P

134 shows138 sequences

1 sequence

P-Valley

2020–StarzDrama

Katori Hall's Mississippi Delta strip club, opened by a sequence shot with the same neon grammar as the club itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pachinko

2022–Apple TV+Drama

The entire cast dancing in a pachinko parlour, grinning, in period costume — a sequence with no relationship to the show's tone and all the better for it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pacific

2010HBODrama

The companion piece to Band of Brothers, with charcoal drawings taking the place of the pencil sketches and Hans Zimmer taking the place of Michael Kamen.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pacific Blue

1996–2000USA NetworkCrime

Bicycle police in Santa Monica, pitched by its own network as Baywatch on bikes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pair of Kings

2010–2013Disney XDComedy

Two brothers from Chicago who inherit an island kingdom neither of them had heard of.

Seasons 1–3

1 sequence

Palm Royale

2024–Apple TV+Comedy

Late-sixties Palm Beach as a resort brochure — pastels, poolside and social climbing, all rendered with a completely straight face.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pan Am

2011–2012ABCDrama

Mad Men at altitude, cancelled after one season of very expensive period detail.

Season 1

1 sequence

Panchayat

2020–Prime VideoComedy

An engineering graduate taking a village secretary's job in Uttar Pradesh because nothing better came.

Season 1

1 sequence

Panorama

1953–BBC OneDocumentary

The longest-running current affairs programme in the world, and a theme borrowed from Rachmaninoff.

Season 30

1 sequence

Pantheon

2022–2023AMC+Animation

Uploaded human consciousnesses at war, animated and almost entirely overlooked.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Paper

2025–PeacockComedy

The Office's documentary crew turning up at a dying Ohio newspaper, twelve years after they left Scranton.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parade's End

2012BBC Two / HBODrama

Tom Stoppard adapting Ford Madox Ford across the First World War.

Season 1

1 sequence

Paranoia Agent

2004WOWOWHorror

Satoshi Kon's only television series, opened by the entire cast laughing in front of disasters.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parasyte: The Grey

2024NetflixHorror

The Iwaaki manga relocated to Korea, running alongside the Japanese continuity rather than remaking it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parker Lewis Can't Lose

1990–1993FoxComedy

Ferris Bueller as a weekly series, shot on wide lenses with a narrator who never once stops talking.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Parkers

1999–2004UPNComedy

The Moesha spin-off, with a mother and daughter enrolled at the same community college.

Season 1

1 sequence

Parks and Recreation

2009–2020NBCComedy

Pawnee's municipal signage and a brass fanfare, pitched at exactly the level of civic pride the show's protagonist has for a mid-sized Indiana town.

Seasons 1–7

1 sequence

Party of Five

1994–2000FoxDrama

Five siblings and a house, over BoDeans — an opening that establishes an absence rather than a cast.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pasión de Gavilanes

2003–2022Telemundo / CaracolDrama

Three brothers avenging their sister, and one of the most exported Colombian telenovelas.

Season 1

1 sequence

Passions

1999–2008NBCDrama

A daytime serial that ran witchcraft, a living doll and an orangutan nurse alongside the usual, and was the last new one American network daytime commissioned.

Season 1

1 sequence

Patriot

2015–2018Prime VideoDrama

An intelligence officer who processes his work by performing it as folk music, and an opening that treats that as unremarkable.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pawn Stars

2009–HistoryDocumentary

A Las Vegas pawn shop, three generations of one family, and a guy they call an expert once an episode.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peacemaker

2022–HBO MaxComedy

The entire cast dancing in formation, in costume, completely deadpan, to Wig Wam's 'Do Ya Wanna Taste It'. No plot content whatsoever, and the best argument on this site for titles as a bit.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peaky Blinders

2013–2022BBC Two / BBC OneCrime

Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand' over Birmingham furnaces and a man walking away from a fire — a period drama scored entirely out of period.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pee-wee's Playhouse

1986–1990CBSComedy

A Saturday morning show designed by artists from the New York gallery scene, with a theme sung by Cyndi Lauper under a pseudonym.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peep Show

2003–2015Channel 4Comedy

Nineteen seconds and a card, for a comedy shot almost entirely from inside its characters' heads.

Season 4

1 sequence

PEN15

2019–2021HuluComedy

Two adult women playing themselves at thirteen among actual thirteen-year-olds, opened in the register of a middle-school video project.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Penguin

2024HBOCrime

A flooded, ruined Gotham shot like a crime photograph — standing water, wet brick, no heroics anywhere in it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Penn & Teller: Fool Us

2011–ITV / The CWDocumentary

Magicians performing one trick each for two men who will say afterwards whether they worked out how it was done.

