F
105 shows115 sequences
1 sequenceF Is for Family
2015–2021NetflixAnimation
A 1970s sitcom opening built out of wood panelling, cigarette smoke and a father arriving home — the era's own title design, with the warmth removed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceF Troop
1965–1967ABCComedy
A frontier cavalry post run badly, opened by a sung account of how badly.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe F.B.I.
1965–1974ABCCrime
Nine seasons made with the Bureau's cooperation and its approval of every script, from the Quinn Martin production line.
- Season 1
3 sequencesThe Facts of Life
1979–1988NBCComedy
A girls' boarding school in Peekskill, spun off from Diff'rent Strokes and running three years longer than it.
- Season 1
- Season 7
- Season 8
1 sequenceThe Fades
2011BBC ThreeHorror
The unburied dead accumulating in the air above a British town, and a teenager who can see them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFaerie Tale Theatre
1982–1987ShowtimeDrama
Shelley Duvall's anthology of fairy tales, each directed by a different film-maker and cast from Hollywood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fairly OddParents
2001–2017NickelodeonAnimation
A theme that runs through the entire premise as a checklist, revised several times across sixteen years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFaking It
2014–2016MTVComedy
Two friends mistaken for a couple who decide not to correct anyone.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Falcon and the Winter Soldier
2021Disney+Sci-Fi
Two supporting characters given the shield to argue over, and a title sequence built out of torn paper and news footage.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFalcon Crest
1981–1990CBSDrama
Napa vineyards filmed like an estate agent's brochure, for a family who spend nine seasons trying to take it from each other.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fall
2013–2016BBC TwoCrime
Belfast, and a series that shows you the killer in the first episode and spends three series on the pursuit anyway.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
1976–1979BBC OneComedy
A middle manager who fakes his own death by leaving his clothes on a beach, weekly.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fall Guy
1981–1986ABCDrama
A Hollywood stuntman working as a bounty hunter, with a theme song about being unknown.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fall of the House of Usher
2023NetflixHorror
Corporate portraiture rotting in place — a pharmaceutical dynasty photographed like old money and left to decay in frame.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFalling Skies
2011–2015TNTSci-Fi
A resistance militia in occupied Boston, produced by Steven Spielberg, opened in eleven seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFallout
2024–Prime VideoSci-Fi
Retro-futurist advertising for a world that ended — the games' Vault-Tec aesthetic reproduced exactly, and varied per episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFame
1982–1987NBC / SyndicationDrama
The film continued at the High School of Performing Arts, with a cast who did their own dancing.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFamily Affairs
1997–2005Channel 5Drama
The soap Channel 5 launched with, and the one that had to build an audience from nothing five nights a week.
- Season 3
2 sequencesFamily Feud
1976–ABC / SyndicationDocumentary
Survey says — two families, a buzzer, and a theme rearranged for every host since Richard Dawson.
- Season 1
- Season 35
2 sequencesFamily Guy
1999–FoxAnimation
A musical number performed by the family about how television used to have values — a sitcom opening from the 1970s, done straight and then undercut.
- Season 1
- Season 10
1 sequenceThe Family Man
2019–Prime VideoDrama
A middle-class Mumbai father who is also a National Investigation Agency officer, and cannot tell his family either job is real.
- Season 3
1 sequenceFamily Matters
1989–1998ABC / CBSComedy
A Chicago family and a theme about the tiny things adding up, from a spinoff that was quietly taken over by a neighbour.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFamily Ties
1982–1989NBCComedy
A family portrait being drawn and redrawn, over a duet about what would happen without you — sixties parents and a Reagan-voting son.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Famous Jett Jackson
1998–2001Disney ChannelComedy
A teenage action star who moves his own production to his grandmother's town in North Carolina.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFanboy & Chum Chum
2009–2014NickelodeonAnimation
Two boys in superhero costumes they never take off, in one of Nickelodeon's first CG series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFantasy Island
1977–1984ABCDrama
"De plane! De plane!" — an island where wishes are granted and then examined.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFargo
2014–FXCrime
Snow, and the claim that this is a true story, which it is not — an anthology that opens every season by lying to you in a title card.
