R
116 shows122 sequences
1 sequenceRabbit Hole
2023Paramount+Drama
Kiefer Sutherland as a corporate spy framed for murder, opened in sixteen seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rain
2018–2020Netflix (Denmark)Sci-Fi
A virus carried in rainfall, and two siblings crossing a depopulated Scandinavia.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRainbow
1972–1992ITVComedy
Zippy, George and Bungle, and a theme about a paintbox in the sky that ran for twenty years.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRainbow Brite
1984–1986SyndicationAnimation
A Hallmark character licensed into a cartoon, in the era when the toy came first and the series followed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRaised by Wolves
2020–2022HBO MaxSci-Fi
Androids, soil and bone rendered in the same clinical grey — a sequence with no warmth in it at all, for a show about parenting.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRaising Hope
2010–2014FoxComedy
A young father raising a baby with his own parents' help, from the My Name Is Earl creator.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRake
2010–2018ABCComedy
Sydney and a barrister who is his own worst client, opened with rather more restraint than he ever manages.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRamy
2019–2022HuluComedy
Ramy Youssef's series about a first-generation Egyptian American trying to be a good Muslim, opened in nine seconds flat.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRandall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
1969–1970ITVCrime
A private investigator and his dead partner, who only he can see, in a white suit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRandy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja
2012–2015Disney XDAnimation
A ninth-grader handed an eight-hundred-year-old ninja suit and no instructions.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRanking of Kings
2021–2022Fuji TVAnimation
A deaf prince who cannot lift a sword, in a picture-book style that hides how hard the series hits.
- Season 2
1 sequenceRapunzel's Tangled Adventure
2017–2020Disney ChannelAnimation
The film continued in hand-drawn animation, which the feature never was.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRatched
2020NetflixHorror
Mid-century clinical design turned lurid — surgical steel, pastel tile and hypodermics arranged with the care of a fashion shoot.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRawhide
1959–1965CBSDrama
A cattle drive that never arrives, with Frankie Laine's theme and a young Clint Eastwood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ray Bradbury Theater
1985–1992HBO / USA NetworkSci-Fi
Bradbury adapting himself, introduced each week from an office full of the objects the stories came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRay Donovan
2013–2020ShowtimeCrime
Los Angeles at street level — a fixer's city, shot from the driver's seat rather than the hills.
- Season 4
1 sequenceRe:Zero − Starting Life in Another World
2016–TV TokyoAnimation
A boy who restarts from a save point every time he dies, and remembers all of it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReacher
2022–Prime VideoCrime
Lee Child's drifter, adapted at the scale the books describe rather than the one previous adaptations settled for.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReading Rainbow
1983–2006PBSDocumentary
LeVar Burton reading to children for twenty-three years, and "but you don't have to take my word for it".
- Season 1
1 sequenceReady Steady Go!
1963–1966ITVDocumentary
"The weekend starts here" — the British pop programme that put the Beatles, the Stones and Motown on the same stage.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Real Adventures of Jonny Quest
1996–1999Cartoon NetworkAnimation
The 1964 Hanna-Barbera series rebuilt for the nineties, with early CG sequences inside it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Real Ghostbusters
1986–1991ABCAnimation
The film continued as a cartoon, keeping the theme and adding Real to the title because another studio already had the name.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReal Humans
2012–2014SVT1Sci-Fi
Household androids in a Sweden otherwise exactly like this one, remade in Britain as Humans.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Real World
1992–2019MTVDocumentary
"This is the true story of seven strangers" — the narration that invented the reality format, and the one every parody since has copied.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReba
2001–2007The WB / The CWComedy
Reba McEntire as a Houston mother holding a divorce together, with a theme she sings herself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReBoot
1994–2001YTVAnimation
The first television series animated entirely by computer, and set inside one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRecess
1997–2001ABCAnimation
A brass march over a school playground treated as a sovereign state, which is exactly how the series plays it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRecord of Youth
2020tvNDrama
A model trying to become an actor before his military service, against everyone's advice.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRectify
2013–2016SundanceTVDrama
Rural Georgia at a pace matching the series — a man released after nineteen years, and titles that refuse to hurry him.