Season 1

1 sequence

Penn Zero: Part-Time Hero

2015–2017Disney XDAnimation

A part-time hero zapped into a different world every episode, each drawn in its own style.

Season 1

1 sequence

Penny Dreadful

2014–2016ShowtimeHorror

Victorian specimen jars, insects and anatomical plates, filmed with the patience of a museum catalogue and none of its detachment.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pennyworth

2019–2022Epix / HBO MaxDrama

Alfred as a young SAS veteran in an alternative 1960s London, which is a stranger idea than the Batman it leads to.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peppa Pig

2004–Channel 5Animation

A preschool series drawn in flat two dimensions and sold to a hundred and eighty countries, which is more than almost anything else British television has made.

Season 1

2 sequences

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

2023–Disney+Sci-Fi

The novels adapted with their author involved, and titles that run at the end of the episode rather than the start.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

The Perfect Couple

2024NetflixCrime

The cast dancing on a Nantucket lawn in wedding clothes, entirely straight-faced — a tonal misdirection the series never repeats.

Season 1

1 sequence

Perfect Strangers

1986–1993ABCComedy

'Nothing's Gonna Stop Me Now' over Chicago — one of the decade's most earnest sitcom themes attached to one of its silliest premises.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Peripheral

2022Prime VideoSci-Fi

William Gibson adapted across two futures, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Perry Mason

2020–2023HBOCrime

Depression-era Los Angeles rendered in ink and light leaks, over in twenty-one seconds — a deliberately curt opening for a show about a very slow investigation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Perry Mason (1957)

1957–1966CBSCrime

'Park Avenue Beat' — a jazz chart with a walking bass, over a courtroom drama that ran for nine years on almost nothing else.

Season 1

1 sequence

Person of Interest

2011–2016CBSSci-Fi

Surveillance footage narrated by the machine watching it — an opening delivered from the point of view of the software, years before that was a common idea.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Persuaders!

1971–1972ITVDrama

Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as bickering millionaires, opened by John Barry's most-covered television theme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Petticoat Junction

1963–1970CBSComedy

The Shady Rest Hotel, sharing a universe with Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies.

Season 1

1 sequence

Peyton Place

1964–1969ABCDrama

The primetime serial that proved American networks could run a soap after dark, twice a week.

Season 1

1 sequence

Phil of the Future

2004–2006Disney ChannelSci-Fi

A family from 2121 stranded in the present when their time machine breaks.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Phil Silvers Show

1955–1959CBSComedy

A military march for a sergeant running every racket on the base — the ancestor of every workplace comedy about a charming fraud.

Season 1

1 sequence

Phineas and Ferb

2007–2015Disney ChannelAnimation

A theme that lists everything the characters intend to build over the summer, at a tempo that leaves no room to breathe.

Season 1

1 sequence

Picket Fences

1992–1996CBSDrama

Small-town Wisconsin filmed as pastoral before every episode demonstrates it is anything but.

Season 2

1 sequence

Pickle and Peanut

2015–2018Disney XDAnimation

A pickle and a peanut, animated over photographed backgrounds and stock imagery.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pie in the Sky

1994–1997BBC OneCrime

A detective who would rather run his restaurant, and is not allowed to retire from either.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pigeon Street

1981BBC OneAnimation

A street of neighbours introduced one at a time, including a long-distance lorry driver called Long Distance Clara.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pillars of the Earth

2010StarzDrama

Ken Follett's cathedral built across eight hours of twelfth-century England.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ping Pong the Animation

2014Fuji TVAnimation

Masaaki Yuasa drawing table tennis in a line nobody else would have approved.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pingu

1986–2006SF DRSAnimation

A Swiss claymation penguin speaking an invented language, so it needed no dubbing to sell anywhere.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pinky and the Brain

1995–1998The WBAnimation

A theme that explains the premise as a call and response, ending on the same question every week and never answering it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pinocchio

2014–2015SBSDrama

A reporter who hiccups when she lies, in a drama about what television news does to the people in it.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pitt

2025–HBO MaxDrama

A deliberate homage to ER's titles — the same rhythm, the same institutional blue — for a series that runs one shift in real time.

Season 1

1 sequence

PJ Masks

2015–2024Disney JuniorAnimation

Three children who become animal-themed heroes at night, from the French picture books.

Season 1

1 sequence

The PJs

1999–2001Fox / The WBAnimation

Eddie Murphy's stop-motion housing-project comedy, animated in foam rather than drawn.

