Miami Vice
Flamingos, jai alai and pastel architecture over Jan Hammer — a title sequence that sold an entire aesthetic and arguably a city.
Miami Vice opens with a main title sequence of 63 seconds.
At 63 seconds, it opens well above the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1984, when Truth or Consequences, Another World and Search for Tomorrow were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
63sThe opening credits.
More crime opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequenceMurder, She Wrote
A typewriter, a bicycle and Cabot Cove — twelve seasons of the most reassuring opening ever attached to a programme about repeated homicide.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAgatha Christie's Poirot
Art Deco geometry and Christopher Gunning's theme — a title sequence that establishes the period, the register and the fastidiousness of the detective in one gesture.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMagnum, P.I.
Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMatlock
Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn the Heat of the Night
The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHill Street Blues
Mike Post's piano over squad cars pulling out into snow — the sequence that taught American drama an opening could be melancholy rather than exciting.
- Season 1