T
The letter T accounts for 136 of the 2,618 shows here, with 147 opening title sequences from 1950 to the present.
Two of them are filed here rather than under their first word, because an index ignores a leading "The" or "A" — A Touch of Frost and A to Z.
Eight rebuilt their opening titles mid-run, True Detective most of all with four sequences.
136 shows147 sequences
1 sequenceT. J. Hooker
William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.
- Season 1
1 sequenceT.U.F.F. Puppy
A dog secret agent, from the creator of The Fairly OddParents.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTaken
Spielberg's twenty-hour abduction serial, following three families over fifty years and broadcast across ten consecutive nights.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTakeshi's Castle
A hundred contestants a week storming a fortress, and the origin of every obstacle-course format that came after it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTales from the Crypt
A crawl through a derelict house towards a coffin, which opens — Danny Elfman's theme, and a host who was a puppet.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTales from the Darkside
George Romero's anthology, opened by pastoral countryside that turns to negative while a narrator explains why.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTales of the City
Armistead Maupin's Barbary Lane, returned to thirty years after the first adaptation.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTales of the Unexpected
A dancing silhouette, a spinning roulette wheel and Ron Grainer's theme — an anthology opening far more unsettling than most of the stories that follow it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTask
An FBI task force in the Philadelphia suburbs, from the writer of Mare of Easttown.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTaskmaster
A bust of the host's head and a fanfare, in the register of a much grander programme than the one that follows.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills
Four teenagers given powers by an alien tattoo, in a title that explains the whole programme.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTaxi
A single cab crossing the Queensboro Bridge to Bob James's electric piano — no cast, no jokes, and an unusually melancholy opening for a comedy.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTaxi Driver
A taxi company that takes revenge on behalf of crime victims, from the webtoon.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTeachers
A Bristol comprehensive from the staff room's side, with Andrew Lincoln before The Walking Dead.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Team
A Europol task force built out of three countries' police, and shot in all three languages.
- Season 2
1 sequenceTed
The talking bear from the films as a 1990s teen sitcom, with everyone recast younger.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTed Lasso
Twenty-two seconds of Richmond's own stadium seats, photographed close and covered in fan graffiti, over a brass hook — brisk, warm, and gone before it can outstay itself.
- Season 2
1 sequenceTeen Titans
A J-pop theme by Puffy AmiYumi, recorded in both Japanese and English and alternated between episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTeen Wolf
Transformation rendered as anatomy — claws, teeth and eyes, in a sequence rebuilt several times across six seasons.
- Season 6
1 sequenceTeenage Euthanasia
A Florida funeral home, and a mother resurrected by embalming fluid.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)
The CG revival, which kept the 1987 theme's shape and rebuilt everything around it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTehran
Surveillance imagery and city geometry, cut so that watching and being watched look like the same activity.
- Season 2
1 sequenceTeletubbies
A baby's face in the sun, four aerials and a narrator counting them in — over two minutes of titles for a programme aimed at people under three.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTemptation Island
Unmarried couples separated onto an island of singles, and the format that drew the first serious wave of complaints about American reality television.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTennessee Tuxedo and His Tales
A zoo penguin with a walrus and a professor who explains how things work, which made it educational enough to keep.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Terminal List
A Navy SEAL who comes home to work out that the ambush was arranged, from Jack Carr's novel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTerminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The films continued between the second and third, with Bear McCreary scoring it and Fox cancelling it after two seasons.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTerra Nova
A colony sent eighty-five million years into the past, cancelled after one season for cost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTerriers
An unlicensed private investigator in Ocean Beach, cancelled after thirteen episodes and mourned ever since.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Terror
The Franklin expedition frozen into the ice, with something on it that is not the cold.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTerry and June
Suburban misunderstanding for eight years, and the programme most often used as shorthand for what alternative comedy rebelled against.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat '70s Show
The cast singing 'In the Street' from the back of a Vista Cruiser, re-recorded and reshot every season — plus one-off Halloween and Christmas versions.
