C

177 shows193 sequences

Cabinet of Curiosities

2022NetflixHorror

A physical cabinet opened drawer by drawer, each one holding the object that episode is about — an anthology that indexes itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cable Girls

2017–2020Netflix (Spain)Drama

Four switchboard operators in 1928 Madrid, Netflix's first Spanish original.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cagney & Lacey

1981–1988CBSCrime

Two detectives introduced as colleagues rather than as a novelty, which in 1981 was itself the statement.

Season 2

1 sequence

Caillou

1997–2011Teletoon / PBSAnimation

A four-year-old with no hair and very little patience, adapted from Quebec picture books.

Season 1

2 sequences

California Dreams

1992–1996NBCComedy

A Californian high school band, made by the Saved by the Bell producers for the same Saturday morning block.

Season 1
Seasons 3–5

1 sequence

Californication

2007–2014ShowtimeComedy

Los Angeles from a convertible, with a writer who has not written anything in some years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Caliphate

2020SVT1Drama

A Stockholm schoolgirl recruited online, and the officer who cannot get anyone to listen. Swedish title Kalifat.

Season 1

1 sequence

Call My Agent!

2015–2020France 2Comedy

Paris and a jazz figure, in the register of a film the agency's clients would be too grand to appear in.

Season 1

1 sequence

Call the Midwife

2012–BBC OneDrama

Poplar's district nurses through the fifties and sixties, opened the same way for well over a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Camberwick Green

1966BBC OneAnimation

A musical box that opens to reveal whichever character the episode is about — a title sequence that is also the casting.

Season 1

1 sequence

Camelot

2011StarzDrama

The Arthur legend with Eva Green as Morgan, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Camp Lazlo

2005–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A Brazilian spider monkey at a scout camp run by a humourless beetle.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cannon

1971–1976CBSCrime

William Conrad as a private investigator, the first Quinn Martin series built around a heavy-set lead.

Season 1

1 sequence

Caprica

2010SyfySci-Fi

The Battlestar Galactica prequel, fifty years earlier, about the invention of the Cylons rather than the war with them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future

1987–1988SyndicationSci-Fi

Live action against computer animation, built so that a toy could shoot at the screen.

Season 1

1 sequence

Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons

1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

Anderson's darkest supermarionation series, opened by two rings of light moving across a wall.

Season 1

1 sequence

Car 54, Where Are You?

1961–1963NBCComedy

Two Bronx patrolmen, with a theme that lists everything going wrong in New York and then asks where the car is.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cardcaptor Sakura

1998–2000NHKAnimation

CLAMP's magical girl, with a new costume every episode and three separate openings across the run.

Season 3

1 sequence

The Care Bears Family

1986–1988ABCAnimation

The greetings-card bears given a series, with a stare that resolves every plot.

Season 1

1 sequence

Carmen Sandiego

2019–2021NetflixAnimation

The game-show thief given an origin, animated in flat colour and a lot of red.

Season 1

1 sequence

Carnival Row

2019–2023Prime VideoDrama

Victorian illustration of wings, horns and hooves, catalogued like a natural history plate of a population being policed.

Season 1

1 sequence

Carnivàle

2003–2005HBOHorror

Tarot cards dissolving into Depression-era photographs and newsreel, so the reading and the history become the same footage. Another Emmy winner, and still one of the strangest things a network put in front of a drama.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

The Carol Burnett Show

1967–1978CBSComedy

Twenty-three seconds and a Bob Mackie gown, from the variety show that taught American television how a sketch ensemble should work.

Season 1

2 sequences

Caroline in the City

1995–1999NBCComedy

A Manhattan cartoonist drawing a strip about her own life, and the colourist who is in love with her.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

The Casagrandes

2019–2022NickelodeonAnimation

The Loud House spin-off, following the Mexican American family next door into the city.

Season 1

1 sequence

Casi Ángeles

2007–2010Telefe (Argentina)Drama

Cris Morena's Buenos Aires teen musical, which exported across Latin America and Israel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Castle

2009–2016ABCCrime

Typewriter keys and New York, for a series about a novelist who follows a detective around.

Season 2

1 sequence

Castle Rock

2018–2019HuluHorror

A Maine town assembled out of forty years of Stephen King, with a main title that keeps rebuilding the same house.

