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132 shows141 sequences
1 sequenceH.R. Pufnstuf
1969–1970NBCComedy
Sid and Marty Krofft's first series, and the reason a generation associates foam costumes with a talking flute.
- Season 1
1 sequenceH2O: Just Add Water
2006–2010Network TenDrama
Three Gold Coast girls who become mermaids on contact with water, and an Australian export that reached a hundred and twenty countries.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHacks
2021–MaxComedy
Las Vegas residency glamour, played straight enough to sting — a comedian's brand doing the work of a title sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHaikyu!!
2014–2020MBS / TBSAnimation
Volleyball animated with the weight of a fight scene, over a rock track that never lets the tempo drop.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHailey's On It!
2023–2024Disney ChannelAnimation
A girl with a list of every thing she is afraid of and a deadline to do all of them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHajime no Ippo
2000–2014Nippon TVAnimation
A bullied shopkeeper's son taken into a boxing gym, and one of the few sports series that gets the training right.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHale and Pace
1988–1998ITVComedy
Two former schoolteachers doing sketch comedy for ITV for a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHalf & Half
2002–2006UPNComedy
Two half-sisters who grew up apart, living in the same San Francisco building as adults.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHalo
2022–2024Paramount+Sci-Fi
The Bungie games adapted, with Master Chief's helmet coming off in the first episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHalt and Catch Fire
2014–2017AMCDrama
Elastic's red glitch: a screen tearing itself apart while the cast names surface out of the wreckage, over a Paul Haslinger synth line. Thirty seconds, and almost nothing in it is legible for more than a frame.
- Seasons 1–4
1 sequenceHammer House of Horror
1980ITVHorror
Hammer's one television anthology, made after the films had stopped and shot on the same estate.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHamster & Gretel
2022–2024Disney ChannelAnimation
A brother and sister given superpowers, except only the hamster got them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHana Yori Dango
2005–2007TBSDrama
The manga that became Boys Over Flowers in Korea and Meteor Garden in Taiwan, in its Japanese live-action form.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHancock's Half Hour
1956–1961BBCComedy
Galton and Simpson's radio series moved to television, and the point at which British sitcom stopped being a variety turn.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Handmaid's Tale
2017–2025HuluDrama
Red cloaks and white wings shot from above, arranged into the geometry of a system rather than a group of people.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceHandy Manny
2006–2011Playhouse DisneyAnimation
A bilingual repairman whose tools talk, and the programme that taught a generation of American children their first Spanish.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHang Time
1995–2000NBCComedy
A girl on a boys' high school basketball team, made for the Saturday morning block.
- Season 2
2 sequencesHangin' with Mr. Cooper
1992–1997ABCComedy
A retired basketball player teaching gym in Oakland and sharing a house with two women he went to school with.