- Seasons 1–8
1 sequenceThat '80s Show
The follow-up to That '70s Show with none of the same characters, gone in thirteen episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat Mitchell and Webb Look
The sketch show out of the radio series That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and the home of Numberwang.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime
A salaryman reincarnated as the weakest monster in the game, who builds a country anyway.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat's So Raven
A girl who sees the future and misreads it every week.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTheodore Tugboat
Model tugboats in Halifax harbour, narrated for years by Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Third Day
An island off the Essex coast with its own rules, told in two halves and a live broadcast between them.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThird Watch
Police, paramedics and firefighters on the same New York shift, from the ER producers.
- Season 5
1 sequencethirtysomething
The series that invented the domestic-anxiety drama, and gave a generation of television writers their register.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThis Is Us
A family photograph and a card, over in nine seconds — restraint from a show that is otherwise not remotely restrained.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThis Life
Five law graduates sharing a house in Southwark, shot handheld and stopped after two series while it was still growing.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThis Morning
Daytime television broadcast from the Albert Dock, with a weather map floated in the water outside.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThomas & Friends
Model locomotives shot a frame at a time on a table in Britain, narrated for the first two series by Ringo Starr.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThomas the Tank Engine & Friends
Model railway engines shot at eye level and narrated by Ringo Starr, from the Awdry books.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Thorn Birds
The second most-watched miniseries in American television history, after Roots.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThree's Company
A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThreshold
Geometric contact imagery and a rising tone, from one of three first-contact series the American networks launched in the same season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThriller (1973)
Brian Clemens' anthology of feature-length suspense plays, sold to America as a late-night staple.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThundarr the Barbarian
A post-apocalyptic Earth designed by Jack Kirby, with a narrated prologue doing all the world-building in twenty seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThunderbirds
Five, four, three, two, one — the countdown, the launch bays, and Barry Gray's march. Probably the most quoted title sequence Britain has produced.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThunderCats
A sword extending, a cat's eye opening, and a shout — eighties syndication at its most confident.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tick
The live-action Tick, whose main title is a full superhero sequence played entirely straight.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTiger King
Airbrushed big-cat portraiture and rhinestone lettering, executed with total sincerity — the subject's own aesthetic, borrowed wholesale.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTill Death Us Do Part
Alf Garnett shouting at his family, and the series All in the Family was remade from.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!
Public-access video aesthetics reproduced exactly and then broken — twenty-two seconds that set the terms for a decade of internet comedy.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTime Bandits
The Gilliam film as a series, made by the Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows writers.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTime Squad
Time police correcting history, which keeps going wrong in ways they caused.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTime Team
Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Time Traveler's Wife
Steven Moffat's adaptation of the Niffenegger novel, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Time Tunnel
Two scientists thrown through history, opened by a spiral that became the show's whole identity.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTimeless
A stolen time machine chased through American history, cancelled twice and revived once.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTin Star
A British policeman running a small Alberta force, and the refinery that follows him there.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTinker Tailor Soldier Spy
A Russian nesting doll opening onto a blank face, over Geoffrey Burgon's setting of the Nunc Dimittis — the most quietly devastating title sequence the BBC has made.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTiny Toon Adventures
A patter song naming the entire cast, which the series' successor Animaniacs would take further still.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTitans
Thirteen seconds and a card, in the register of a comic that would prefer you did not call it a comic.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTitus
Christopher Titus narrating his own childhood from a white void between scenes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTo Tell the Truth
Three people claiming to be the same person, and the line that ends it — will the real one please stand up.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTo the Manor Born
A widow forced to sell the manor and move into the lodge at the end of its drive.
- Season 1
1 sequenceA to Z
A romantic comedy that told you in the pilot exactly how many months it would last, and lasted thirteen episodes.
