QI
Sepia illustration and a music-box theme, in a panel show that has changed almost nothing about its opening in two decades and two hosts.
QI opens with a main title sequence of 41 seconds.
It arrived on BBC Two in 2003, when A Question of Sport, Grandstand and This Is Your Life were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
41sThe titles, from QI's own channel.
More comedy opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequenceThe Big Bang Theory
Fourteen billion years of natural history in twenty-three seconds, flashing past at one image per beat.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMalcolm 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 sequenceThe 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 sequenceScrubs
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 sequenceIt'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 sequenceModern Family
Fourteen seconds of family photographs sliding into place, and a card. Nothing else.
- Season 1