- Season 1
2 sequencesRed Dwarf
1988–BBC Two / DaveComedy
The last human alive, three million years from Earth, introduced with a mining ship the size of a city and a theme sung over the end of it.
- Season 1
- Season 10
1 sequenceThe Red Green Show
1991–2006CHCH-TV / CBCComedy
A lodge of middle-aged Canadian men and the duct tape with which they solve everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Red River
2021–2023OPENDrama
A Greek period drama on the Asia Minor catastrophe and the generation displaced by it. Original title Το κόκκινο ποτάμι.
- Season 2
1 sequenceThe Red Road
2014–2015SundanceTVDrama
A New Jersey policeman and a Ramapough man held together by what each knows about the other.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRedwall
1999–2002TeletoonAnimation
Brian Jacques' abbey mice animated in Canada, with the villains drawn considerably better than the heroes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Regime
2024HBODrama
Palace portraiture and state iconography assembled into propaganda for a country that does not exist.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRegular Show
2010–2017Cartoon NetworkAnimation
A blue jay and a raccoon employed as groundskeepers, opened with a synth sting and almost no information.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rehearsal
2022–HBOComedy
Constructed sets and blueprints presented with total sincerity, which is the only register the show ever uses.
- Season 2
1 sequenceReign
2013–2017The CWDrama
Mary, Queen of Scots at the French court, with a deliberately anachronistic soundtrack.
- Season 2
1 sequenceReilly, Ace of Spies
1983ITVDrama
Sidney Reilly across twelve parts, and the serial that gave Sam Neill his first lead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRelic Hunter
1999–2002SyndicationDrama
Tia Carrere as a professor recovering antiquities, in the syndication boom that followed Xena.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRellik
2017BBC OneCrime
A murder investigation told backwards — the title is killer reversed, and so is the series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRemington Steele
1982–1987NBCCrime
A narrated premise about a detective agency with an invented boss, delivered by the woman who invented him.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ren & Stimpy Show
1991–1996NickelodeonAnimation
Rubber-limbed animation and a jaunty theme, both of which are considerably more unhinged than a children's network should have permitted.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRenegade
1992–1997Syndication / USA NetworkCrime
A framed policeman on a motorcycle, made for syndication by the people who made The A-Team.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRentaghost
1976–1984BBC OneComedy
An agency staffed entirely by ghosts, which is a sitcom premise and a title sequence at the same time.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Replacements
2006–2009Disney ChannelAnimation
Two orphans with a phone number that replaces any adult in their lives.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1988
2015–2016tvNDrama
Five families in one Seoul alley in 1988, and the most loved of the Reply series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1994
2013tvNDrama
A Seoul boarding house of students up from the provinces, and the second of the three Reply series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1997
2012tvNDrama
Busan schoolfriends and first-generation fandom, told from a reunion looking back.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRepublic of Doyle
2010–2014CBCCrime
A father-and-son detective agency in St. John's, Newfoundland.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRequiem
2018BBC OneHorror
A cellist in a Welsh village that remembers a disappearance she does not.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRescue Me
2004–2011FXDrama
New York firefighters after 2001, introduced without a single heroic frame in it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Residence
2025NetflixCrime
The White House drawn as a cutaway doll's house, every room a suspect — a whodunnit that hands you the floor plan first.
- Season 1
1 sequenceResident Alien
2021–SyfySci-Fi
An alien stranded in small-town Colorado, impersonating the doctor whose body he took.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Restaurant
2017–2021SVT (Sweden)Drama
A Stockholm restaurant family from 1945 onwards. Vår tid är nu at home — "our time is now".
