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120 shows126 sequences
1 sequenceThe L Word
2004–2009ShowtimeDrama
A circle of women in West Hollywood, and a theme song that lists what the show is about out loud.
- Season 1
1 sequenceL.A. Law
1986–1994NBCDrama
A car boot slamming on a personalised numberplate, and Mike Post again — the legal drama that defined the form for a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLa Casa de las Flores
2018–2020NetflixComedy
A Mexico City florist family and the second family the father has been keeping.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLa Femme Nikita
1997–2001USA NetworkDrama
Cold blue corridors and electronic music, for a series that treated its agency as an antagonist from the first frame.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLa Reina del Sur
2011–2023TelemundoCrime
Arturo Pérez-Reverte's Sinaloan trafficker, remade in English by USA Network as Queen of the South.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLady Dynamite
2016–2017NetflixComedy
Maria Bamford's series about Maria Bamford, structured across three timelines and opened in fifteen seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLady in the Lake
2024Apple TV+Crime
Two women in 1960s Baltimore, one investigating and one already dead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLaguna Beach
2004–2006MTVDocumentary
Real teenagers filmed like a drama, and the format most of MTV's next decade was built on.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLamb Chop's Play-Along
1992–1995PBSComedy
Shari Lewis and her puppets, and the song that does not end.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLand of the Giants
1968–1970ABCSci-Fi
Irwin Allen's last 1960s series, about a suborbital flight stranded on a world of giants.
- Season 2
1 sequenceLand of the Lost
1974–1976NBCSci-Fi
A raft over a waterfall into a closed pocket universe, written by Dorothy Fontana and David Gerrold for Saturday mornings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLark Rise to Candleford
2008–2011BBC OneDrama
Flora Thompson's hamlet and its market town, adapted into four years of BBC Sunday evenings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Larry Sanders Show
1992–1998HBOComedy
A talk-show opening for a talk show that does not exist, performed with total conviction by a band and an announcer who are also characters.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLas Vegas
2003–2008NBCDrama
Casino surveillance as an ensemble drama, opening on the Strip at the hour it looks best.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLast Chance U
2016–2023NetflixDocumentary
Junior college football players with one season left to be recruited, and a marching-band cue for a theme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Dance
2020ESPN / NetflixDocumentary
Archive footage cut to a hip-hop bed, treating a basketball season as a heist film.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Days of Ptolemy Grey
2022Apple TV+Drama
Samuel L. Jackson given a drug that returns his memory for thirty days.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Kingdom
2015–2022BBC America / NetflixDrama
Earth, ash and iron assembling into a map of a divided England, with the borders shifting as the seasons go on.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Man on Earth
2015–2018FoxComedy
The last man alive, who turns out not to be, and who is not much of a loss to anybody either way.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last of Us
2023–HBODrama
Cordyceps growing across a map — mould spreading through a continent in time-lapse until the shapes it leaves behind resolve into two figures. Gustavo Santaolalla's guitar, carried over from the game.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Panthers
2015Sky AtlanticCrime
A jewel heist across Europe, opening on the title track of Blackstar — the last title music David Bowie wrote.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLast Resort
2012–2013ABCDrama
A submarine crew who refuse an order and declare an island sovereign, cancelled after thirteen episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Ship
2014–2018TNTDrama
A destroyer at sea when a pandemic takes the rest of the world.
- Season 2
1 sequenceLast Tango in Halifax
2012–2020BBC OneDrama
Two people who were sweethearts at school meeting again in their seventies, and the families that have accumulated since.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Last Thing He Told Me
2023Apple TV+Crime
A houseboat, a marina and water — a disappearance introduced by the place the missing man left behind.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLast Week Tonight with John Oliver
2014–HBOComedy
A weekly half-hour whose animated globe-and-newsprint open has run essentially unchanged for a decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLate Night with Conan O'Brien
1993–2009NBCComedy
An unknown writer handed the 12.30 slot, and sixteen years to grow into it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLate Night with David Letterman
1982–1993NBCComedy
New York at night shot from a moving car, over a jazz-organ theme — the opening that decided what a late-night talk show looks like.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLate Show with David Letterman
1993–2015CBSComedy
Letterman moved to CBS and to a theatre on Broadway, which the titles put on screen every night for twenty-two years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLaverne & Shirley
1976–1983ABCComedy
A skipping chant and two women walking through Milwaukee — the Happy Days spinoff that outrated its parent.