Season 1

1 sequence

Castlevania

2017–2021NetflixAnimation

Gothic architecture and stained glass rendered as a slow climb, refusing the game series' rock score for something closer to a requiem.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Casualty

1986–BBC OneDrama

Holby City Hospital's emergency department, and the longest-running primetime medical drama in the world.

Season 27

1 sequence

Catchphrase

1986–ITVDocumentary

Say what you see, and a golden robot called Mr Chips who was the reason anyone watched.

Season 1

1 sequence

CatDog

1998–2005NickelodeonAnimation

A cat and a dog sharing one body, and a theme song that spends its whole length asking how.

Season 1

1 sequence

Catherine the Great

2019HBO / Sky AtlanticDrama

Helen Mirren as the empress in her last decades, in four parts.

Season 1

1 sequence

Celebrity Deathmatch

1998–2007MTVAnimation

Claymation celebrities fighting to the death in a wrestling ring, with commentary played completely straight.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chad Powers

2025–HuluComedy

A disgraced quarterback who returns to college football in prosthetics under an assumed name.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chainsaw Man

2022–TV TokyoAnimation

An opening built almost entirely out of film references — a different movie restaged in nearly every shot, at a speed that makes spotting them a second viewing's work.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Chair Company

2025HBOComedy

Tim Robinson on a man who will not let a collapsing office chair go.

Season 1

1 sequence

ChalkZone

2002–2008NickelodeonAnimation

A world made of everything ever erased from a blackboard.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chapelwaite

2021–EpixHorror

Jerusalem's Lot filmed as a nineteenth-century gothic, from the King short story the vampire novel grew out of.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chappelle's Show

2003–2006Comedy CentralComedy

Twenty-two seconds of animation and a beat, for the sketch show that defined a decade of American comedy in two and a half seasons.

Season 1

1 sequence

Charles in Charge

1984–1990CBS / SyndicationComedy

A student paying his rent by minding somebody else's children, in a sitcom CBS cancelled and syndication brought back.

Season 1

1 sequence

Charlie and Lola

2005–2008CBeebiesAnimation

Lauren Child's collage illustration animated as collage, with children rather than actors doing the voices.

Season 1

1 sequence

Charlie's Angels

1976–1981ABCCrime

Three detectives working for a voice on a speakerphone, and a title sequence that explains the entire premise in narration before a scene is played.

Season 1

8 sequences

Charmed

1998–2006The WBHorror

Love Spit Love's cover of 'How Soon Is Now?' over the Book of Shadows and three sisters, re-cut every season. It goes further than that, though: the credits were rebuilt whenever the cast of an episode changed, so a season carries several versions rather than one — eight of them in the second year alone.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 5 more

1 sequence

Cheer

2020–2022NetflixDocumentary

A Texas junior college cheerleading squad, filmed as a sport rather than as a sideline to one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cheers

1982–1993NBCComedy

A minute of hand-tinted engravings and old photographs of strangers drinking, none of them from the show and none of them the cast. The bar you are about to spend eleven years in is introduced as the latest in a very long line of them.

Seasons 1–11

1 sequence

Chef's Table

2015–NetflixDocumentary

Food shot in extreme close-up to classical strings — a cookery series that opens like a perfume advertisement and means it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chernobyl

2019HBODrama

No montage and no metaphor — the camera simply moves through the plant's corridors and control rooms while Hildur Guðnadóttir's score, built from recordings made inside a power station, does the rest.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chesapeake Shores

2016–2022Hallmark ChannelDrama

A daughter called home to a Maryland inn, in the series that showed Hallmark could run a returning drama rather than only films.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

Chewing Gum

2015–2017E4Comedy

Michaela Coel's Tower Hamlets comedy, made three years before I May Destroy You.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Chi

2018–ShowtimeDrama

Lena Waithe's South Side, following several lives that keep intersecting.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Chicago Fire

2012–NBCDrama

The first of Dick Wolf's Chicago series, and the one the other two were built out from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Hope

1994–2000CBSDrama

The medical drama that premiered the same week as ER and spent six years being the other one.

Season 5

1 sequence

Chicago Justice

2017NBCCrime

The fourth Chicago series, cancelled after thirteen episodes — the only one Dick Wolf could not make stick.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago Med

2015–NBCDrama

The third Chicago series, sharing a city and a crossover schedule with the other two.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chicago P.D.

2014–NBCCrime

The second of Dick Wolf's Chicago series, and the one the crossovers usually run through.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chief of War

2025–Apple TV+Drama

Hawaiian carving, cloth and volcanic landscape, filmed as artefacts of a nation rather than scenery.