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Returned
2012–2015Canal+Horror
The dead walking back into an Alpine town as though nothing happened, opened by Mogwai over a collapsing dam.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRevenge
2011–2015ABCDrama
The Count of Monte Cristo relocated to the Hamptons.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRevolution
2012–2014NBCSci-Fi
Fifteen years after all electricity stopped working, from Eric Kripke and J. J. Abrams.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRhoda
1974–1978CBSComedy
The first Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, following Rhoda Morgenstern back to New York.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRick and Morty
2013–Adult SwimAnimation
A montage of adventures that mostly never happened, re-cut every season out of clips from episodes that do not exist.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rifleman
1958–1963ABCDrama
A widowed rancher and his son, opened by twelve rounds fired down a street in under ten seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Righteous Gemstones
2019–2025HBOComedy
Eleven seconds of gold-plated megachurch branding, delivered with exactly the sincerity the family would want.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRinger
2011–2012The CWDrama
A woman who takes over her twin sister's identity and finds it is worse than the one she left.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRipper Street
2012–2016BBC One / Prime VideoCrime
Whitechapel in the years after the murders, policed by men the murders made famous.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiptide
1984–1986NBCCrime
Two Vietnam veterans running a detective agency from a boat, with a helicopter called the Screaming Mimi.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
2018–2020NickelodeonAnimation
The turtles redrawn in a hand-animated style closer to a comic than the CG series before it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRising Damp
1974–1978ITVComedy
Leonard Rossiter as a boarding-house landlord, and the most successful ITV sitcom of the seventies.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rising of the Shield Hero
2019–Tokyo MXAnimation
The isekai hero given the defensive weapon and none of the credit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRita
2012–2020TV 2Comedy
A Danish schoolteacher who is very good at her job and bad at everything else.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiver Monsters
2009–2017Animal PlanetDocumentary
A biologist catching freshwater fish large enough to account for the local legends about them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiverdale
2017–2023The CWDrama
Archie comics restaged as neon-lit noir, with the town's diner shot like a crime scene.
- Season 1
2 sequencesRiviera
2017–2020Sky AtlanticDrama
A widow discovering what her husband's money was, retitled between seasons as the show moved away from the coast it is named for.
- Season 1
- Season 3
1 sequenceRizzoli & Isles
2010–2016TNTCrime
A Boston detective and a medical examiner, from the Tess Gerritsen novels.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoad Rovers
1996–1997Kids' WBAnimation
Domestic dogs from six countries turned into a superhero team by a scientist who does not explain much.
- Season 1
2 sequencesRoad to Avonlea
1990–1996CBCDrama
Montgomery's Prince Edward Island stories, made by the CBC with Disney paying half the bill.
- Season 1
- Season 5
1 sequenceRobin of Sherwood
1984–1986ITVDrama
The Robin Hood that put a horned god behind the legend, scored throughout by Clannad.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRobin's Nest
1977–1981ITVComedy
The second Man About the House spin-off, with Robin running a bistro in Fulham.
- Season 2
1 sequenceRobot Chicken
2005–Adult SwimAnimation
A chicken reanimated with machinery and forced to watch television, which is the show's premise and its title sequence at once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRobot Wars
1998–2018BBC TwoDocumentary
Twenty-one seconds of sparks and industrial metal, for a programme in which people destroyed their own hardware for sport.
- Seasons 1–4
3 sequencesRobotech
1985SyndicationAnimation
Three unrelated Japanese series cut together into one American saga, and the opening is where the seam shows: the same theme and the same establishing pan every week, then a different logo card and a different war.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceRoc
1991–1994FoxComedy
A Baltimore refuse collector and his family, and a season shot live to air on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRocket Boys
2022–2023SonyLIVDrama
Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai building India's nuclear and space programmes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRocket Power
1999–2004NickelodeonAnimation
Four children in a California beach town who do every extreme sport in sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rockford Files
1974–1980NBCCrime
A telephone rings, an answering machine picks up, and a stranger leaves a message that is usually bad news and occasionally a joke at Rockford's expense. Then the theme starts. The private detective is introduced by the people avoiding him.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequenceRocko's Modern Life
1993–1996NickelodeonAnimation
An Australian wallaby in O-Town, written for children with as much as possible smuggled past them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoger Ramjet
1965–1969SyndicationAnimation
A five-minute cartoon about a pilot who takes a pill for twenty seconds of super strength, drawn as cheaply as that sounds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRolie Polie Olie
1998–2004CBC / Playhouse DisneyAnimation
A world of robots built entirely out of spheres and cylinders, computer-animated in Toronto.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRome
2005–2007HBODrama
Graffiti coming alive on Roman walls — painted figures fighting, coupling and marching across plaster while the camera tracks past. The city's own scrawl doing the work a montage usually does.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceRomper Room
1953–1994SyndicationComedy
A franchised preschool programme licensed to local stations, each with its own hostess and the same magic mirror.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoobarb
1974BBC OneAnimation
Felt-tip animation that boils and shimmers because it was drawn one frame at a time and never traced twice.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rookie
2018–ABCCrime
Los Angeles patrol work, opened with the network-procedural confidence the format has run on since Hill Street Blues.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRookie Blue
2010–2015Global / ABCCrime
Five recruits out of the academy in Toronto, made as a summer series for two countries at once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoots
1977ABCDrama
The miniseries that changed what American television believed it was allowed to broadcast, opened with Quincy Jones and a slave ship.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ropers
1979–1980ABCComedy
Three's Company's landlords given their own series, from the British spin-off George and Mildred.