Seasons 1–2

1 sequence

A Place in the Sun

2000–Channel 4Documentary

British buyers shown three houses abroad, running daily for a quarter of a century.

Season 1

1 sequence

Planet Earth

2006BBC OneDocumentary

George Fenton's orchestral swell over the planet from orbit — twenty-nine seconds that set the house style for every natural history series since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Platonic

2023–Apple TV+Comedy

Hand-lettered titles over Los Angeles in the afternoon, keeping the show's register exactly: pleasant, and slightly off.

Season 1

1 sequence

Playhouse 90

1956–1960CBSDrama

Ninety minutes of live original drama every week, and the anthology from which Rod Serling, John Frankenheimer and most of the era's writers emerged.

Season 1

1 sequence

Please Like Me

2013–2016ABC2Comedy

An Australian comedy that rewrites its opening for every episode — a different song, a different set of images, in a show otherwise built on stillness.

Season 1

1 sequence

Plebs

2013–2022ITV2Comedy

Ancient Rome played as a flatshare, with the empire happening somewhere off to one side.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Plot Against America

2020HBODrama

David Simon's Roth adaptation, opened by American stamps and postmarks turning quietly wrong.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pluribus

2025–Apple TV+Sci-Fi

Vince Gilligan's first series after Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, opened in twenty-one seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pocoyo

2005–2010La 2 / CITVAnimation

A Spanish preschool series played out on plain white, with no scenery at all to compete with the four-year-old and the narrator who argues with him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Point Pleasant

2005FoxHorror

The devil's daughter washed up in a New Jersey beach town, from the Buffy writers' room.

Season 1

2 sequences

Pokémon

1997–TV TokyoAnimation

The longest-running video-game adaptation on television, and a theme song that outlasted every cast change.

Season 1
Season 5

1 sequence

Poker Face

2023–PeacockCrime

Seventies title design executed exactly, for a case-of-the-week mystery deliberately built on the Columbo model.

Season 1

1 sequence

Poldark (2015)

2015–2019BBC OneDrama

Winston Graham's Cornish captain home from the American war to find his father dead and his fiancée engaged to his cousin.

Season 1

1 sequence

Police Squad!

1982ABCComedy

Six episodes of the Airplane! team's deadpan, cancelled on the grounds that watching it required looking at it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Poltergeist: The Legacy

1996–1999Showtime / Sci-Fi ChannelHorror

A secret society investigating the supernatural from a San Francisco island house.

Season 1

1 sequence

Popee the Performer

2000–2001Kids StationAnimation

A circus in the desert, animated in early CGI and far more violent than its length suggests.

Season 1

1 sequence

Porridge

1974–1977BBC OneComedy

Ronnie Barker inside HMP Slade, opened by a judge's sentencing read over the prison gates.

Season 1

1 sequence

Port Charles

1997–2003ABCDrama

The General Hospital spin-off that later restructured itself into thirteen-week arcs with an ending each — the closest American daytime came to a limited series.

Season 1

1 sequence

Portlandia

2011–2018IFCComedy

Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein on a city that is mostly an attitude, with a theme they wrote and perform themselves.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pose

2018–2021FXDrama

Ballroom culture rendered in gold and satin, with the house names given the billing a network usually reserves for stars.

Season 1

1 sequence

Postman Pat

1981–2017BBC OneAnimation

A rural postman and his black and white cat, stop-motion, with a theme everyone in Britain can finish.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power

2014–2020StarzCrime

A New York club owner running a drug network behind it, and the franchise Starz built out of him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Book III: Raising Kanan

2021–2026StarzCrime

The Power universe wound back to 1991 Queens, following the character the first series had already killed.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Beast Morphers

2019NickelodeonSci-Fi

Animal DNA and Grid energy, and the first season made after Hasbro bought the franchise.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Cosmic Fury

2023NetflixSci-Fi

The thirtieth season, and the first made for streaming rather than a children's channel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Dino Charge

2015–2016NickelodeonSci-Fi

Energems and dinosaur spirits, and the season that ran two years under one name.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Dino Fury

2021–2022NickelodeonSci-Fi

Dinosaur rangers again, sixteen years on, with the first deaf ranger in the franchise.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Dino Thunder

2004ABC FamilySci-Fi

The season that brought the original green ranger back as a palaeontology teacher.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers in Space

1998Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season written as an ending, which rated well enough that the franchise carried on for decades.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Jungle Fury

2008Toon DisneySci-Fi

Kung fu students who take animal spirits, working out of a pizza parlour.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue

2000Fox KidsSci-Fi

A season whose rangers are a government rescue service rather than teenagers chosen by a wizard.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Lost Galaxy

1999Fox KidsSci-Fi

The first season to break the format and start again with a wholly separate cast and setting.