Season 1

1 sequence

Childhood's End

2015SyfySci-Fi

The Arthur C. Clarke novel adapted across three nights.

Season 1

1 sequence

Childrens Hospital

2008–2016Adult SwimComedy

A hospital soap parody that changed its own premise whenever it got bored, Rob Corddry's first series.

Season 3

1 sequence

Chilling Adventures of Sabrina

2018–2020NetflixHorror

The Archie witch as horror rather than sitcom, from the Riverdale producers.

Season 1

1 sequence

China Beach

1988–1991ABCDrama

An evacuation hospital on the Vietnamese coast, told from the women posted to it rather than the men passing through.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chip 'n' Dale: Park Life

2021–2024Disney+Animation

The chipmunks in a city park, dialogue-free, animated in France.

Season 1

1 sequence

CHiPs

1977–1983NBCCrime

California Highway Patrol motorcycle officers, filmed almost entirely on freeways.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chorlton and the Wheelies

1976–1979ITVAnimation

A happiness dragon in Wheelie World, from the studio that went on to make Danger Mouse.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Chosen

2017–VidAngel / Prime VideoDrama

The crowdfunded life of Christ, with a title sequence that deliberately does not look like a Bible show.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Chowder

2007–2010Cartoon NetworkAnimation

An apprentice cook in Marzipan City, animated over patterned backgrounds that never stop moving.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chozen

2014FXAnimation

An animated rapper released from prison, from the Archer production team.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Chris Isaak Show

2001–2004ShowtimeComedy

The musician playing himself and his band playing themselves, in a series about their own touring.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Chronicles of Narnia

1988–1990BBC OneDrama

Lewis adapted across four serials, with costumes and matte paintings doing what the budget could not.

Season 1

1 sequence

Chuck

2007–2012NBCComedy

Consumer electronics and spy hardware cut together at the same speed, for a show that could never decide which it was about — correctly.

Season 1

2 sequences

ChuckleVision

1987–2009BBC OneComedy

Two brothers and a slapstick format that ran for twenty-one series on the strength of one exchange.

Season 1
Seasons 17–20

1 sequence

Chuno

2010KBS2Drama

Slave hunters in late Joseon, shot handheld in the mountains and unusually violent for its slot.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cidade dos Homens

2002–2005TV GloboDrama

Two boys growing up in a Rio favela, made by the City of God team either side of the film.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cigarette Girl

2023NetflixDrama

The Indonesian kretek industry in the 1960s, and a woman who is not allowed near the part of it she is best at. Original title Gadis Kretek.

Season 1

1 sequence

Circle of Fear

1972–1973NBCHorror

An anthology that began as Ghost Story with a host and a hotel, then dropped both and renamed itself halfway through.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cisco Kid

1950–1956SyndicationDrama

The first television series filmed in colour, three years before anyone in America could receive it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Citadel

2023–Prime VideoDrama

The Russo brothers' spy franchise, built to spawn local-language series in several countries at once.

Season 1

1 sequence

Citizen Smith

1977–1980BBC OneComedy

John Sullivan's first series, a Tooting revolutionary with no revolution, written five years before Only Fools and Horses.

Season 1

1 sequence

City on a Hill

2019–2022ShowtimeCrime

Boston in the early nineties, a corrupt FBI agent and the prosecutor trying to use him.

Season 1

1 sequence

City on Fire

2023Apple TV+Crime

New York in the year of the blackout, burning at the edges of the frame — another Imaginary Forces main title, and a much colder one.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Clangers

1969–1974BBC OneAnimation

Knitted creatures on a small planet who speak in swanee whistles, narrated as though it were a nature programme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Clannad

2007–2009TBSAnimation

A Kyoto Animation adaptation that spends a full season setting up what the second season does to you.

Season 1

1 sequence

Clarence

2014–2018Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A relentlessly cheerful boy and two friends, drawn in a loose line that never tidied itself up.

Season 1

1 sequence

Clarissa Explains It All

1991–1994NickelodeonComedy

The first Nickelodeon live-action series built around a girl, addressed straight to camera.