- Season 1
2 sequencesLaw & Order
1990–NBCCrime
The original, and the source of the two-note sting that half of American television has been quoting ever since.
- Season 1
- Season 20
1 sequenceLaw & Order: Criminal Intent
2001–2011NBC / USA NetworkCrime
The franchise entry that follows the criminal rather than the case, and so has to break the format's own rule about not showing you the answer.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLaw & Order: Organized Crime
2021–NBC / PeacockCrime
Stabler brought back a decade after leaving Special Victims Unit, into a serialised format the franchise had never used.
- Season 1
2 sequencesLaw & Order: Special Victims Unit
1999–NBCCrime
The franchise's chung-chung and a narrated premise, held for a quarter of a century — the longest-running opening in this catalogue by some distance.
- Season 1
- Season 15
1 sequenceLaw & Order: Trial by Jury
2005–2006NBCCrime
The shortest-lived Law & Order, cancelled after thirteen episodes, covering the half of the format the parent series skipped.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLaw & Order: UK
2009–2014ITVCrime
American scripts reshot in London with the two-part structure intact, and the chung-chung kept.
- Season 6
1 sequenceThe Lawrence Welk Show
1951–1982ABC / SyndicationDocumentary
Champagne music, bubbles in the titles, and thirty-one years of the same band leader counting in.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLazarus
2025Adult SwimAnimation
Shinichirō Watanabe's series with action by Chad Stahelski, opened to Kamasi Washington.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLazor Wulf
2019–2021Adult SwimAnimation
A wolf with a laser bolted to his back, in fourteen seconds of open.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe League
2009–2015FX / FXXComedy
A fantasy football league and the friendships it slowly destroys.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe League of Gentlemen
1999–2017BBC TwoHorror
Royston Vasey, a local shop, and a radio series that arrived on television already knowing exactly what it looked like.
- Season 1
3 sequencesThe Leftovers
2014–2017HBODrama
The rare show that threw out a perfectly good title sequence and replaced it with its opposite. One season of grief painted as a Renaissance ceiling, then a complete reversal into snapshots and a country song.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceLegacies
2018–2022The CWHorror
The third series in the Vampire Diaries line, set at a boarding school for the supernatural.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Legacy
2014–2017DR1 (Denmark)Drama
Four siblings fighting over an artist mother's estate. Arvingerne at home.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Legend of Korra
2012–2014NickelodeonAnimation
The Avatar sequel, which keeps the four-element structure of its predecessor's opening and moves it into an industrial age.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Legend of the Blue Sea
2016–2017SBSDrama
A mermaid and a con artist, reincarnated from a Joseon folk tale into modern Seoul.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLegend of the Seeker
2008–2010SyndicationDrama
Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth novels, from the Hercules and Xena producers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Legend of Vox Machina
2022–Prime VideoAnimation
The first Critical Role campaign animated as a series, with a proper broadcast title sequence to go with it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLegends of the Hidden Temple
1993–1995NickelodeonDocumentary
A children's game show staged inside a temple, presided over by a talking stone head.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLegends of Tomorrow
2016–2022The CWSci-Fi
Thirteen seconds, by a show that worked out earlier than its siblings that the narrated premise was a joke worth dropping.
- Season 5
1 sequenceLegion
2017–2019FXSci-Fi
Noah Hawley's series about a man who cannot trust his own perception, with title design to match.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLessons in Chemistry
2023Apple TV+Drama
Laboratory glassware and 1950s kitchen surfaces filmed identically, so the science and the domesticity become the same set of tools.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLetterkenny
2016–2023CraveComedy
A cold open, a card, and back out — a rural Ontario comedy that spends as little time on formalities as its characters would.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLeverage
2008–2012TNTCrime
Twenty seconds of heist iconography, in a show that opens each episode with a job already half underway.
- Season 1
3 sequencesLexx
1997–2002Citytv / Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi
A living insect-shaped ship the size of a planet, introduced with the seriousness of an opera and the budget of a regional theatre. Rebuilt every season, and stranger each time.