Season 1

2 sequences

Power Rangers Megaforce

2013NickelodeonSci-Fi

The twentieth-anniversary season, built to reach back through the whole franchise.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Power Rangers Mystic Force

2006Toon DisneySci-Fi

The magic season, with wands instead of morphers and a mother among the rangers.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Ninja Storm

2003ABC FamilySci-Fi

The season after Fox Kids closed, made in New Zealand and pitched lighter than the ones before it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Operation Overdrive

2007Toon DisneySci-Fi

Treasure hunting across continents, and the first season to put the rangers on a payroll.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers RPM

2009ABC FamilySci-Fi

The season set after the robots won, played as comedy inside a domed last city.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers S.P.D.

2005ABC Family / Toon DisneySci-Fi

The franchise's police year, rebuilt from Tokusou Sentai Dekaranger and set two decades ahead of the children watching it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Time Force

2001Fox KidsSci-Fi

Rangers sent back from the year 3000, remade from Mirai Sentai Timeranger.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Turbo

1997Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season that started with a feature film and handed four of the five suits to a new cast mid-run.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Wild Force

2002Fox KidsSci-Fi

The tenth Power Rangers year, remade from Hyakujuu Sentai Gaoranger and the last of them produced in America for a decade.

Season 1

1 sequence

Power Rangers Zeo

1996Fox KidsSci-Fi

The season straight after Mighty Morphin, remade from Chouriki Sentai Ohranger.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Powerpuff Girls

1998–2005Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Narrated origin, sugar, spice and everything nice — a premise delivered in one sentence over sixties-modern graphic design.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Practice

1997–2004ABCDrama

Boston law offices in grey and brown, from the producer who would spin this off into Boston Legal and lighten it considerably.

Season 1

1 sequence

Preacher

2016–2019AMCDrama

The Ennis and Dillon comic adapted with its worst instincts intact.

Season 1

1 sequence

Prehistoric Planet

2022–2023Apple TV+Documentary

Attenborough narrating the Cretaceous as though a camera crew had been there, with a title sequence to match.

Season 1

1 sequence

Press Gang

1989–1993ITVDrama

A school newspaper written by Steven Moffat, which is why the dialogue is faster than the format.

Season 1

1 sequence

Press Your Luck

1983–1986CBSDocumentary

A quiz built around a board that could take everything back, and a contestant who memorised its patterns.

Season 1

1 sequence

Presumed Innocent

2024–Apple TV+Crime

Evidence photographs and courtroom stone, shot cold enough that guilt and innocence look identical.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Pretender

1996–2000NBCDrama

A man raised in a laboratory who can become any professional he reads about, running from the people who made him.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pretty Little Liars

2010–2017FreeformDrama

Four girls shushing the camera over a coffin — twenty-two seconds that state the entire premise and the entire threat.

Season 1

1 sequence

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

2022–2024HBO MaxHorror

The Pretty Little Liars premise remade as a slasher, with a title sequence that finally commits to the genre.

Season 1

2 sequences

The Price Is Right

1972–CBSDocumentary

"Come on down" — the longest-running game show in American television, opening the same way for fifty years.

Season 1
Season 36

1 sequence

Pride and Prejudice

1995BBC OneDrama

Carl Davis's theme over needlework and a country lane — the adaptation against which every subsequent Austen has been measured.

Season 1

1 sequence

Primal

2019–2024Adult Swim / MaxAnimation

Twenty seconds of charcoal and blood, with no dialogue anywhere in it — which is also true of most of the series.

Season 1

1 sequence

Prime Suspect

1991–2006ITVCrime

Stephen Warbeck's theme over London at night — spare, cold, and entirely without the reassurance the genre usually offers.

Season 1

1 sequence

Primeval

2007–2011ITVSci-Fi

Anomalies in time opening across England and letting prehistory through, in ITV's answer to the revived Doctor Who.

Season 3

1 sequence

Prison Break

2005–2017FoxDrama

Blueprints and tattoo ink treated as the same document — which, for this show's premise, they are.

Season 1

1 sequence

Prison Playbook

2017–2018tvNComedy

A baseball pitcher jailed weeks before signing for the major leagues, and the wing he ends up in.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Prisoner

1967–1968ITVSci-Fi

Thunder, a Lotus Seven driven hard past Parliament, a resignation letter slammed onto a desk, and then gas under the door of a man's own flat. Two minutes that explain the entire premise without a narrator, and end with the only line the show ever needed: I am not a number.