Season 1

1 sequence

Clarkson's Farm

2021–Prime VideoDocumentary

Jeremy Clarkson farming a thousand Cotswold acres badly, and the year-shaped structure the titles borrow from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Class of 3000

2006–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

André 3000's series about an Atlanta music class, with a theme he wrote and performed himself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Claws

2017–2022TNTCrime

A Florida nail salon laundering money for a pill mill, staged in saturated colour throughout.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cleaning Lady

2022–2025FoxCrime

A Filipino doctor in Las Vegas cleaning for organised crime to pay for her son's treatment.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cleopatra 2525

2000–2001SyndicationSci-Fi

Half-hour science fiction from the Hercules and Xena producers, paired with Jack of All Trades in one hour.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cleveland Show

2009–2013FoxAnimation

The Family Guy spin-off, moving Cleveland Brown to Virginia and giving him a theme song about it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cloak & Dagger

2018–2019FreeformSci-Fi

Two New Orleans teenagers whose powers only work near each other, which the titles make the whole design out of.

Season 2

1 sequence

Clone High

2002–2023MTV / MaxAnimation

A theme that introduces the entire premise as a shouted list of historical figures, which remains the fastest exposition in animation.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Closer

2005–2012TNTCrime

Kyra Sedgwick's LAPD deputy chief, and the most-watched drama basic cable had at the time.

Season 1

1 sequence

Club de Cuervos

2015–2019NetflixComedy

Netflix's first Spanish-language original, about two siblings inheriting a football club.

Season 1

2 sequences

Clueless

1996–1999ABC / UPNComedy

The film continued at Bronson Alcott High, with most of the cast replaced and Dionne kept.

Season 1
Season 3

1 sequence

Coach

1989–1997ABCComedy

A Minnesota football program run by three men who are markedly better at the game than at the rest of their lives.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cobra Kai

2018–2025YouTube Red / NetflixDrama

The Karate Kid continued forty years on, with a title card that has been restaged in several different styles across the run.

Season 1

1 sequence

Code Black

2015–2018CBSDrama

The busiest emergency room in America, named for the state it spends most of its time in.

Season 1

1 sequence

Code Geass

2006–2008MBS / TBSAnimation

Mecha and monarchy over a rock track, with the aristocratic cast posed like a fashion shoot.

Season 1

1 sequence

Codename: Kids Next Door

2002–2008Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A spy-thriller opening for five children fighting adults, played with the seriousness of a much larger programme.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Colbert Report

2005–2014Comedy CentralComedy

An eagle, a flag and a barrage of adjectives flying at the camera — a parody of cable-news branding so precise that cable news started copying it back.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cold Case

2003–2010CBSCrime

Evidence boxes and faded photographs, for a procedural whose whole method is that the past is filed somewhere.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Colgate Comedy Hour

1950–1955NBCComedy

A live variety hour with a different star each week, made to take the audience off Ed Sullivan.

Season 4

1 sequence

Colin From Accounts

2022–Binge / Paramount+Comedy

An Australian comedy that begins with a hit dog and is named after him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Colony

2016–2018USA NetworkSci-Fi

Occupied Los Angeles under an alien administration nobody has seen, opened in ten seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Columbo

1971–2003NBC / ABCCrime

Twenty-four seconds, and for much of the run no sequence at all — a series confident enough to open on the murder and let the detective arrive late.

Season 1

1 sequence

Come Outside

1993–1997BBC TwoDocumentary

Auntie Mabel and her dog Pippin flying a spotted aeroplane to find out where one ordinary thing comes from.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Commish

1991–1996ABCCrime

A police commissioner who solves things by talking, in a series built against the action shows around it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Common Side Effects

2025Adult SwimAnimation

A mushroom that cures anything, and everyone who would rather it did not exist.

Season 1

1 sequence

Community

2009–2015NBC / YahooComedy

Study-group detritus on a table, in a show that spent six seasons abandoning its own format for whatever genre it fancied that week.

Season 1

1 sequence

Conan

2010–2021TBSComedy

The show Conan O'Brien built after losing The Tonight Show, opening on a cartoon of himself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Connections

1978BBC OneDocumentary

James Burke tracing one invention to another across centuries, in a structure the titles set up before he says a word.

Season 1

2 sequences

The Conners

2018–2025ABCComedy

Roseanne continued without her, after the network cancelled the revival it had just recommissioned.

