The Bill
A London police station shot at ground level, under a rule the programme kept for twenty-seven years: no scene an officer is not present for.
The Bill rebuilt its titles: three distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1, 4 and 5, running between 25 and 53 seconds.
It arrived on ITV in 1983, when The Sooty Show, The Big Match and Rainbow were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The Bill did so two times.
All 3 opening title sequences
Season 1
31sFrom a channel that collects nothing but this programme's titles. Dated to the 1984–85 series, which the episode list confirms is the first.
Season 4
53sThe 1988 titles, which the episode list places as the fourth series.
Season 5
25sThe 1989 titles, half the length of the previous year's. The same year the run went from 48 episodes to 104.
More crime opening titles from the 1980s
1 sequence
Miami Vice
Flamingos, jai alai and pastel architecture over Jan Hammer — a title sequence that sold an entire aesthetic and arguably a city.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMurder, She Wrote
A typewriter, a bicycle and Cabot Cove — twelve seasons of the most reassuring opening ever attached to a programme about repeated homicide.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAgatha Christie's Poirot
Art Deco geometry and Christopher Gunning's theme — a title sequence that establishes the period, the register and the fastidiousness of the detective in one gesture.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMagnum, P.I.
Hawaii, a Ferrari and a moustache, over a theme so brash it dates the decade to within about eighteen months.
- Season 1
1 sequenceMatlock
Andy Griffith as a defence attorney in a grey suit, nine seasons long.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIn the Heat of the Night
The 1967 film continued as a series, with Carroll O'Connor as the chief.
- Season 1