The Corner
David Simon and David Mills's West Baltimore miniseries, made three years before The Wire took the same corner.
The Corner opens with a main title sequence of 27 seconds.
At 27 seconds, it opens well under the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on HBO in 2000, when Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos and Arli$$ were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
27sFan upload of the intro.
More drama opening titles from the 2000s
1 sequence
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Twenty seconds of chemistry-set smoke and floating element symbols. Almost aggressively short, which leaves the cold open to do the work.
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Grey's Anatomy
Twenty-six seconds of surgical instruments and a guitar figure, from a series that has now outlived most of the shows that copied it.
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Mad Men
A silhouetted adman falls past skyscrapers built out of his own advertising — smiling wives, stockinged legs, a hand holding a drink — and then, at the bottom, is sitting comfortably with a cigarette. Nobody lands. That is the joke and the thesis.
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1 sequence
Gilmore Girls
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2 sequences
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Anatomical illustration and MRI imagery over Massive Attack's 'Teardrop' — a diagnostic show that opens by looking inside a body rather than at one.
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1 sequence
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Art history restaged as domestic comedy — Cranach's Eve, Egyptian tomb painting, American Gothic — each one collapsing under a woman's exasperation.
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