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59 shows65 sequences

1 sequence

Early Edition

1996–2000CBSDrama

A man who receives tomorrow's newspaper today, delivered by a cat.

Season 1

1 sequence

Earth 2

1994–1995NBCSci-Fi

Colonists on a planet that turns out to be alive, cancelled on a cliffhanger after twenty-one episodes.

Season 1

3 sequences

Earth: Final Conflict

1997–2002SyndicationSci-Fi

Developed from Gene Roddenberry's notes after his death, and it shows in the titles: benign-looking aliens, civic architecture and a great deal of blue, all arranged to look like a press release rather than an invasion.

Season 1
Season 3
Season 5

1 sequence

Earthworm Jim

1995–1996The WBAnimation

The game adapted with its own voice cast and most of its absurdity intact.

Season 1

2 sequences

EastEnders

1985–BBC OneDrama

An aerial pull-back over the Thames and the drum that answers it — thirty-two seconds that have barely changed in forty years.

Season 1
Season 41

1 sequence

Echo

2024Disney+Sci-Fi

The Hawkeye villain given her own series and a title sequence woven out of Choctaw history.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ed Sullivan Show

1948–1971CBSDocumentary

Twenty-three years of Sunday nights, and the stage the Beatles and Elvis were introduced to America from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ed, Edd n Eddy

1999–2009Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Wobbling outlines and a scat vocal, drawn deliberately so that every line shakes — the last major American cartoon animated entirely by hand on paper.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eek! The Cat

1992–1997Fox KidsAnimation

A purple cat whose motto is that it never hurts to help, in a series built entirely on disproving it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eerie, Indiana

1991–1993NBCHorror

A boy who works out that his new town is the centre of every strange thing in America.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eight Is Enough

1977–1981ABCDrama

A newspaper columnist with eight children, and a theme song that counts them.

Season 1

1 sequence

El Chavo del Ocho

1971–1980TelevisaComedy

A boy living in a barrel in a Mexico City tenement, and the most watched Spanish-language series ever made.

Seasons 4–6

1 sequence

El Ministerio del Tiempo

2015–2020La 1Sci-Fi

A secret Spanish government department policing doors into the country's own history.

Season 1

1 sequence

El Señor de los Cielos

2013–TelemundoCrime

A narco drama loosely built on Amado Carrillo Fuentes, and Telemundo's longest-running original.

Season 2

1 sequence

El Tigre: The Adventures of Manny Rivera

2007–2008NickelodeonAnimation

A boy from a family of both superheroes and supervillains, who has not chosen yet.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Electric Company

1971–1977PBSComedy

The Children's Television Workshop's reading show for older children, with Morgan Freeman and Rita Moreno in the cast.

Season 1

1 sequence

Elementary

2012–2019CBSCrime

Holmes and a female Watson in New York, opened by a Rube Goldberg machine assembling itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Elena of Avalor

2016–2020Disney ChannelAnimation

A crown princess ruling a Latin American-inspired kingdom before she is old enough to be queen.

Season 1

1 sequence

Elite

2018–2024NetflixDrama

Eleven seconds of school crest and bass drop. The shortest opening on this site that still manages to be about class.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ellen

1994–1998ABCComedy

A Los Angeles bookshop owner, in the sitcom whose fourth season changed what American television would say out loud.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Ellen DeGeneres Show

2003–2022SyndicationComedy

Nineteen years of daytime, opening on a host dancing her way in through the audience.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Elsbeth

2024–CBSCrime

The Good Wife's oddest lawyer given a Columbo format of her own, and nine seconds to introduce it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Elvira's Movie Macabre

1981–1986SyndicationHorror

A horror host wrapped around public-domain films, and the character that outlasted every film she introduced.

Season 4

1 sequence

Emergency!

1972–1977NBCDrama

Los Angeles County paramedics, made with the fire department's cooperation and credited with popularising the profession.

Season 1

1 sequence

Emily in Paris

2020–NetflixComedy

Paris as a postcard rack — every landmark in order, photographed exactly as the show's protagonist would photograph them.