- Season 1
4 sequencesFarscape
1999–2003Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi
A Henson creature workshop pointed at space opera, and an opening that halves in ambition halfway through the run — the narrated version explaining the premise gives way to one that assumes you already know it.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more
1 sequenceFarzi
2023–Prime VideoCrime
A struggling artist forging banknotes well enough to destabilise the currency.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFat Albert and the Cosby Kids
1972–1985CBSAnimation
A North Philadelphia junkyard, with a moral at the end and a live-action introduction at the start.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFatal Attraction
2023Paramount+Drama
The 1987 film reworked as a series that takes the other side of the story seriously.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Brown
2013–BBC OneCrime
Chesterton's priest detective moved to the 1950s Cotswolds, and the most durable daytime drama the BBC has.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Dowling Mysteries
1989–1991NBC / ABCCrime
A Chicago priest and a nun solving murders, cancelled by NBC and picked up by ABC.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Knows Best
1954–1960CBS / NBCComedy
The Anderson family of Springfield, and the series the phrase came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFather Ted
1995–1998Channel 4Comedy
Three priests on a rock in the Atlantic, introduced by a whistle tune and some of the flattest scenery ever put in a title sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFauda
2015–Yes / NetflixDrama
An Israeli undercover unit and the Palestinian militants it pursues, played from both sides.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFawlty Towers
1975–1979BBC TwoComedy
A hotel sign whose letters are rearranged into a different rude anagram every episode — the earliest running title gag in this catalogue by two decades.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFBI: International
2021–2025CBSCrime
The franchise's Budapest-based Fly Team, covering American interests across Europe.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFBI: Most Wanted
2020–2025CBSCrime
The first FBI spin-off, following the fugitive task force, in nine seconds of title card.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFear Factor
2001–2012NBCDocumentary
The Dutch format that asked contestants to eat things, opening on a montage of them regretting it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFear Itself
2008NBCHorror
Masters of Horror moved to a broadcast network and cut to fit it, which is most of what went wrong.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFear the Walking Dead
2015–2023AMCHorror
Seventeen seconds and a card — the spinoff declining the parent show's decaying montage entirely.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceFelicity
1998–2002The WBDrama
J. J. Abrams and Matt Reeves's college drama, opened by a montage that changed as often as its lead's haircut did.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFerris Bueller
1990–1991NBCComedy
The film adapted for television without its star, and remembered mostly for opening with a joke about that.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFeud
2017–2024FXDrama
Ryan Murphy's anthology of famous enmities, retitled from scratch for each pair.
- Season 2
1 sequenceFinal Space
2018–2021TBS / Adult SwimAnimation
A prisoner adrift in space with an alien that everyone in the galaxy wants.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFire Country
2022–CBSDrama
A convict on a Northern California firefighting crew, working off his sentence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFired Up
1997–1998NBCComedy
Two women sacked from a public relations firm who start their own out of a spare room.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFirefly
2002FoxSci-Fi
A slide guitar and a weary blues vocal over a spaceship. Sonny Rhodes sings words the show's creator wrote, and the argument of the whole series — that this is a western that happens to be in orbit — is settled before a line of dialogue is spoken.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFireman Sam
1987–BBC OneAnimation
A Welsh fire station in stop-motion, made in Welsh first and dubbed into English second.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe First Lady
2022ShowtimeDrama
Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford and Michelle Obama told in parallel across one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFish Hooks
2010–2014Disney ChannelAnimation
A high school inside a pet-shop fish tank, animated over photographed backgrounds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFive Days at Memorial
2022Apple TV+Drama
A New Orleans hospital across the five days after Katrina, and the decisions taken inside it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Flash
2014–2023The CWSci-Fi
The same narrated formula as Arrow, delivered faster — which is at least appropriate.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFlashForward
2009–2010ABCSci-Fi
Everyone on Earth blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds and sees the same day six months ahead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFlashpoint
2008–2012CTV / CBSCrime
A Toronto tactical unit, and the first Canadian drama to air simultaneously on an American network.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFleabag
2016–2019BBC Three / Prime VideoComedy
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's series, which opens by looking directly at you and skips the formality of a title sequence entirely.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Flight Attendant
2020–2022HBO MaxCrime
Saul Bass by way of an in-flight safety card — flat colour, cut paper and a woman falling through all of it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFlight of the Conchords
2007–2009HBOComedy
Cut-paper animation of two New Zealanders failing to make it in New York, assembled with the same handmade cheapness as the band it is about.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceThe Flintstones
1960–1966ABCAnimation
The first animated series in American primetime, and the source of a theme that did not arrive until the third season — the first two opened on something else entirely.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFlower of Evil
2020tvNCrime
A detective investigating a case that leads to her own husband's past.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFood Wars! Shokugeki no Soma
2015–2020Tokyo MXAnimation
Competitive cooking staged as combat, with the reaction shots doing most of the work.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFool Me Once
2024NetflixCrime
A widow who sees her dead husband on a nanny camera, from the Harlan Coben deal.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFor All Mankind
2019–Apple TV+Sci-Fi
Archive footage of the space race, doctored — real newsreel edited so that the alternate history it depicts appears to have actually been filmed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceForensic Files
1996–2011TLC / Court TV / truTVDocumentary
Real cases retold through the laboratory work that closed them, and the programme that made luminol a household word.
