New Tricks
Retired detectives reopening cold cases, with a theme song sung by Dennis Waterman about the premise.
New Tricks opens with a main title sequence of 24 seconds.
At 24 seconds, it opens well under the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on BBC One in 2003, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and This Is Your Life were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
24sFan upload. The second Dennis Waterman theme in this catalogue after Minder — he sang the title song for both.
More crime opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
Dexter
Breakfast filmed as though it were a murder. A mosquito swatted, a blood orange crushed, a shaving nick, a steak sliced, floss drawn tight — every shot of an ordinary morning framed exactly as the violence the show never puts on screen this early.
- Seasons 1–8
5 sequences
The Wire
The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 2 more
2 sequences
NCIS
Naval insignia, photographs and a snare roll, refreshed periodically as a cast that has now turned over almost completely came and went.
- Season 10
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Mentalist
A red smiley face drawn in blood, which is the whole of the series' mythology compressed into one image.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Sons of Anarchy
Leather, chrome and a reaper patch, over a theme re-recorded by a different artist as the club's situation deteriorates.
- Season 1
- Season 7
1 sequence
Bones
Skeletal reconstruction rendered as clean laboratory graphics — a procedural that opens on anatomy rather than crime.
- Season 2