Season 1
Season 5

1 sequence

Constantine

2014–2015NBCHorror

The Hellblazer comic adapted, cancelled after thirteen episodes and continued in animation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Constellation

2024Apple TV+Sci-Fi

Doubled and inverted imagery over ice and orbit — two versions of the same events, laid on top of one another.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Continental: From the World of John Wick

2023PeacockCrime

The hotel's origin in 1970s New York, three episodes long.

Season 1

1 sequence

Continuum

2012–2015ShowcaseSci-Fi

Vancouver rendered as a surveillance grid, with the future arriving as an overlay on the present.

Season 1

1 sequence

Control Z

2020–2022NetflixDrama

A Mexican school where a hacker exposes every student's secrets, opened in nine seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Corner

2000HBODrama

David Simon and David Mills's West Baltimore miniseries, made three years before The Wire took the same corner.

Season 1

2 sequences

Coronation Street

1960–ITVDrama

The longest-running television soap in the world, opening on rooftops and a cornet ever since 1960.

Season 1
Season 31

1 sequence

Cory in the House

2007–2008Disney ChannelComedy

That's So Raven's brother moved into the White House as the chef's son.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cosby Show

1984–1992NBCComedy

A family dancing to a new arrangement of the same theme every season — jazz, big band, calypso — which makes it one of the earliest American sitcoms to treat its opening as something to redo annually.

Season 1

1 sequence

Count Arthur Strong

2013–2017BBC Two / BBC OneComedy

Steve Delaney's radio character given a sitcom around him, co-written by Graham Linehan.

Season 1

1 sequence

Count Duckula

1988–1993ITV (Cosgrove Hall)Animation

The Danger Mouse villain spun off into his own castle, a vegetarian vampire duck.

Season 1

1 sequence

Countdown

1982–Channel 4Documentary

The first programme Channel 4 ever broadcast, and a clock sequence that has been recognisable to British afternoons for forty years.

Season 1

1 sequence

Counterpart

2017–2019StarzSci-Fi

Imaginary Forces splitting everything in two — figures, corridors, the type itself — for a show about a man meeting the version of himself from the other side of a crossing.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

A Country Practice

1981–1994Seven NetworkDrama

A rural New South Wales medical practice, and one of Australian television's defining serials.

Season 1

1 sequence

Countryfile

1988–BBC OneDocumentary

Sunday evening rural affairs, and one of the most watched factual programmes in Britain.

Season 24

1 sequence

The Couple Next Door

2023–Channel 4 / StarzDrama

Two couples in a Leeds cul-de-sac, and what starts once one of them looks over the fence.

Season 1

1 sequence

Coupling

2000–2004BBC TwoComedy

Six friends in a bar, structured as farce rather than warmth — the British sitcom most often, and most unfairly, compared to Friends.

Season 1

1 sequence

Courage the Cowardly Dog

1999–2002Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Twenty-nine seconds establishing a farmhouse in the middle of Nowhere and a dog who is right to be frightened.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cousin Skeeter

1998–2002NickelodeonComedy

A boy and the puppet cousin who moves in with him, which nobody in the series treats as unusual.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cover Up

1984–1985CBSDrama

A fashion photographer and her model working as agents, and the series remembered for how its lead died.

Season 1

1 sequence

Covert Affairs

2010–2014USA NetworkDrama

A CIA trainee promoted early for reasons she is not told.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cow and Chicken

1997–1999Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A cow and a chicken with human parents whose faces are never shown above the waist.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cowboy Bebop

1998–1999TV Tokyo / WOWOWAnimation

A jazz record given ninety seconds of animation. Silhouettes and hard-edged colour panels cut on the beat of a big band, borrowing the grammar of 1960s film titles so completely that the show it opens looks like a rediscovery rather than a debut.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cowboy Bebop (2021)

2021NetflixSci-Fi

A live-action restaging of one of the most admired title sequences in animation, shot-for-shot against Yoko Kanno's original arrangement.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cracker

1993–2006ITVCrime

Nineteen seconds, and no attempt to make its criminal psychologist look like someone you would want to meet.

Season 1

1 sequence

Craig of the Creek

2018–Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A wooded creek run entirely by the children who play in it, mapped like a country.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cranford

2007–2009BBC OneDrama

Elizabeth Gaskell's Cheshire town, with Judi Dench and most of the British stage.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crash Landing on You

2019–2020tvNDrama

A South Korean heiress paraglides into North Korea, and the opening treats the border as scenery rather than politics.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crashing

2017–2019HBOComedy

Pete Holmes sleeping on other comedians' sofas after his marriage ends, opened in eighteen seconds.

