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136 shows147 sequences

1 sequence

T. J. Hooker

1982–1986ABC / CBSCrime

William Shatner back in uniform between Star Trek films.

Season 1

1 sequence

T.U.F.F. Puppy

2010–2015NickelodeonAnimation

A dog secret agent, from the creator of The Fairly OddParents.

Season 1

1 sequence

Taken

2002Sci-Fi ChannelSci-Fi

Spielberg's twenty-hour abduction serial, following three families over fifty years and broadcast across ten consecutive nights.

Season 1

1 sequence

Takeshi's Castle

1986–1990TBSDocumentary

A hundred contestants a week storming a fortress, and the origin of every obstacle-course format that came after it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tales from the Crypt

1989–1996HBOHorror

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 sequence

Tales from the Darkside

1983–1988SyndicationHorror

George Romero's anthology, opened by pastoral countryside that turns to negative while a narrator explains why.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tales of the City

2019NetflixDrama

Armistead Maupin's Barbary Lane, returned to thirty years after the first adaptation.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tales of the Unexpected

1979–1988ITVHorror

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 sequence

Task

2025HBOCrime

An FBI task force in the Philadelphia suburbs, from the writer of Mare of Easttown.

Season 1

1 sequence

Taskmaster

2015–Dave / Channel 4Comedy

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 sequence

Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters from Beverly Hills

1994–1995USA NetworkSci-Fi

Four teenagers given powers by an alien tattoo, in a title that explains the whole programme.

Season 1

1 sequence

Taxi

1978–1983ABC / NBCComedy

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 sequence

Taxi Driver

2021–2023SBSCrime

A taxi company that takes revenge on behalf of crime victims, from the webtoon.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teachers

2001–2004Channel 4Comedy

A Bristol comprehensive from the staff room's side, with Andrew Lincoln before The Walking Dead.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Team

2015–2018ZDF / DR1Crime

A Europol task force built out of three countries' police, and shot in all three languages.

Season 2

1 sequence

Ted

2024–2026PeacockComedy

The talking bear from the films as a 1990s teen sitcom, with everyone recast younger.

Season 1

1 sequence

Ted Lasso

2020–Apple TV+Comedy

Twenty-three seconds of illustrated football club iconography and a brass hook — brisk, warm, and gone before it can outstay itself.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teen Titans

2003–2006Cartoon NetworkAnimation

A J-pop theme by Puffy AmiYumi, recorded in both Japanese and English and alternated between episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teen Wolf

2011–2017MTVHorror

Transformation rendered as anatomy — claws, teeth and eyes, in a sequence rebuilt several times across six seasons.

Season 6

1 sequence

Teenage Euthanasia

2021–2023Adult SwimAnimation

A Florida funeral home, and a mother resurrected by embalming fluid.

Season 1

1 sequence

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2012)

2012–2017NickelodeonAnimation

The CG revival, which kept the 1987 theme's shape and rebuilt everything around it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tehran

2020–Apple TV+Drama

Surveillance imagery and city geometry, cut so that watching and being watched look like the same activity.

Season 2

1 sequence

Teletubbies

1997–2001BBC TwoComedy

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 sequence

Temptation Island

2001–2003FoxDocumentary

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 sequence

Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales

1963–1966CBSAnimation

A zoo penguin with a walrus and a professor who explains how things work, which made it educational enough to keep.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Terminal List

2022–Amazon Prime VideoDrama

A Navy SEAL who comes home to work out that the ambush was arranged, from Jack Carr's novel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

2008–2009FoxSci-Fi

The films continued between the second and third, with Bear McCreary scoring it and Fox cancelling it after two seasons.

Season 1

1 sequence

Terra Nova

2011FoxSci-Fi

A colony sent eighty-five million years into the past, cancelled after one season for cost.

Season 1

1 sequence

Terriers

2010FXCrime

An unlicensed private investigator in Ocean Beach, cancelled after thirteen episodes and mourned ever since.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Terror

2018–2019AMCHorror

The Franklin expedition frozen into the ice, with something on it that is not the cold.

Season 1

1 sequence

Terry and June

1979–1987BBC OneComedy

Suburban misunderstanding for eight years, and the programme most often used as shorthand for what alternative comedy rebelled against.

Season 1

1 sequence

That '70s Show

1998–2006FoxComedy

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 sequence

That '80s Show

2002FoxComedy

The follow-up to That '70s Show with none of the same characters, gone in thirteen episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

That Mitchell and Webb Look

2006–2010BBC TwoComedy

The sketch show out of the radio series That Mitchell and Webb Sound, and the home of Numberwang.

