R
The letter R accounts for 113 of the 2,618 shows here, with 119 opening title sequences from 1953 to the present.
23 of them are filed here rather than under their first word, because an index ignores a leading "The" or "A" — The Rookie, The Righteous Gemstones and The Residence among them.
Five rebuilt their opening titles mid-run, Robotech most of all with three sequences.
113 shows119 sequences
1 sequence
Rabbit Hole
Kiefer Sutherland as a corporate spy framed for murder, opened in sixteen seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Rain
A virus carried in rainfall, and two siblings crossing a depopulated Scandinavia.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Rainbow
Zippy, George and Bungle, and a theme about a paintbox in the sky that ran for twenty years.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Rainbow Brite
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
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
A young father raising a baby with his own parents' help, from the My Name Is Earl creator.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRake
Sydney and a barrister who is his own worst client, opened with rather more restraint than he ever manages.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRamy
Ramy Youssef's series about a first-generation Egyptian American trying to be a good Muslim, opened in nine seconds flat.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
A private investigator and his dead partner, who only he can see, in a white suit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRandy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja
A ninth-grader handed an eight-hundred-year-old ninja suit and no instructions.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRanking of Kings
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
The film continued in hand-drawn animation, which the feature never was.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Ratched
Mid-century clinical design turned lurid — surgical steel, pastel tile and hypodermics arranged with the care of a fashion shoot.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRawhide
A cattle drive that never arrives, with Frankie Laine's theme and a young Clint Eastwood.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Ray Bradbury Theater
Bradbury adapting himself, introduced each week from an office full of the objects the stories came from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRay Donovan
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
A boy who restarts from a save point every time he dies, and remembers all of it.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Reacher
Lee Child's drifter, adapted at the scale the books describe rather than the one previous adaptations settled for.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Reading Rainbow
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!
"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
The 1964 Hanna-Barbera series rebuilt for the nineties, with early CG sequences inside it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Real Ghostbusters
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
Household androids in a Sweden otherwise exactly like this one, remade in Britain as Humans.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Real World
"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
Reba McEntire as a Houston mother holding a divorce together, with a theme she sings herself.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReBoot
The first television series animated entirely by computer, and set inside one.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRecess
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
A model trying to become an actor before his military service, against everyone's advice.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRectify
Rural Georgia at a pace matching the series — a man released after nineteen years, and titles that refuse to hurry him.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Red Dwarf
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
A lodge of middle-aged Canadian men and the duct tape with which they solve everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Red River
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
A New Jersey policeman and a Ramapough man held together by what each knows about the other.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRedwall
Brian Jacques' abbey mice animated in Canada, with the villains drawn considerably better than the heroes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Regime
Palace portraiture and state iconography assembled into propaganda for a country that does not exist.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRegular Show
A blue jay and a raccoon employed as groundskeepers, opened with a synth sting and almost no information.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rehearsal
Constructed sets and blueprints presented with total sincerity, which is the only register the show ever uses.
- Season 2
1 sequenceReign
Mary, Queen of Scots at the French court, with a deliberately anachronistic soundtrack.
- Season 2
1 sequenceReilly, Ace of Spies
Sidney Reilly across twelve parts, and the serial that gave Sam Neill his first lead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRelic Hunter
Tia Carrere as a professor recovering antiquities, in the syndication boom that followed Xena.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRellik
A murder investigation told backwards — the title is killer reversed, and so is the series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRemington Steele
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
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
A framed policeman on a motorcycle, made for syndication by the people who made The A-Team.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRentaghost
An agency staffed entirely by ghosts, which is a sitcom premise and a title sequence at the same time.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Replacements
Two orphans with a phone number that replaces any adult in their lives.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1988
Five families in one Seoul alley in 1988, and the most loved of the Reply series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1994
A Seoul boarding house of students up from the provinces, and the second of the three Reply series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceReply 1997
Busan schoolfriends and first-generation fandom, told from a reunion looking back.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRepublic of Doyle
A father-and-son detective agency in St. John's, Newfoundland.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRequiem
A cellist in a Welsh village that remembers a disappearance she does not.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRescue Me
New York firefighters after 2001, introduced without a single heroic frame in it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Residence
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
An alien stranded in small-town Colorado, impersonating the doctor whose body he took.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Restaurant
A Stockholm restaurant family from 1945 onwards. Vår tid är nu at home — "our time is now".
