Red Dwarf
The last human alive, three million years from Earth, introduced with a mining ship the size of a city and a theme sung over the end of it.
Red Dwarf rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1 and 10, running between 42 and 59 seconds.
At 59 seconds at its longest, it opens well above the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on BBC Two in 1988, when Talking Heads, Yes, Prime Minister and French and Saunders were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Red Dwarf did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 1
59sThe first series' credits, 1988 — the model shot and the Howard Goodall theme before either was rebuilt.
Season 10
42sThe series X titles, from the show's later revival run on Dave.
More comedy opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequenceThe 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 sequenceSeinfeld
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 sequencesRoseanne
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