Season 1

2 sequences

Emmerdale

1972–ITVDrama

A Yorkshire Dales farming serial that dropped Farm from its name in 1989 and kept the landscape.

Season 27
Season 49

1 sequence

The Emperor's New School

2006–2008Disney ChannelAnimation

The Emperor's New Groove continued as a school comedy, with the film's narrator still interrupting.

Season 1

1 sequence

Empire Falls

2005HBODrama

Richard Russo adapting his own novel about a Maine mill town that has already lost.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Empress

2022–NetflixDrama

Habsburg portraiture and court embroidery, arranged so the jewellery reads as restraint rather than wealth.

Season 1

1 sequence

Empress Ki

2013–2014MBCDrama

A Goryeo woman who becomes empress of the Yuan court, across fifty-one episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Empty Nest

1988–1995NBCComedy

The Golden Girls' neighbour given his own house, two grown daughters and a conspicuously large dog.

Season 1

1 sequence

The End of the F***ing World

2017–2019Channel 4 / NetflixDrama

Sixties pop over two teenagers on a road trip that is going to end badly — an opening that is much sweeter than anything it introduces.

Season 1

1 sequence

Endeavour

2012–2023ITVCrime

The Morse prequel, which quotes Pheloung's Morse-code motif in its own theme without repeating it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The English

2022BBC Two / Prime VideoDrama

Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer crossing 1890 Wyoming, and — for this catalogue — the single most disruptive title in the whole project.

Season 1

1 sequence

Enlightened

2011–2013HBOComedy

Nature footage of the sort used in wellness videos, played entirely straight — which becomes the joke the moment the show starts.

Season 1

1 sequence

Entourage

2004–2011HBOComedy

Los Angeles from a moving car, and Jane's Addiction — an opening that is essentially an advertisement for the lifestyle the show is about.

Season 1

1 sequence

Episodes

2011–2017Showtime / BBC TwoComedy

Two British writers watching their sitcom be remade badly in Los Angeles, with Matt LeBlanc as himself.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Equalizer (1985)

1985–1989CBSCrime

A retired intelligence officer advertising his services in the classifieds, scored by Stewart Copeland the year after the Police stopped.

Season 1

2 sequences

ER

1994–2009NBCDrama

James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.

Season 1
Season 10

1 sequence

Erased

2016Fuji TVAnimation

A man sent back to his own childhood to prevent a murder, opened with the cold blue of a Hokkaido winter.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Eric André Show

2012–Adult SwimComedy

A talk-show set destroyed by its own host before the first guest arrives — an opening that is demolished and rebuilt every episode.

Season 1

2 sequences

Euphoria

2019–HBODrama

Bodies, water and neon shot at the point where a party stops being fun, over Labrinth. Beautiful in a way that is deliberately hard to enjoy.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Eureeka's Castle

1989–1991NickelodeonComedy

Puppets in a castle carried by a giant, made for the channel's pre-school block before it had one.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eureka

2006–2012Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

Twelve seconds of small-town Americana with the physics quietly wrong in the background.

Season 1

1 sequence

Eve

2003–2006UPNComedy

The rapper Eve as a Miami fashion designer, in one of the run of sitcoms UPN built its Monday nights on.

Season 1

1 sequence

Even Stevens

2000–2003Disney ChannelComedy

Shia LaBeouf as the youngest of three in a Sacramento family.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ever Decreasing Circles

1984–1989BBC OneComedy

Richard Briers after The Good Life, running every committee in his cul-de-sac.

Season 1

1 sequence

Everwood

2002–2006The WBDrama

A New York surgeon moving his family to a Colorado mountain town after his wife's death.

Season 1

1 sequence

Everybody Hates Chris

2005–2009UPN / The CWComedy

Chris Rock narrating his own Bed-Stuy adolescence, opened by the family on the stoop.

Season 1

1 sequence

Everybody Loves Raymond

1996–2005CBSComedy

A brass sting and a family photograph, in forty-eight seconds that promise nothing more complicated than what you are about to get.

Season 1

1 sequence

Evil

2019–2024CBS / Paramount+Horror

Religious iconography and clinical diagrams intercut, so that possession and psychiatry are presented with equal weight — which is the show's entire method.