- Season 1
1 sequenceToast of London
Matt Berry as a voiceover actor with an unshakeable opinion of himself.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTodd McFarlane's Spawn
The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.
- Season 1
- Season 2
1 sequenceTokyo Ghoul
A student turned half-ghoul, opened by "Unravel" — one of the few anime openings better known than the series.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTokyo Mew Mew
Five girls infused with the DNA of endangered animals, in the magical girl series that made cat ears a convention.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTokyo Vice
Neon reflected in wet Shinjuku streets, shot from a car — a foreign correspondent's view of a city he does not yet read.
- Seasons 1–2
1 sequenceTom Goes to the Mayor
Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's first series, animated from photographs of the cast with almost no motion.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tomorrow People
Children evolving telepathy in a Thames Television series remade twice since.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTomorrow's World
Live demonstrations of things that did not work yet, opening on graphics that promised they would.
- Season 29
1 sequenceThe Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
A curtain, a rainbow arch and an announcer saying the two words — thirty years of the same entrance.
- Season 18
1 sequenceToo Close
A forensic psychiatrist and the patient who will not stay on her side of the table.
- Season 1
1 sequenceToo Close for Comfort
A cartoonist whose grown daughters move into the flat downstairs, which is the entire problem.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTop Boy
A Hackney estate shot from within rather than above, over Brian Eno's score — which is not the collaboration anyone predicted.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTop Cat
Hanna-Barbera doing Sgt. Bilko with alley cats, in the primetime slot the studio kept trying to hold.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTop Chef
Knives on a board and a countdown, in the cooking competition that took itself seriously first.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTop Gear
Twenty-one seconds of engine noise and a rock riff — a motoring programme that opens like a trailer for itself.
- Season 1
- Season 23
1 sequenceTop of the Lake
Jane Campion's missing-girl series, opened across the South Island lake it is named for.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTop of the Pops
Forty-two years of the chart, and a Phil Lynott instrumental called Yellow Pearl for a theme.
- Season 1
- Seasons 18–20
1 sequenceToradora!
Two students agreeing to help each other with the wrong crushes, which goes exactly as expected.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTorchwood
The Doctor Who spinoff that wanted to be taken seriously, opening with Cardiff, a rift and a great deal of blue light.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tortellis
Carla's ex-husband and his family moved to Las Vegas, and the shortest-lived thing Cheers produced.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTotal Drama Island
Survivor animated for children, with confessional booths and eliminations played entirely straight.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTotal Recall 2070
A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTotal Request Live
MTV's daily video countdown, broadcast from a studio above Times Square with the crowd outside kept in shot.
- Season 5
1 sequenceTotally Spies!
Three Beverly Hills schoolgirls working for a spy agency, made in France and drawn in a style borrowed from anime.
- Season 7
1 sequenceTots TV
Three rag dolls with a bag, one of whom only speaks French, from the studio that went on to make Teletubbies.
- Season 1
1 sequenceA Touch of Frost
David Jason as a Denton detective who is right and insubordinate in roughly equal measure.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTouched by an Angel
Angels sent to intervene in ordinary American lives, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTour of Duty
An infantry platoon in Vietnam, and the first American drama series to be set there.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tracey Ullman Show
The sketch show Fox launched its network with, and the one that carried the Simpsons as thirty-second interstitials before they left.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTransparent
Joey Soloway's family series, opened by home-movie footage of the Pfeffermans that turns out to be the whole thesis.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Trap Door
Plasticine creatures in a castle basement, with a theme built from a voice going "don't you open that trap door".
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrapped
Icelandic weather as an antagonist — ice, sea and a town nobody can leave, which is both the plot and the title.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrapper John, M.D.
The MASH surgeon twenty-eight years later, running a San Francisco hospital.