- Season 1
- Seasons 4–5
1 sequenceHannibal
2013–2015NBCHorror
A figure forming out of blood in water, on network television at ten o'clock. Twenty-one seconds, and among the most beautiful things any broadcast network has aired.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Days
1974–1984ABCComedy
A fifties jukebox theme that started as a closing song and was promoted to the opening once it became a hit record.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Endings
2011–2013ABCComedy
Six friends in Chicago talking over one another at a speed most sitcoms do not attempt.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Tree Friends
2000–Mondo MediaAnimation
Woodland animals drawn in the shape of greetings cards and then killed in every episode, made for the web years before television wanted it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Valley
2014–2023BBC OneCrime
Sally Wainwright's Calder Valley series, which opens with almost nothing and is all the bleaker for it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHardcastle and McCormick
1983–1986ABCCrime
A retired judge and the ex-convict he paroles into being his driver, chasing the cases he could not convict.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHardcore Pawn
2010–2015truTVDocumentary
A Detroit pawnbroker and the arguments across his counter, which are most of the programme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHarley Quinn
2019–DC Universe / HBO MaxAnimation
The adult animated Harley, whose opening is short enough that the show keeps rewriting it episode to episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHarry Enfield & Chums
1990–1992BBC TwoComedy
Enfield's characters given a series each week, and most of British catchphrase comedy for a decade after.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHart of Dixie
2011–2015The CWDrama
A New York surgeon who inherits half a general practice in Alabama and finds she cannot leave it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHart to Hart
1979–1984ABCCrime
A wealthy married couple who solve murders, introduced by their own butler in voiceover.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHarvey Beaks
2015–2017NickelodeonAnimation
A well-behaved bird and the two feral children who are his best friends.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHarvey Birdman, Attorney at Law
2000–2007Adult SwimAnimation
Birdman as a lawyer representing Hanna-Barbera characters, opened in the register of a network legal drama.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Haunting of Bly Manor
2020NetflixHorror
The Turn of the Screw as the second Haunting, with the same company of actors in different parts.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Haunting of Hill House
2018–2020NetflixHorror
The house drawn as an architectural plate, rooms opening into rooms, with figures standing in doorways you are not meant to notice on a first pass.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHave Gun – Will Travel
1957–1963CBSDrama
A gunfighter who advertises in the newspaper, and one of the first westerns to open on a business card.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequenceHave I Got News for You
1990–BBC Two / BBC OneComedy
Newspaper mastheads and printing presses, rebuilt periodically across thirty-five years of British political humiliation.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHaven
2010–2015SyfySci-Fi
A Maine town where the afflictions are supernatural and hereditary, from the Stephen King novella.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHawaii Five-0 (2010)
2010–2020CBSCrime
The reboot, which keeps the 1968 theme almost note for note and rebuilds the wave and the zoom around it in high definition.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHawaii Five-O
1968–1980CBSCrime
The wave, the zoom onto the hotel balcony, and one of the four or five most recognisable television themes ever recorded.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHawkeye
2021Disney+Sci-Fi
A Christmas series about the Avenger with no powers, opening on a wall of comic-panel artwork.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHe-Man and the Masters of the Universe
1983–1985SyndicationAnimation
A man holding a sword above his head announcing that he has the power, at a volume that defined an entire decade of toy advertising.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHead of the Class
1986–1991ABCComedy
A history teacher handed the gifted programme at a Manhattan school, played by a stand-up who had never taught anyone.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHealer
2014–2015KBS2Drama
A night courier who takes any job without asking what it is, and the reporter who works out who he is.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHeartbeat
1992–2010ITVDrama
A Yorkshire village policeman in the 1960s, opened by the Buddy Holly song the series is named for.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHeartbreak High
1994–1999Ten / ABC (Australia)Drama
A Sydney comprehensive, revived by Netflix thirty years later.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHeartland
2007–CBCDrama
A family ranch in Alberta, and the longest-running one-hour drama in Canadian television.
- Seasons 1–3
1 sequenceHeated Rivalry
2025–CraveDrama
Two rival ice hockey players who spend a decade hiding what is between them, from Rachel Reid's novel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHee Haw
1969–1993CBS / SyndicationComedy
Country music and cornfield jokes, cancelled by CBS in the rural purge and then outliving it in syndication by twenty years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Heirs
2013SBSDrama
The children of chaebol families at the same school, arranged by inheritance rather than friendship.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHelix
2014–2015SyfyHorror
A CDC team at an Arctic research base, opened in ten seconds because the show never slows down either.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHell on Wheels
2011–2016AMCDrama
Iron, sleepers and surveyor's tools — the transcontinental railroad introduced as labour rather than achievement.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHell's Kitchen
2005–FoxDocumentary
Flames, a skull made of a chef's hat, and Gordon Ramsay shouting — the titles tell you exactly what the hour is.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHellbound
2021–NetflixHorror
Twenty-five seconds of smoke and scripture, over before the dread has anywhere to settle.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHello Tomorrow!
