The Fall
Belfast, and a series that shows you the killer in the first episode and spends three series on the pursuit anyway.
The Fall opens with a main title sequence of 28 seconds.
At 28 seconds, it opens well under the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on BBC Two in 2013, when Talking Heads, Yes, Prime Minister and Robot Wars were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
28sPosted by Peter Anderson Studio, who designed it — the same studio behind Line of Duty's titles and Doctor Who's 2012 sequence.
More crime opening titles from the 2010s
1 sequence
Peaky Blinders
Nick Cave's 'Red Right Hand' over Birmingham furnaces and a man walking away from a fire — a period drama scored entirely out of period.
- Season 1
1 sequence
The Rookie
A five-second card: THE ROOKIE in tall white capitals over a row of Los Angeles palms against a hazy blue sky, and the episode is under way.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Better Call Saul
A title card that gets worse every year on purpose: tracking errors, colour bleed and tape damage accumulating season by season, so the picture degrades at roughly the rate its subject does.
- Seasons 1–6
1 sequence
Fargo
Snow, and the claim that this is a true story, which it is not — an anthology that opens every season by lying to you in a title card.
- Season 1
4 sequences
True Detective
Double-exposure portraits where the landscape is projected onto the people. Every season is reshot from scratch, so the titles change as completely as the cast does.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
- and 1 more
1 sequence
The Blacklist
Nine seconds and a card. A ten-season network procedural that never once made you wait to get into an episode.
- Season 1