- Season 6
1 sequenceTravelers
Consciousnesses sent back from a ruined future into people about to die anyway, so the timeline notices nothing.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTreadstone
The Bourne programme as a series, cancelled after one season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTreme
Water stains, peeling paint and brass — post-Katrina New Orleans read off its own damaged walls, over John Boutté's title song.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tribe
A virus kills every adult and the children left over form tribes, made in New Zealand for a British channel.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTribes of Europa
Europe broken into warring tribes after a global blackout, opened in eleven seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrigun
A desert western scored like a spy thriller, with a gunman who refuses to kill anyone.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tripods
The John Christopher novels adapted at great expense and cancelled two thirds of the way through the story.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrollhunters
Guillermo del Toro's trolls under a Californian town, opened in fifteen seconds.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTron: Uprising
The Grid between the two films, animated with a design sense far beyond its slot.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTru Calling
A morgue attendant who relives days, opened with the clock imagery the premise requires.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrue Blood
Digital Kitchen again, and their nastiest work: swamp water, roadkill, a revival tent, a child in a Klan hood, all cut to Jace Everett's 'Bad Things'. It promises a show about the South rather than a show about vampires.
- Seasons 1–7
4 sequencesTrue Detective
Double-exposure portraits where the landscape is projected onto the people. Every season is reshot from scratch, so the titles change as completely as the cast does.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more
1 sequenceTrumpton
The Camberwick Green sequel, opening on a town clock and a fire brigade roll-call people still recite.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTrust
The Getty kidnapping told across ten hours by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTruth Be Told
Recording equipment and case material, for a series about a true-crime podcast reopening its own mistake.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTruth or Consequences
A radio stunt show that reached television in 1950 and persuaded a New Mexico town to rename itself after it.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTuca & Bertie
Buildings with faces and plants with opinions — a city drawn as though everything in it is slightly alive, which in this show it is.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Tudors
Henry VIII played young and handsome for four seasons, opened by a montage of everything the reign would cost.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTUGS
Model tugboats in a 1920s harbour, made by the Thomas the Tank Engine team and considerably darker.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTunnel
A 1986 detective stepping through a tunnel into 2017, still chasing the same killer.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTurn: Washington's Spies
Invisible ink, cipher keys and folded letters — a spy series introduced entirely through its tradecraft.
- Seasons 1–4
1 sequenceTwenty-Five Twenty-One
A fencer and a reporter across the 1997 financial crisis and after.
- Season 1
3 sequencesThe Twilight Zone
Three different openings in five seasons, and the one everybody can hum arrived third. Rod Serling narrates the audience into another dimension over abstractions that were, for 1959, genuinely strange television.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Seasons 3–5
1 sequenceThe Twilight Zone (1985)
The first revival, with the Grateful Dead re-recording Marius Constant's motif — the middle of three attempts at the same idea, all of which are now in this catalogue.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Twilight Zone (2019)
Jordan Peele's revival, which rebuilds Marius Constant's theme and the spiral for a fourth time — sixty years after the original and still recognisably the same idea.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTwin Peaks
A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.
- Seasons 1–2
- Season 3
1 sequenceTwinkling Watermelon
The hearing son of deaf parents sent back to 1995, where he meets his father at nineteen.
- Season 1
1 sequenceTwo and a Half Men
Twelve seasons on a Malibu beach house, opened by four sung syllables.
- Season 6
2 sequencesTwo Guys and a Girl
A Boston pizza place the series was named after for two seasons and then quietly dropped from the title.
- Season 1
- Seasons 3–4
1 sequenceTwo Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps
Six friends in a Runcorn pub, and the sitcom BBC Three ran for nine series while the critics ignored it.
- Season 9
1 sequenceThe Two Ronnies
Barker and Corbett behind a news desk, with a pair of spectacles as the logo for sixteen years.
- Season 1
2 sequencesTyler Perry's House of Payne
A Georgia fire chief with the rest of his family in the house, and the series that proved syndication could still start a hit.
- Season 1
- Seasons 2–8
1 sequenceTyrant
The younger son of a Middle Eastern dictator dragged back from a Californian suburb.
- Season 1