2023Apple TV+Sci-Fi
Timeshare salesmen selling lunar property in a retrofuturist America that never happened.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHelstrom
2020HuluHorror
The last of Marvel's television output before the Disney+ era swallowed it, and the only one that is a horror series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHemlock Grove
2013–2015NetflixHorror
A Pennsylvania steel town with a werewolf and a biotech company in it, and one of Netflix's first three originals.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHer Private Life
2019tvNComedy
A gallery curator running a fan site for an idol, and the director who finds out.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHercules: The Legendary Journeys
1995–1999SyndicationDrama
A narrated mythological premise delivered with total conviction over New Zealand hillsides.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Herculoids
1967–1969CBSAnimation
Alex Toth designs on an alien planet, in the run of Hanna-Barbera action shows that got them banned from Saturday mornings for violence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHerman's Head
1991–1994FoxComedy
A man's four personified impulses arguing inside his skull while the plot happens outside it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHeroes
2006–2010NBCSci-Fi
An eclipse and a card, in twelve seconds. The restraint is the point — a superhero show refusing to open like one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHeroes Reborn
2015–2016NBCSci-Fi
The revival, five years after the original stopped, and one season long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHetty Wainthropp Investigates
1996–1998BBC OneCrime
A Lancashire pensioner who opens a detective agency because nobody will give her a job.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHey Arnold!
1996–2004NickelodeonAnimation
A jazz theme over a city block, for a children's cartoon that treated urban childhood with unusual seriousness.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHey Dude
1989–1991NickelodeonComedy
Teenagers working a dude ranch in Arizona, in one of the first scripted series Nickelodeon made itself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHey Duggee
2014–CBeebiesAnimation
A dog running a scout group for small animals, structured around a badge per episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHi Hi Puffy AmiYumi
2004–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation
The Japanese pop duo animated as cartoon versions of themselves, with a theme they recorded.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHi-de-Hi!
1980–1988BBC OneComedy
A 1950s holiday camp, the fourth David Croft series in this catalogue.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe High Chaparral
1967–1971NBCDrama
An Arizona cattle ranch and the Mexican family it marries into, from the producer of Bonanza.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHigh Maintenance
2016–2020HBOComedy
A weed delivery cyclist as the only connection between otherwise unrelated New York stories.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHigh Potential
2024–ABCCrime
A cleaner with an exceptional mind who starts solving the cases in the files she is dusting.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHigh Seas
2019–2020NetflixCrime
Two sisters on a 1940s liner to Rio, and a passenger who was never on the manifest.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHigher Ground
2000Fox FamilyDrama
A wilderness school for troubled teenagers, cancelled after one season and remembered for its cast list.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHighlander: The Series
1992–1998SyndicationSci-Fi
Queen's 'Princes of the Universe' over swordplay and lightning, and a narration explaining immortality every week for six years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHightown
2020–2024StarzCrime
A fisheries agent in Provincetown pulled into an overdose investigation she should not be near.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHighway Patrol
1955–1959SyndicationCrime
Broderick Crawford saying "Ten-four" into a car radio, which entered the language from here.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHijack
2023–Apple TV+Drama
Flight paths, cabin geometry and a clock — a series told in real time, saying so before it starts.
- Season 2
1 sequenceHilda
2018–2023NetflixAnimation
Luke Pearson's blue-haired girl and the Nordic folklore living beside her town.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHill Street Blues
1981–1987NBCCrime
Mike Post's piano over squad cars pulling out into snow — the sequence that taught American drama an opening could be melancholy rather than exciting.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Hills
2006–2010MTVDocumentary
The Laguna Beach spin-off that moved to Los Angeles, and the show that made the word scripted an argument.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHinterland
2013–2016S4C / BBC OneCrime
Aberystwyth and the country behind it, shot twice over - once in Welsh as Y Gwyll, once in English.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHip-Hop Evolution
2016–2020NetflixDocumentary
Shad interviewing the people who were actually in the room, decade by decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHis Dark Materials
2019–2022BBC One / HBOSci-Fi
Pullman's trilogy adapted with a title sequence that opens a window between worlds and keeps going through it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHisteria!