Season 1

1 sequence

That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime

2018–Tokyo MXAnimation

A salaryman reincarnated as the weakest monster in the game, who builds a country anyway.

Season 1

1 sequence

That's So Raven

2003–2007Disney ChannelComedy

A girl who sees the future and misreads it every week.

Season 1

1 sequence

Theodore Tugboat

1993–2001CBCAnimation

Model tugboats in Halifax harbour, narrated for years by Denny Doherty of the Mamas and the Papas.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Third Day

2020HBO / Sky AtlanticHorror

An island off the Essex coast with its own rules, told in two halves and a live broadcast between them.

Season 1

1 sequence

Third Watch

1999–2005NBCDrama

Police, paramedics and firefighters on the same New York shift, from the ER producers.

Season 5

1 sequence

thirtysomething

1987–1991ABCDrama

The series that invented the domestic-anxiety drama, and gave a generation of television writers their register.

Season 1

1 sequence

This Is Us

2016–2022NBCDrama

A family photograph and a card, over in nine seconds — restraint from a show that is otherwise not remotely restrained.

Season 1

1 sequence

This Life

1996–2007BBC TwoDrama

Five law graduates sharing a house in Southwark, shot handheld and stopped after two series while it was still growing.

Season 1

1 sequence

This Morning

1988–ITVDocumentary

Daytime television broadcast from the Albert Dock, with a weather map floated in the water outside.

Season 1

1 sequence

Thomas & Friends

1984–2021ITVAnimation

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 sequence

Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends

1984–2021ITVAnimation

Model railway engines shot at eye level and narrated by Ringo Starr, from the Awdry books.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Thorn Birds

1983ABCDrama

The second most-watched miniseries in American television history, after Roots.

Season 1

1 sequence

Three's Company

1976–1984ABCComedy

A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.

Season 1

1 sequence

Threshold

2005–2006CBSSci-Fi

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 sequence

Thriller (1973)

1973–1976ITVHorror

Brian Clemens' anthology of feature-length suspense plays, sold to America as a late-night staple.

Season 1

1 sequence

Thundarr the Barbarian

1980–1982ABCAnimation

A post-apocalyptic Earth designed by Jack Kirby, with a narrated prologue doing all the world-building in twenty seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Thunderbirds

1965–1966ITVSci-Fi

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 sequence

ThunderCats

1985–1989SyndicationAnimation

A sword extending, a cat's eye opening, and a shout — eighties syndication at its most confident.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tick

2016–2019AmazonComedy

The live-action Tick, whose main title is a full superhero sequence played entirely straight.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tiger King

2020–2021NetflixDocumentary

Airbrushed big-cat portraiture and rhinestone lettering, executed with total sincerity — the subject's own aesthetic, borrowed wholesale.

Season 1

1 sequence

Till Death Us Do Part

1965–1975BBC OneComedy

Alf Garnett shouting at his family, and the series All in the Family was remade from.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

2007–2010Adult SwimComedy

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 sequence

Time Bandits

2024Apple TV+Comedy

The Gilliam film as a series, made by the Flight of the Conchords and What We Do in the Shadows writers.

Season 1

1 sequence

Time Squad

2001–2003Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Time police correcting history, which keeps going wrong in ways they caused.

Season 1

1 sequence

Time Team

1994–2014Channel 4Documentary

Three days to excavate a site, with the clock running in the titles before anyone picks up a trowel.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Time Traveler's Wife

2022HBODrama

Steven Moffat's adaptation of the Niffenegger novel, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Time Tunnel

1966–1967ABCSci-Fi

Two scientists thrown through history, opened by a spiral that became the show's whole identity.

Season 1

1 sequence

Timeless

2016–2018NBCSci-Fi

A stolen time machine chased through American history, cancelled twice and revived once.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tin Star

2017–2020Sky AtlanticCrime

A British policeman running a small Alberta force, and the refinery that follows him there.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

1979BBC TwoDrama

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 sequence

Tiny Toon Adventures

1990–1995Syndication / Fox KidsAnimation

A patter song naming the entire cast, which the series' successor Animaniacs would take further still.

Season 1

1 sequence

Titans

2018–2023DC Universe / HBO MaxDrama

Thirteen seconds and a card, in the register of a comic that would prefer you did not call it a comic.

