Picket Fences
Small-town Wisconsin filmed as pastoral before every episode demonstrates it is anything but.
Picket Fences kept one opening title sequence, 59 seconds long, across season 2.
It arrived on CBS in 1992, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 2
59sThe second season's opening credits.
More drama opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequence
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Ninety seconds of a man driving home from the Lincoln Tunnel to North Caldwell. No cast montage, no highlights — just the commute, which turns out to be the whole show.
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2 sequences
Twin Peaks
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.
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- Season 3
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ER
James Newton Howard's theme over sliding doors, gurneys and light — the template every medical drama since has either copied or deliberately avoided.
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1 sequence
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Paula Cole over a Massachusetts creek — a theme so tied to the show that its absence from the streaming release became a story in itself.
- Season 1
2 sequences
The West Wing
Oil portraits, flags and W.G. Snuffy Walden's brass — an opening that treats the executive branch as a cathedral, which is the show's entire register.
- Season 1
- Season 5
1 sequenceBeverly Hills, 90210
Freeze-frames of a cast grinning at the camera over a synth-brass hook — the template every teen drama of the decade copied.
- Season 1