1998–2000Kids' WBAnimation
History taught as an Animaniacs-style variety show, made to satisfy an educational broadcasting requirement.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Hitchhiker
1983–1991HBOHorror
HBO's first original series: an anthology introduced by a man on a road who never explains himself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHockey Night in Canada
1952–CBC / SportsnetDocumentary
A theme so embedded that when the CBC lost the rights to it in 2008 the story led the national news.
- Season 70
1 sequenceThe Hogan Family
1986–1990NBCComedy
A sitcom that changed its name twice while on the air, from Valerie to Valerie's Family to this one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHogan's Heroes
1965–1971CBSComedy
A prisoner-of-war camp run as a sabotage operation, opened by a march whistled rather than sung.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHolby City
1999–2022BBC OneDrama
The Casualty spin-off that moved upstairs to the surgical wards and outlasted most of what was around it.
- Season 12
1 sequenceThe Hollow Crown
2012–2016BBC TwoDrama
The history plays filmed as features, with a title card so brief it barely qualifies as a sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHollyoaks
1995–Channel 4Drama
A Chester soap aimed at an audience twenty years younger than any other British serial's.
- Season 14
1 sequenceHollywood Squares
1986–1989SyndicationDocumentary
The noughts-and-crosses game revived for syndication, with nine celebrities stacked in a lit grid.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHolocaust
1978NBCDrama
The miniseries that put the word into everyday use in Germany, where half the country watched it.
- Season 1
2 sequencesHome and Away
1988–Seven NetworkDrama
Summer Bay, still running after nearly forty years, with the opening remade every few seasons.
- Season 1
- Season 38
1 sequenceHome Improvement
1991–1999ABCComedy
Power tools and a grunting brass riff, in the register of the fictional DIY programme the show is about.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHome Movies
1999–2004UPN / Adult SwimAnimation
Nineteen seconds, squiggle-drawn, from the series that established the improvised-dialogue style its creator would later bring to Bob's Burgers.
- Season 1
3 sequencesHomeland
2011–2020ShowtimeDrama
Jazz, archive news audio and a child in a lion mask — a fever dream assembled from half a century of American foreign policy, recut every season with that year's crisis in it.
- Season 1
- Season 6
- Season 8
1 sequenceThe Honeymooners
1955–1956CBSComedy
A moon over Brooklyn and an orchestra — the sitcom that most American sitcoms since are a variation on, in thirty-nine episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHong Kong Phooey
1974ABCAnimation
A janitor dog who is a secret kung fu detective, with Scatman Crothers singing his own theme.
- Season 1
2 sequencesHope & Gloria
1995–1996NBCComedy
A talk show producer and a hairdresser sharing a Pittsburgh apartment building.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceHormones
2013–2015GMM 25Drama
A Bangkok school series that broke Thai television's rules about what teenagers could be shown doing.
- Season 2
1 sequenceHornblower
1998–2003ITVDrama
Forester's naval officer, made not as a series but as eight television films spread over five years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHorrible Histories
2009–CBBCComedy
Sketch comedy about history for children that adults watched anyway, with the titles redrawn between series.
- Season 5
1 sequenceHospital Playlist
2020–2021tvNDrama
Five doctors who have been friends since medical school, and a band they will not stop forming.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHot in Cleveland
2010–2015TV LandComedy
Three Los Angeles women whose plane diverts, and who find that in Ohio they are considered striking.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHot Stove League
2019–2020SBSDrama
A baseball club's front office in the closed season, which is where the title's stove is.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHotel Cocaine
2024MGM+Crime
The Mutiny Hotel in late-seventies Miami, and everyone who passed through its lobby.
- Season 1
2 sequencesHouse
2004–2012FoxDrama
Anatomical illustration and MRI imagery over Massive Attack's 'Teardrop' — a diagnostic show that opens by looking inside a body rather than at one.