- Season 1
1 sequenceForever Knight
1992–1996CBS / SyndicationHorror
A vampire working homicide nights in Toronto, introduced with narration explaining the arrangement every week.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFortitude
2015–2018Sky AtlanticCrime
An Arctic settlement where nothing decays and a killing therefore cannot be buried.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFosse/Verdon
2019FXDrama
Bob Fosse and Gwen Verdon's working marriage, opened in eleven seconds because the choreography is the show.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFoster's Home for Imaginary Friends
2004–2009Cartoon NetworkAnimation
A boarding house for imaginary friends whose children have outgrown them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fosters
2013–2018ABC Family / FreeformDrama
A couple raising biological, adopted and foster children together, on a channel then rebranding around exactly that audience.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFoundation
2021–Apple TV+Sci-Fi
Mathematics rendered as architecture — the Prime Radiant's equations building and dissolving structures across millennia.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFraggle Rock
1983–1987HBOComedy
Jim Henson's series about three societies who cannot see each other properly, made to be co-produced in every country that bought it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFraggle Rock: Back to the Rock
2022–2024Apple TV+Comedy
The Henson revival, which rebuilds the 1983 theme shot for shot with new puppets.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Franchise
2024HBOComedy
The crew of a failing superhero film, from Armando Iannucci and Sam Mendes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrankie Drake Mysteries
2017–2021CBCCrime
Toronto's only female private detective in the 1920s, from the Murdoch Mysteries producers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFranklin
2024Apple TV+Drama
Eighteenth-century Paris in ink and gold leaf, assembling the diplomacy the series is about out of correspondence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrasier
1993–2004NBCComedy
A skyline drawn in simple lines while a man sings about tossed salads and scrambled eggs, and declines to explain either.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFreakazoid!
1995–1997The WBAnimation
A superhero theme performed at a volume and speed that make the joke before the show has started.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFreaks and Geeks
1999–2000NBCComedy
School photographs taken one at a time, with each cast member visibly hating the process — Joan Jett over the least flattering portraits anyone would agree to.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFreddy's Nightmares
1988–1990SyndicationHorror
An anthology hosted by Freddy Krueger, made while the films were still coming out and stranger than any of them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrench and Saunders
1987–2007BBC TwoComedy
Twenty years of film parodies, and the double act that came out of the Comic Strip.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrequency
2016–2017The CWSci-Fi
A ham radio that reaches the operator's dead father twenty years earlier, from the 2000 film.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFresh Meat
2011–2016Channel 4Comedy
Six students sharing a Manchester house, from the Peep Show writers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFresh Off the Boat
2015–2020ABCComedy
A Taiwanese-American family moving to Orlando in 1995, from Eddie Huang's memoir.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
1990–1996NBCComedy
An entire origin story rapped over an animated title card — the longest opening of its era, cut down substantially after the first season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFriday Night Dinner
2011–2020Channel 4Comedy
The same family, the same meal, every week, for six series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFriday Night Lights
2006–2011NBCDrama
Explosions in the Sky over Texas fields and floodlights — a football show whose titles are almost entirely landscape and weather.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFriday the 13th: The Series
1987–1990SyndicationHorror
An antiques shop recovering cursed objects, sharing nothing with the films but a title.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFridays
1980–1982ABCComedy
ABC's answer to Saturday Night Live, best remembered for the night Andy Kaufman refused to say his lines.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFriends
1994–2004NBCComedy
A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.
- Season 6
3 sequencesFringe
2008–2013FoxSci-Fi
Pseudo-scientific terms floating in coloured fog — and the colour is the plot: the palette changes to tell you which universe or era the episode is set in.
- Season 1
- Season 4
- Season 5
1 sequenceFrom
2022–MGM+Horror
'Que Sera, Sera' over a town nobody can leave — a cheerful standard used as a threat, which is the oldest trick in horror and still works.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrom Dusk till Dawn: The Series
2014–2016El ReyHorror
Rodriguez remaking his own film at series length, on the channel he founded to show it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrom the Earth to the Moon
1998HBODrama
Tom Hanks's twelve-part Apollo history, opened by archive footage cut to Michael Kamen's march.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrontline
1994–1997ABC (Australia)Comedy
A current affairs programme satirised from inside its own newsroom, and the model most workplace mockumentaries since have followed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFrozen Planet
2011BBC OneDocumentary
Ice filmed as architecture, and George Fenton again — twenty-six seconds with no animal in them at all.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFruits Basket
2019–2021TV TokyoAnimation
The second adaptation, which ran the manga to its end rather than stopping partway.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFull Circle
2023HBO MaxCrime
New York cut into overlapping fragments, so that separate lives keep occupying the same frame before the plot connects them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFull Frontal with Samantha Bee
2016–2022TBSComedy
A weekly satire whose opening graphics were redesigned more often than most dramas change a season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFull House
1987–1995ABCComedy
A San Francisco picnic and a song about everywhere you look — the platonic form of the American family-sitcom opening.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
2009–2010MBS / TBSAnimation
Alchemical circles and transmutation, animated at a scale the first adaptation could not afford.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Fungies!
2020–2021Cartoon Network / HBO MaxAnimation
A mushroom child scientist in a prehistoric fungal town.
- Season 1
2 sequencesFuturama
1999–Fox / Comedy Central / HuluAnimation
Like The Simpsons, an opening built to differ every week — a new caption under the logo and a different scrap of old cartoon on the screen the ship flies past — wrapped around Christopher Tyng's theme and a crash into a billboard.
- Seasons 1–4
- Seasons 6–7
1 sequenceFuture Man
2017–2020HuluSci-Fi
A janitor recruited by time travellers because he finished a video game nobody else could.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceFuture-Worm!
2016–2018Disney XDAnimation
A time-travelling worm and the boy who built his flask, from Ryan Quincy.
- Season 1