My Family
A Chiswick dentist and the relatives he cannot get out of the house, written by a rotating room on the American model.
My Family rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 3 and 6, each running 15 seconds.
At 15 seconds at its longest, it opens well under the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on BBC One in 2000, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and This Is Your Life were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; My Family did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 3
15sThe sliced-photograph sequence, from a channel that posts each series separately.
Season 6
15sThe later design, silhouettes on white. The series 5 copy was left out because one frame could not separate it from series 3's.
More comedy opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
The Big Bang Theory
Fourteen billion years of natural history in twenty-three seconds, flashing past at one image per beat.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Malcolm in the Middle
They Might Be Giants' 'Boss of Me' over archive film of chaos — falling, crashing and general misadventure, cut faster than a network comedy usually dares.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Office
Scranton, a car park and a filing cabinet, shot like stock footage for a regional business — twenty-two seconds that promise nothing will happen.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Scrubs
Twelve seconds, an X-ray and a guitar — a medical comedy that spends less time on titles than most shows spend on a network ident.
- Season 1
1 sequence
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Photographs of Philadelphia over a jaunty public-domain waltz, with the episode's absurd title card dropped into the middle of it.
- Seasons 2–4
1 sequence
Modern Family
Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.
- Season 1