Mystery Science Theater 3000
1988–1999, 2017–2018Comedy CentralSci-Fi ChannelNetflixComedy
A man and two robots heckling films, whose theme song exists to explain the premise and then says so out loud.
Mystery Science Theater 3000 opens with a main title sequence of 90 seconds.
At 90 seconds, it opens well above the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
The opening titles
Season 1
90sFan upload of the Joel-era open. The lyric rewrites itself across the run — the host's name changes when Mike Nelson takes over, and the Netflix revival rewrites it again — but no clean upload of those later versions has been verified.
More comedy opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequence
The Golden Girls
'Thank You for Being a Friend' over four women and a Miami kitchen — a theme so tied to the show that the original songwriter's version is now the obscure one.
- Season 7
1 sequence
Seinfeld
A slap bass figure and a stand-up set — an opening that is literally the comedian's act, which is what the show was sold as.
- Season 1
1 sequenceCheers
A minute of hand-tinted engravings and old photographs of strangers drinking, none of them from the show and none of them the cast. The bar you are about to spend eleven years in is introduced as the latest in a very long line of them.
- Seasons 1–11
1 sequenceMarried... with Children
Sinatra's 'Love and Marriage' over a Chicago family who demonstrably have neither — one of television's earliest deliberately sarcastic openings.
- Season 1
1 sequenceOnly Fools and Horses
A theme sung by the show's own writer, explaining the premise in verse — and one of the very few British sitcom openings to have charted.
- 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