Season 1

1 sequence

Titus

2000–2002FoxComedy

Christopher Titus narrating his own childhood from a white void between scenes.

Season 1

1 sequence

To Tell the Truth

1956–CBSDocumentary

Three people claiming to be the same person, and the line that ends it — will the real one please stand up.

Season 1

1 sequence

To the Manor Born

1979–1981BBC OneComedy

A widow forced to sell the manor and move into the lodge at the end of its drive.

Season 1

1 sequence

A to Z

2014NBCComedy

A romantic comedy that told you in the pilot exactly how many months it would last, and lasted thirteen episodes.

Season 1

1 sequence

Toast of London

2012–2015Channel 4Comedy

Matt Berry as a voiceover actor with an unshakeable opinion of himself.

Season 1

2 sequences

Todd McFarlane's Spawn

1997–1999HBOAnimation

The comic adapted as adult animation, and among the first American cartoons made explicitly for an adult slot.

Season 1
Season 2

1 sequence

Tokyo Ghoul

2014–2018Tokyo MXHorror

A student turned half-ghoul, opened by "Unravel" — one of the few anime openings better known than the series.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tokyo Mew Mew

2002TV TokyoAnimation

Five girls infused with the DNA of endangered animals, in the magical girl series that made cat ears a convention.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tokyo Vice

2022–2024HBO MaxCrime

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 sequence

Tom Goes to the Mayor

2004–2006Adult SwimAnimation

Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim's first series, animated from photographs of the cast with almost no motion.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tomorrow People

1973–1979ITVSci-Fi

Children evolving telepathy in a Thames Television series remade twice since.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tomorrow's World

1965–2003BBC OneDocumentary

Live demonstrations of things that did not work yet, opening on graphics that promised they would.

Season 29

1 sequence

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

1962–1992NBCComedy

A curtain, a rainbow arch and an announcer saying the two words — thirty years of the same entrance.

Season 18

1 sequence

Too Close

2021ITVDrama

A forensic psychiatrist and the patient who will not stay on her side of the table.

Season 1

1 sequence

Too Close for Comfort

1980–1987ABC / SyndicationComedy

A cartoonist whose grown daughters move into the flat downstairs, which is the entire problem.

Season 1

1 sequence

Top Boy

2011–2023Channel 4 / NetflixCrime

A Hackney estate shot from within rather than above, over Brian Eno's score — which is not the collaboration anyone predicted.

Season 1

1 sequence

Top Cat

1961–1962ABCAnimation

Hanna-Barbera doing Sgt. Bilko with alley cats, in the primetime slot the studio kept trying to hold.

Season 1

1 sequence

Top Chef

2006–BravoDocumentary

Knives on a board and a countdown, in the cooking competition that took itself seriously first.

Season 1

2 sequences

Top Gear

2002–BBC TwoDocumentary

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 sequence

Top of the Lake

2013–2017BBC Two / SundanceTVCrime

Jane Campion's missing-girl series, opened across the South Island lake it is named for.

Season 1

2 sequences

Top of the Pops

1964–2006BBC OneDocumentary

Forty-two years of the chart, and a Phil Lynott instrumental called Yellow Pearl for a theme.

Season 1
Seasons 18–20

1 sequence

Toradora!

2008–2009TV TokyoAnimation

Two students agreeing to help each other with the wrong crushes, which goes exactly as expected.

Season 1

1 sequence

Torchwood

2006–2011BBC Three / BBC OneSci-Fi

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 sequence

The Tortellis

1987NBCComedy

Carla's ex-husband and his family moved to Las Vegas, and the shortest-lived thing Cheers produced.

Season 1

1 sequence

Total Drama Island

2007–2008TeletoonAnimation

Survivor animated for children, with confessional booths and eliminations played entirely straight.

Season 1

1 sequence

Total Recall 2070

1999Showtime / SpaceSci-Fi

A Canadian series taking more from Blade Runner than from the film it is named after.

Season 1

1 sequence

Total Request Live

1998–2008MTVDocumentary

MTV's daily video countdown, broadcast from a studio above Times Square with the crowd outside kept in shot.

Season 5

1 sequence

Totally Spies!

2001–2014TF1 / Cartoon NetworkAnimation

Three Beverly Hills schoolgirls working for a spy agency, made in France and drawn in a style borrowed from anime.

Season 7

1 sequence

Tots TV

1993–1998ITVComedy

Three rag dolls with a bag, one of whom only speaks French, from the studio that went on to make Teletubbies.