- Season 8
- Season 1
2 sequencesHouse of Anubis
2011–2013NickelodeonDrama
An English boarding school with an Egyptian secret underneath it, remade by Nickelodeon from a Dutch and Belgian original.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceHouse of Cards
2013–2018NetflixDrama
Washington in time-lapse, shot at dusk and left to run — monuments, traffic and cloud moving over a city where nothing visibly happens. Jeff Beal's theme does the menace.
- Seasons 1–6
3 sequencesHouse of the Dragon
2022–HBODrama
The parent show mapped a continent; this one traces a bloodline. Where Game of Thrones built cities, these titles follow blood running through stone channels and a tapestry recording who killed whom.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceHouseBroken
2021–2023FoxAnimation
A group-therapy circle of neighbourhood pets, run by a poodle who is not qualified.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow I Met Your Father
2022–2023HuluComedy
The How I Met Your Mother format restaged, with the same framing device and fifteen seconds of titles.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow I Met Your Mother
2005–2014CBSComedy
Fourteen seconds of photographs and a ukulele — a nine-year story introduced by a handful of snapshots.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow It's Made
2001–Discovery ChannelDocumentary
Manufacturing filmed without a presenter, a plot or a raised voice, for over thirty seasons.
- Season 15
1 sequenceHow to Get Away with Murder
2014–2020ABCCrime
Law-school iconography cut against evidence photographs, so the lecture and the crime scene share a visual language.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow to Make It in America
2010–2011HBOComedy
New York street fashion and hustle, cut to Aloe Blacc — the East Coast answer to Entourage, and a better title sequence than the show got credit for.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow to Sell Drugs Online (Fast)
2019–2022NetflixComedy
A teenager who builds Europe's largest online drug market from his bedroom to win back a girlfriend, and eleven seconds to say so.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHow To with John Wilson
2020–2023HBODocumentary
New York filmed on the street by one man with a camera, and titles assembled from the same accidental footage the series is made of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHowards End
2017BBC One / StarzDrama
Kenneth Lonergan's Forster adaptation, with titles built from cut-paper Edwardian silhouettes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHowards' Way
1985–1990BBC OneDrama
Boatyards and money on the Solent, which the BBC ran opposite Dallas and Dynasty on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Huckleberry Hound Show
1958–1961SyndicationAnimation
The first animated series to win an Emmy, and the show Yogi Bear was a supporting segment in.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHudson & Rex
2019–CitytvCrime
A St John's detective and his German shepherd, remade from an Austrian series that ran for twenty years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHuff
2004–2006ShowtimeDrama
A psychiatrist whose own life comes apart after a patient's suicide.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Hughleys
1998–2000ABCComedy
A family moving to a white suburb and the father who cannot stop noticing it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHulk and the Agents of S.M.A.S.H.
2013–2015Disney XDAnimation
The Hulks as a team, framed as a documentary crew filming themselves.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHuman Planet
2011BBC OneDocumentary
The BBC natural-history unit turning its cameras on people, one habitat per episode.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHumans
2015–2018Channel 4 / AMCSci-Fi
Domestic synths in an England that already has them, opened by faces that hold still a beat too long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHung
2009–2011HBOComedy
Detroit in decline, filmed with more sympathy than the premise would lead you to expect.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHunter × Hunter
2011–2014Nippon TVAnimation
One opening held for most of a hundred and forty-eight episodes, which for a shonen series of that length is close to unheard of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHunters
2020–2023Prime VideoDrama
Seventies exploitation-poster design applied to Nazi hunting in 1977 New York, with all the tastelessness that implies deliberately left in.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Hunting Wives
2025–NetflixDrama
A Massachusetts family relocated to east Texas, and the shooting club the wife falls in with.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHustle
2004–2012BBC OneCrime
Playing cards, sleight of hand and London — a con-artist series whose titles are themselves a piece of misdirection.
- Season 1