- Season 2
- Season 3
- Season 4
1 sequenceLie to Me
2009–2011FoxCrime
A deception expert reading faces frame by frame, built on the research of the psychologist who consulted on it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife (2007)
2007–2009NBCCrime
A detective released after twelve years for a crime he did not commit, handed back his badge and a very large settlement.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Life & Times of Tim
2008–2012HBOAnimation
A man in New York whose every conversation makes his situation worse, drawn as simply as possible.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Life and Times of Grizzly Adams
1977–1978NBCDrama
A man wrongly accused who goes to live in the mountains with a bear, and NBC's biggest surprise of 1977.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife Goes On
1989–1993ABCDrama
The first American series built around a lead actor with Down syndrome, opening on the Beatles.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife in Pieces
2015–2019CBSComedy
One family across four short stories an episode, told out of order and cut together at the end.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Life of Riley
1949–1958NBCComedy
A radio sitcom moved to television twice, the second time with William Bendix finally allowed to play the part he had on radio.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife on Earth
1979BBC TwoDocumentary
The series that invented the modern natural history film, and the template for everything Attenborough made afterwards.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife on Mars
2006–2007BBC OneSci-Fi
A Manchester detective wakes in 1973 and cannot establish whether he is mad, in a coma, or back in time — the show's own summary, delivered as narration.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife on Mars (US)
2008–2009ABCSci-Fi
The American remake of the BBC series, opening on 1973 New York and the Bowie song both versions are named for.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife Unexpected
2010–2011The CWDrama
A girl in foster care who finds both her birth parents and asks them to take her back.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife with Louie
1995–1998Fox KidsAnimation
Louie Anderson's Wisconsin childhood animated, with his own father as the character the show turns on.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLife with Lucy
1986ABCComedy
Lucille Ball's last series, pulled after eight episodes of a thirteen-episode order.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Light in Your Eyes
2019JTBCDrama
A woman who can turn back time and ages a lifetime doing it, which the series does not explain until it has to.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLilyhammer
2012–2014NRK1 / NetflixCrime
Netflix's first original commission, and an opening that plays a New Jersey mobster in rural Norway entirely straight.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLimitless
2015–2016CBSSci-Fi
The film's premise as a procedural, opened by Prologue in twenty-two seconds of chemical bloom.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lincoln Lawyer
2022–NetflixCrime
Connelly's defence attorney working out of the back seat of a car, brought to television a decade after the film.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLine of Duty
2012–2021BBC Two / BBC OneCrime
Redaction as a design language — evidence bags, case files and blocks of black covering the parts you are not cleared for.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle America
2020–2022Apple TV+Drama
Half-hour films about immigrants to the United States, each based on a real person.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Bear
1995–2001CBC / Nick Jr.Animation
Maurice Sendak's drawings animated in no hurry whatever, and about the quietest programme Nick Jr. ever ran.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Britain
2003–2006BBC Three / BBC OneComedy
A radio series moved to television, narrated as though it were a documentary about a country nobody has heard of.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Dorrit
2008BBC OneDrama
Dickens serialised across fourteen parts, opened by ink and engraving that assemble the Marshalsea.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Little Drummer Girl
2018BBC One / AMCDrama
Park Chan-wook directing le Carré, in the most controlled colour palette on television that year.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Fires Everywhere
2020HuluDrama
Two mothers in a planned Ohio suburb, and the house that is already burning down in the first scene.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle House on the Prairie
1974–1983NBCDrama
Three girls running down a hill, one of whom falls — a shot kept in for nine years because it was better than the take where nobody did.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLittle Mosque on the Prairie
2007–2012CBCComedy
A Muslim congregation renting a prairie church hall, in a sitcom that became Canada's most exported comedy.
