it went further still and threw the titles out altogether.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 8 more

1 sequence

American Housewife

2016–2021ABCComedy

A woman who reckons herself the second-fattest in Westport, Connecticut, and says so at length.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Idol

2002–Fox / ABCDocumentary

The talent format that ran American primetime for a decade, opening on a spotlight and a logo that spins.

Season 1

1 sequence

American Pickers

2010–HistoryDocumentary

Two dealers driving across America buying things out of other people's barns.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Americans

2013–2018FXDrama

Soviet and American iconography intercut until they mirror each other exactly — the show's entire thesis in twenty-six seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Amphibia

2019–2022Disney ChannelAnimation

A Californian teenager stranded in a world of frog people, with a banjo theme to match.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ancient Aliens

2009–HistoryDocumentary

A documentary series whose answer to every question it raises is the same one.

Season 1

1 sequence

And Then There Were None

2015BBC OneCrime

Christie's island novel adapted straight, with a title sequence that counts the cast down as the story does.

Season 1

1 sequence

Andi Mack

2017–2019Disney ChannelDrama

A thirteen-year-old told that her sister is her mother, and the first Disney Channel series to give a main character a coming-out story.

Season 1

1 sequence

Andor

2022–2025Disney+Sci-Fi

A Star Wars show that refuses the fanfare: a plain card, a few bars, and straight in. The restraint is the statement.

Seasons 1–2

2 sequences

Andromeda

2000–2005SyndicationSci-Fi

Another posthumous Roddenberry premise, opened with a ship, a collapsed republic and a great deal of lens flare.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

The Andy Griffith Show

1960–1968CBSComedy

A father and son walking to a fishing hole while somebody whistles — twenty-three seconds, and one of the most quoted pieces of music in American television.

Season 1

5 sequences

Angel

1999–2004The WBHorror

The spinoff takes the parent show's structure and drops the jokes: Darling Violetta's 'Sanctuary' instead of surf-punk, city at night instead of monster movies. Like Buffy, the design holds for five years while the names in front of it keep moving.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 2 more

1 sequence

Angela Anaconda

1999–2001TeletoonAnimation

Photographs of real faces cut out and animated over drawn backgrounds, which is as unsettling as it sounds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Angels in America

2003HBODrama

Kushner's play filmed by Mike Nichols, opened by a flight across America into a Manhattan fountain.

Season 1

1 sequence

Anger Management

2012–2014FXComedy

Charlie Sheen's return to television after Two and a Half Men, opened in twelve seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Angie Tribeca

2016–2018TBSComedy

A police procedural played entirely as Airplane!, produced by Steve Carell and shot at that density of joke.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Angry Beavers

1997–2001NickelodeonAnimation

Two beaver brothers who have left home and are managing it badly.

Season 1

1 sequence

Angry Boys

2011ABC (Australia)Comedy

The follow-up to Summer Heights High, co-produced with HBO and the BBC and shot on three continents.

Season 1

1 sequence

Animal Control

2023–FoxComedy

Municipal animal control officers, in the only workplace sitcom where the supporting cast bites.

Season 1

1 sequence

Animal Kingdom

2016–2022TNTCrime

The Australian film remade in Southern California, following the same criminal family.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Animals of Farthing Wood

1993–1995BBC OneAnimation

Animals leaving a destroyed wood for a nature reserve, and a children's series that killed off its cast as it went.

Season 1

1 sequence

Animaniacs

1993–1998Fox Kids / The WBAnimation

A patter song with a different closing rhyme every week, sung by three cartoon characters at a tempo no live performer would attempt.

Season 1

1 sequence

Animorphs

1998–2000NickelodeonSci-Fi

Children who can turn into any animal they touch, from the books that sold sixty million copies.

Season 1

1 sequence

Anne with an E

2017–2019CBC / NetflixDrama

Prince Edward Island in stop-motion paper and pressed flowers, over The Tragically Hip.

Season 1

1 sequence

Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day

2011Fuji TVAnimation

Childhood friends reassembled by the one of them who died, who only one of them can see.

Season 1

1 sequence

Another Miss Oh

2016tvNDrama

Two women with the same name, and a man who can see a few seconds into the future.

Season 1

1 sequence

Another Period

2015–2018Comedy CentralComedy

Newport in 1902 shot as a reality series, with the confessional interviews and everything.

Season 2

1 sequence

Another World

1964–1999NBCDrama

The first American serial to run an hour, and the first to spin off another serial from itself.

Season 26

1 sequence

Anpanman

1988–NTVAnimation

A superhero whose head is made of bread and who tears pieces off it to feed the hungry, running now for more than a thousand episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations

2005–2012Travel ChannelDocumentary

The travel programme that treated a meal as reporting, opening on a passport stamp and a guitar line.

Season 1

1 sequence

Any Day Now

1998–2002LifetimeDrama

Two friends in Birmingham, told in the present and in 1963 at once.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Apothecary Diaries

2023–Tokyo MXAnimation

A poison expert conscripted into the imperial rear palace, solving what everyone else is covering up.

