Saturday Night Live
A new cast montage every single season for fifty years — New York at night, the current company photographed in it, and a band playing over the top. The longest-running rotating title sequence on television.
No single version of the Saturday Night Live titles stands for the rest, so the clip here collects them together across season 1.
It arrived on NBC in 1975, when Truth or Consequences, Another World and Search for Tomorrow were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
129sEvery cast introduction in the show's history, collected. No single season's version could stand for a sequence that has been rebuilt fifty times.
More comedy opening titles from the 1970s
1 sequence
All in the Family
Two people at an upright piano singing about how things used to be — an opening performed live by the cast rather than scored.
- Season 1
1 sequenceFawlty Towers
A hotel sign whose letters are rearranged into a different rude anagram every episode — the earliest running title gag in this catalogue by two decades.
- Season 1
1 sequenceHappy Days
A fifties jukebox theme that started as a closing song and was promoted to the opening once it became a hit record.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThree's Company
A theme that explains the premise, the address and the invitation in about forty seconds, then hands you a farce.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThe Love Boat
A cruise ship with a new guest cast every week, introduced by name in the titles.
- Season 3
1 sequenceTaxi
A single cab crossing the Queensboro Bridge to Bob James's electric piano — no cast, no jokes, and an unusually melancholy opening for a comedy.
- Season 1