- Season 4
1 sequenceLittle Women
2017BBC OneDrama
Alcott in three parts, with a title sequence made of cut paper and pressed flowers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Littles
1983–1985ABCAnimation
Six-inch people with tails living inside the walls, from the John Peterson books.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLiv and Maddie
2013–2017Disney ChannelComedy
Dove Cameron playing identical twins with opposite lives.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLive
2018tvNDrama
Beat officers at a Seoul substation, from the writer of the Reply series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Living Planet
1984BBC OneDocumentary
The Life on Earth sequel, on habitats rather than lineages, opening on the planet doing the sorting.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLiving Single
1993–1998FoxComedy
Queen Latifah performing the theme over Brooklyn — a sitcom opening sung by one of its own stars.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLocke & Key
2020–2022NetflixHorror
Keys turning in locks that open onto rooms which should not exist, drawn from the comic's own conceit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLodge 49
2018–2019AMCComedy
A Long Beach fraternal lodge and a man who joins it looking for something he cannot name.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLogan's Run
1977–1978CBSSci-Fi
The film continued as a series, running fourteen episodes before CBS stopped it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman
1993–1997ABCSci-Fi
Superman rewritten as a workplace romance, on the principle that Clark is the real man and the cape is the costume.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLoki
2021–2023Disney+Sci-Fi
Bureaucratic typography and timeline diagrams — a superhero series whose titles are styled after an office that manages history.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lone Gunmen
2001FoxSci-Fi
The X-Files spin-off about its three conspiracy theorists, cancelled after thirteen episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lone Ranger
1949–1957ABCDrama
Rossini's William Tell overture attached so firmly to a masked rider that the music has never fully got free of it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLonesome Dove
1989CBSDrama
Basil Poledouris scoring a cattle drive from Texas to Montana — the miniseries that proved the western was not finished after all.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLong Story Short
2025NetflixAnimation
Raphael Bob-Waksberg's family comedy, which jumps decades between scenes and uses its titles to say so.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLong Way Round
2004Sky OneDocumentary
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman riding from London to New York the long way, and the map that opens each leg.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLoot
2022–Apple TV+Comedy
Extreme wealth drawn as a cheerful animated inventory — yachts, jets and foundations, arranged like a toy catalogue.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power
2022–Prime VideoDrama
Sand and iron filings moving into Chladni patterns under sound — a title sequence built by playing music at a physical surface rather than animating it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLos Espookys
2019–2022HBOComedy
Handmade horror props filmed lovingly and badly on purpose — fake blood, rubber and fog, exactly the standard the characters work to.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLost
2004–2010ABCDrama
One word, drifting slowly out of the dark towards the camera, over a low tone that is barely a piece of music. Fifteen seconds, no cast, no footage — the cheapest main title of any network drama of its size, and the most imitated.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequenceLost Girl
2010–2016Showcase / SyfySci-Fi
A succubus choosing neither Fae court, in one of Canada's longest-running genre exports.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLost in Space
1965–1968CBSSci-Fi
John Williams, decades before anyone was calling him that, writing a fanfare for a family stranded in a jelly-mould spaceship.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lost Room
2006Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi
A motel room that stopped existing in 1961 and left its contents behind as objects with impossible properties.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLou Grant
1977–1982CBSDrama
The Mary Tyler Moore Show character moved into an hour-long newspaper drama — the only American series to make that jump.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Loud House
2016–NickelodeonAnimation
One boy, ten sisters, and a theme song that has to introduce all eleven of them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Loudest Voice
2019ShowtimeDrama
Roger Ailes and the building of Fox News, one episode per significant year.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLouie
2010–2015FXComedy
A man walking to a comedy club and eating a slice of pizza, singing his own theme — fifty-two seconds with no jokes in them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLouis Theroux's Weird Weekends
1998–2000BBC TwoDocumentary
Theroux embedding himself with American subcultures and letting the awkwardness do the work.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLove & Death
2023HBO MaxCrime
Suburban Texas in the early eighties — lawns, church halls and kitchen counters filmed with the flatness of a case file.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Love Boat
1977–1987ABCComedy
A cruise ship with a new guest cast every week, introduced by name in the titles.
- Season 3
1 sequenceLove, Death + Robots
2019–NetflixAnimation
Three icons — a heart, a skull, a robot — recombined every episode to declare which of the three that instalment is going to be. The shortest possible statement of an anthology's rules.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLovecraft Country
2020HBOHorror
Twelve seconds — a card, a horn stab, and straight into an episode that will not be the same genre as the last one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLovely Runner
2024tvNDrama
A fan travelling back fifteen years to stop her favourite singer's death.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLow Winter Sun
2013AMCCrime
The British two-parter remade in Detroit and stretched to ten episodes, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLucifer
2016–2021Fox / NetflixDrama
Eleven seconds and a card, from a procedural that would rather get to the case.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLuck
2011–2012HBODrama
Milch and Michael Mann at a racetrack, ended after one season when horses died during production.
- Season 1
1 sequenceLuke Cage
2016–2018NetflixCrime
Harlem projected onto a man's skin — brownstones, crowds and streets mapped across a body that cannot be marked. The one Marvel Netflix opening that is about a place rather than a mood.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceLuther
2010–2019BBC OneCrime
Massive Attack's 'Paradise Circus' over a city at night, with a detective who is already losing before the episode starts.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Lying Game
2011–2013ABC FamilyDrama
Twins separated at birth swapping places, from the author of Pretty Little Liars.
- Season 1