Season 1

4 sequences

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

2015–2019The CWComedy

A musical comedy that threw away its theme song every year and wrote a new one, each arguing with the last about whether the word in the title is fair.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
and 1 more

1 sequence

Crazyhead

2016Channel 4Horror

Two women who can see demons, from the writer of Misfits, and cancelled after six episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Creepshow

2019–ShudderHorror

The Romero and King film continued as an anthology, with the comic-book panels doing the same work in the titles.

Season 1

1 sequence

Criminal Justice

2019–Disney+ HotstarCrime

The BBC series remade in India, running longer than the original did.

Season 1

1 sequence

Criminal Minds

2005–CBS / Paramount+Crime

Case files and profiler jargon in thirty-one seconds, from a procedural that has now run for two decades.

Season 1

1 sequence

Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders

2016–2017CBSCrime

The spin-off that moved the profiling unit to crimes against Americans abroad.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Critic

1994–1995ABC / FoxAnimation

Al Jean and Mike Reiss's film critic, made between their Simpsons runs and cancelled by two networks.

Season 1

1 sequence

Critical Role

2015–Twitch / YouTubeComedy

A tabletop campaign broadcast live, which by its second campaign had a fully animated title sequence of its own.

Season 2

1 sequence

The Crocodile Hunter

1996–2004Animal PlanetDocumentary

Steve Irwin handling animals at arm's length or closer, for eight years.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Crocodile Hunter Diaries

2002–2006Animal PlanetDocumentary

The spin-off following the zoo's staff between expeditions, rather than Irwin in the field.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cross

2024–Prime VideoCrime

James Patterson's Alex Cross novels, with a second-season sequence rebuilt from scratch.

Season 2

1 sequence

Crossing Jordan

2001–2007NBCCrime

A Boston medical examiner who investigates her own cases against instruction.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crossroads

1964–1988ATV Midlands / CentralDrama

A Midlands motel, taped so fast that the sets famously wobbled, and watched by fifteen million people anyway.

Season 7

1 sequence

The Crowded Room

2023Apple TV+Drama

Tom Holland in a 1979 case built on the Billy Milligan story.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Crown

2016–2023NetflixDrama

Molten gold pouring, cooling and assembling itself into a crown, over Hans Zimmer. No faces and no footage — the object outlasts everyone who wears it, which is the show's entire argument.

Seasons 1–6

1 sequence

Cruel Summer

2021–2023FreeformDrama

Two girls, three summers and one accusation, told from both sides at once and cut between them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Crusade

1999TNTSci-Fi

The Babylon 5 sequel, cancelled after thirteen episodes before any of them aired in order.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Crystal Maze

1990–Channel 4Documentary

Four themed zones and a warehouse in Essex, opened with an orchestral fanfare grander than any game show has earned before or since.

Season 5

1 sequence

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

2000–2015CBSCrime

The Who over forensic macro photography, and the sequence that turned laboratory work into prime-time spectacle for a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Cyber

2015–2016CBSCrime

The last CSI, moving the forensics from bodies to hard drives, and the one the franchise ended on.

Season 2

1 sequence

CSI: Miami

2002–2012CBSCrime

The first CSI spin-off, opened by The Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again".

Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: NY

2004–2013CBSCrime

The third CSI, opened by "Baba O'Riley".

Season 1

1 sequence

CSI: Vegas

2021–2024CBSCrime

The franchise returned to the city it started in, with two of the original cast and the same Who song.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cubicles

2019–SonyLIV / TVFComedy

A first job in an Indian IT firm, from the studio that made Panchayat and Kota Factory.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cuckoo

2012–2019BBC ThreeComedy

A daughter returning from a gap year married to an American with no discernible occupation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Culinary Class Wars

2024–NetflixDocumentary

A hundred anonymous Korean chefs cooking against twenty famous ones, the unknown half dressed in black throughout.

Season 1

1 sequence

Cunk on Earth

2022BBC TwoComedy

Philomena Cunk presenting human civilisation, opened by a ten-second parody of every documentary open ever made.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Cuphead Show!

2022NetflixAnimation

The game's 1930s rubber-hose style animated properly, which is the whole point of it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Curb Your Enthusiasm

2000–2024HBOComedy

A tuba, a circus march, and nothing else. Twenty-four years and twelve seasons on a piece of production-library music picked because it sounded like a man walking into trouble.