Season 1

1 sequence

A Touch of Frost

1992–2010ITVCrime

David Jason as a Denton detective who is right and insubordinate in roughly equal measure.

Season 1

1 sequence

Touched by an Angel

1994–2003CBSDrama

Angels sent to intervene in ordinary American lives, nine seasons long.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tour of Duty

1987–1990CBSDrama

An infantry platoon in Vietnam, and the first American drama series to be set there.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tracey Ullman Show

1987–1990FoxComedy

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 sequence

Transparent

2014–2019AmazonDrama

Joey Soloway's family series, opened by home-movie footage of the Pfeffermans that turns out to be the whole thesis.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Trap Door

1984–1986ITVAnimation

Plasticine creatures in a castle basement, with a theme built from a voice going "don't you open that trap door".

Season 1

1 sequence

Trapped

2015–2022RÚVCrime

Icelandic weather as an antagonist — ice, sea and a town nobody can leave, which is both the plot and the title.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trapper John, M.D.

1979–1986CBSDrama

The MASH surgeon twenty-eight years later, running a San Francisco hospital.

Season 6

1 sequence

Travelers

2016–2018NetflixSci-Fi

Consciousnesses sent back from a ruined future into people about to die anyway, so the timeline notices nothing.

Season 1

1 sequence

Treadstone

2019–2020USA NetworkDrama

The Bourne programme as a series, cancelled after one season.

Season 1

1 sequence

Treme

2010–2013HBODrama

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 sequence

The Tribe

1999–2003Channel 5Drama

A virus kills every adult and the children left over form tribes, made in New Zealand for a British channel.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tribes of Europa

2021Netflix (Germany)Sci-Fi

Europe broken into warring tribes after a global blackout, opened in eleven seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trigun

1998TV TokyoAnimation

A desert western scored like a spy thriller, with a gunman who refuses to kill anyone.

Season 1

1 sequence

The Tripods

1984–1985BBC OneSci-Fi

The John Christopher novels adapted at great expense and cancelled two thirds of the way through the story.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trollhunters

2016–2018NetflixAnimation

Guillermo del Toro's trolls under a Californian town, opened in fifteen seconds.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tron: Uprising

2012–2013Disney XDAnimation

The Grid between the two films, animated with a design sense far beyond its slot.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tru Calling

2003–2005FoxSci-Fi

A morgue attendant who relives days, opened with the clock imagery the premise requires.

Season 1

1 sequence

True Blood

2008–2014HBOHorror

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 sequences

True Detective

2014–HBOCrime

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 sequence

Trumpton

1967BBC OneAnimation

The Camberwick Green sequel, opening on a town clock and a fire brigade roll-call people still recite.

Season 1

1 sequence

Trust

2018FXDrama

The Getty kidnapping told across ten hours by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy.

Season 1

1 sequence

Truth Be Told

2019–2023Apple TV+Crime

Recording equipment and case material, for a series about a true-crime podcast reopening its own mistake.

Season 1

1 sequence

Truth or Consequences

1950–1988CBS / NBC / SyndicationDocumentary

A radio stunt show that reached television in 1950 and persuaded a New Mexico town to rename itself after it.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tuca & Bertie

2019–2022Netflix / Adult SwimAnimation

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 sequence

The Tudors

2007–2010ShowtimeDrama

Henry VIII played young and handsome for four seasons, opened by a montage of everything the reign would cost.

Season 1

1 sequence

TUGS

1989ITVAnimation

Model tugboats in a 1920s harbour, made by the Thomas the Tank Engine team and considerably darker.

Season 1

1 sequence

Tunnel

2017OCNCrime

A 1986 detective stepping through a tunnel into 2017, still chasing the same killer.

Season 1

1 sequence

Turn: Washington's Spies

2014–2017AMCDrama

Invisible ink, cipher keys and folded letters — a spy series introduced entirely through its tradecraft.

Seasons 1–4

1 sequence

Twenty-Five Twenty-One

2022tvNDrama

A fencer and a reporter across the 1997 financial crisis and after.

Season 1

3 sequences

The Twilight Zone

1959–1964CBSSci-Fi

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 sequence

The Twilight Zone (1985)

1985–1989CBSSci-Fi

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 sequence

The Twilight Zone (2019)

2019–2020CBS All AccessSci-Fi

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 sequences

Twin Peaks

1990–1991, 2017ABC / ShowtimeDrama

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.