- Season 1
2 sequencesRoseanne
1988–2018ABCComedy
A family at a kitchen table, laughing at something you cannot hear, rebuilt for every season across twenty years and a thirty-year gap.
- Season 1
- Season 10
1 sequenceRosemary & Thyme
2003–2007ITVCrime
Two gardeners who keep finding bodies in the borders they have been hired to replant.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRosewood
2015–2017FoxCrime
A private pathologist in Miami working the cases the police have already closed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRosie and Jim
1990–2000ITVComedy
Two rag dolls on a narrowboat who come alive when the adult is not looking.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoswell
1999–2002The WB / UPNSci-Fi
Dido over a New Mexico desert, for a series that treats an alien conspiracy as primarily a problem of adolescence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRotten
2018–2019NetflixDocumentary
The food supply chain taken apart one commodity at a time, in seventeen seconds of things going bad.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRound the Twist
1989–2001ABC / Seven NetworkComedy
An Australian children's series set in a lighthouse, with a theme song that asks whether strange things ever happen to you.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRowan & Martin's Laugh-In
1967–1973NBCComedy
Psychedelic panels opening onto one-liners, cut faster than anything else on 1960s television and directly responsible for the pacing of sketch comedy since.
- Season 3
1 sequenceRoyal Canadian Air Farce
1993–2008CBCComedy
A radio sketch troupe of twenty years' standing moved to television, and kept there for fifteen more.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Royal Family
1991–1992CBSComedy
Redd Foxx and Della Reese as a couple whose children move back in, and the series Foxx died making.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoyal Pains
2009–2016USA NetworkComedy
A concierge doctor in the Hamptons, in the middle of USA's blue-sky decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Royals
2015–2018E!Drama
An invented British royal family behaving badly, on a channel that had spent a decade filming real ones.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRubicon
2010AMCDrama
An intelligence analyst finding a pattern nobody wants found, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRugrats
1991–2004NickelodeonAnimation
Mark Mothersbaugh scoring a baby's-eye view of a living room — the theme is closer to a Devo B-side than to children's television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRules of Engagement
2007–2013CBSComedy
Two couples at opposite ends of a relationship and one man at neither, in the sitcom CBS used for years as a gap-filler.
- Season 3
1 sequenceRun
2020HBO / Sky ComedyComedy
Two people who agreed years ago that either could send one word and the other would drop everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRunaways
2017–2019HuluSci-Fi
Six teenagers who discover their parents are a supervillain cabal, from the Brian K. Vaughan comic.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRuPaul's Drag Race
2009–Logo / VH1 / MTVDocumentary
Eighteen seconds that get remade every season — new logo treatment, new track, new set of queens.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRuPaul's Drag Race All Stars
2012–2016Logo TVDocumentary
Returning queens competing again, in the spin-off that handed the eliminations to the contestants.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRussian Doll
2019–2022NetflixDrama
Twenty-eight seconds, which is all a show about the same night repeating needs. The joke is that you will see it many more times than the episode count suggests.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ruth Rendell Mysteries
1987–2000ITVCrime
Rendell adapted for thirteen years, mostly as Wexford and occasionally as the standalone novels.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRyan's Hope
1975–1989ABCDrama
An Irish-American family running a bar near a Manhattan hospital, in a serial set in a real neighbourhood rather than an invented town.
- Season 1