Season 1

1 sequence

Apparitions

2008BBC OneHorror

A Catholic priest working as an exorcist in modern London, and one of the most complained-about dramas the BBC has run.

Season 1

1 sequence

Apple & Onion

2018–2021Cartoon NetworkAnimation

An apple and an onion sharing a flat in a city of anthropomorphic food.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Apprentice

2004–NBCDocumentary

Manhattan from a helicopter over the O'Jays' For the Love of Money, which is the whole thesis of the programme in one sample.

Season 1

1 sequence

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

2000–2015Adult SwimAnimation

A rap theme introducing three fast-food items who do not solve crimes, performed with the conviction of a show that does.

Season 1

1 sequence

Aranyélet

2015–2018HBO HungaryCrime

A Budapest family whose comfortable life runs on crime, and the first Hungarian series HBO Europe made itself. Known abroad as Golden Life.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arcane

2021–2024NetflixAnimation

Painterly animation of two sisters pulling apart, rendered in the same hand-worked style as the series — one of the few animated openings that is not a step down from the show it introduces.

Season 1

1 sequence

Archer

2009–2023FXAnimation

Sixties spy-thriller title design executed straight — silhouettes, gun barrels and a brass sting, with the joke being that the show underneath refuses to match it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Archie Bunker's Place

1979–1983CBSComedy

All in the Family continued as a bar, four more years after the series that made Archie famous had finished.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Archie Show

1968–1969CBSAnimation

The cartoon whose fictional band had a real number one single, which is a thing that has happened once.

Season 1

1 sequence

Archive 81

2022NetflixHorror

Degraded videotape and splice marks — the found footage the show is built from, doing its own titles.

Season 1

1 sequence

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

1990–2000Nickelodeon / YTVHorror

A campfire, a handful of powder thrown into it, and a children's anthology that frightened a generation on a Saturday teatime.

Season 1

1 sequence

Are You Being Served?

1972–1985BBC OneComedy

The Grace Brothers department store, opened by a lift announcing each floor's stock.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arli$$

1996–2002HBOComedy

A sports agent played by Robert Wuhl, running seven seasons on almost no critical goodwill.

Season 1

1 sequence

Army Wives

2007–2013LifetimeDrama

Four wives and one husband on a South Carolina army post, and the series that made Lifetime a scripted network.

Season 1

1 sequence

Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin

1989BBC OneDocumentary

The Verne route without aircraft, and the series that turned a Python into Britain's travel presenter.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arrested Development

2003–2019Fox / NetflixComedy

A ukulele, a narrator, and a family photograph that gets less flattering the longer you look at it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arrow

2012–2020The CWDrama

A narrated premise delivered every week in the first person, which the entire subsequent CW superhero slate copied verbatim.

Season 1

1 sequence

Art Attack

1990–2007ITVDocumentary

Neil Buchanan making things out of household rubbish, and the big art laid out on the floor at the end.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Artful Dodger

2023–Disney+Drama

Dickens's pickpocket grown up into a surgeon in colonial Australia, and still stealing on the side.

Season 1

1 sequence

Arthur

1996–2022PBSAnimation

An aardvark in the third grade, in the longest-running animated children's series in American television.

Season 1

2 sequences

As the World Turns

1956–2010CBSDrama

The turning globe that gave American daytime its most-copied image, over fifty-four years.

Season 41
Season 52

1 sequence

As Time Goes By

1992–2005BBC OneComedy

Judi Dench and Geoffrey Palmer meeting again thirty-eight years after they lost touch.

Season 1

1 sequence

As Told by Ginger

2000–2006NickelodeonAnimation

Middle school treated as continuing drama rather than a gag engine, which was unusual for the slot.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ascent of Man

1973BBC TwoDocumentary

Jacob Bronowski on science as a human activity, made as the BBC's answer to its own Civilisation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ash vs Evil Dead

2015–2018StarzHorror

A ten-second title card, which for a series this loud is the only restrained decision in it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Assassination Classroom

2015–2016Fuji TVAnimation

A class assigned to kill their own teacher, who is the best teacher any of them have had.

Season 2

1 sequence

Astro Boy

1963–1966Fuji TVAnimation

Tezuka's Mighty Atom, the first Japanese television animation series, and the start of the whole industry.

Season 1

1 sequence

At Home with Amy Sedaris

2017–2020truTVComedy

A homemaking show that is not one, opened in the idiom of 1970s daytime television.

Season 1

1 sequence

Atlanta

2016–2022FXComedy

Donald Glover's series, opened with the same refusal to signal genre that the episodes run on — you are never told what kind of half-hour this is.

Season 1

1 sequence

Atlantis

2013–2015BBC OneSci-Fi

The BBC's Saturday teatime myth series after Merlin, with the same job to do and the same slot to do it in.

Season 1

1 sequence

Attack on Titan

2013–2023NHK General TV / MBSAnimation

A new opening for almost every cour, each one restating the series' situation as it currently stands — which over four seasons means the titles document a war changing sides.