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Returned
The dead walking back into an Alpine town as though nothing happened, opened by Mogwai over a collapsing dam.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRevenge
The Count of Monte Cristo relocated to the Hamptons.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRevolution
Fifteen years after all electricity stopped working, from Eric Kripke and J. J. Abrams.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRhoda
The first Mary Tyler Moore spin-off, following Rhoda Morgenstern back to New York.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Rick and Morty
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
A widowed rancher and his son, opened by twelve rounds fired down a street in under ten seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Righteous Gemstones
Eleven seconds of gold-plated megachurch branding, delivered with exactly the sincerity the family would want.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRipper Street
Whitechapel in the years after the murders, policed by men the murders made famous.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiptide
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
The turtles redrawn in a hand-animated style closer to a comic than the CG series before it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRising Damp
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
The isekai hero given the defensive weapon and none of the credit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRita
A Danish schoolteacher who is very good at her job and bad at everything else.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiver Monsters
A biologist catching freshwater fish large enough to account for the local legends about them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRiverdale
Archie comics restaged as neon-lit noir, with the town's diner shot like a crime scene.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Riviera
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
A Boston detective and a medical examiner, from the Tess Gerritsen novels.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoad Rovers
Domestic dogs from six countries turned into a superhero team by a scientist who does not explain much.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Road to Avonlea
Montgomery's Prince Edward Island stories, made by the CBC with Disney paying half the bill.
- Season 1
- Season 5
1 sequenceRobin of Sherwood
The Robin Hood that put a horned god behind the legend, scored throughout by Clannad.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRobin's Nest
The second Man About the House spin-off, with Robin running a bistro in Fulham.
- Season 2
1 sequenceRobot Chicken
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
Twenty-one seconds of sparks and industrial metal, for a programme in which people destroyed their own hardware for sport.
- Seasons 1–4
3 sequences
Robotech
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
A Baltimore refuse collector and his family, and a season shot live to air on purpose.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRocket Boys
Homi Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai building India's nuclear and space programmes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRocket Power
Four children in a California beach town who do every extreme sport in sequence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Rockford Files
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
An Australian wallaby in O-Town, written for children with as much as possible smuggled past them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoger Ramjet
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
A world of robots built entirely out of spheres and cylinders, computer-animated in Toronto.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRome
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
A franchised preschool programme licensed to local stations, each with its own hostess and the same magic mirror.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoobarb
Felt-tip animation that boils and shimmers because it was drawn one frame at a time and never traced twice.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Rookie
A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRookie Blue
Five recruits out of the academy in Toronto, made as a summer series for two countries at once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoots
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
Three's Company's landlords given their own series, from the British spin-off George and Mildred.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Roseanne
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
Two gardeners who keep finding bodies in the borders they have been hired to replant.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRosewood
A private pathologist in Miami working the cases the police have already closed.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRosie and Jim
Two rag dolls on a narrowboat who come alive when the adult is not looking.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoswell
Dido over a New Mexico desert, for a series that treats an alien conspiracy as primarily a problem of adolescence.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRound the Twist
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
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
A radio sketch troupe of twenty years' standing moved to television, and kept there for fifteen more.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Royal Family
Redd Foxx and Della Reese as a couple whose children move back in, and the series Foxx died making.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRoyal Pains
A concierge doctor in the Hamptons, in the middle of USA's blue-sky decade.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRubicon
An intelligence analyst finding a pattern nobody wants found, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRugrats
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
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
Two people who agreed years ago that either could send one word and the other would drop everything.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRunaways
Six teenagers who discover their parents are a supervillain cabal, from the Brian K. Vaughan comic.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRuPaul's Drag Race
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
Returning queens competing again, in the spin-off that handed the eliminations to the contestants.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRussian Doll
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
Rendell adapted for thirteen years, mostly as Wexford and occasionally as the standalone novels.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRyan's Hope
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