The F.B.I.
Nine seasons made with the Bureau's cooperation and its approval of every script, from the Quinn Martin production line.
The F.B.I. opens with a main title sequence of 59 seconds.
At 59 seconds, it opens well above the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on ABC in 1965, when The Bugs Bunny Show, ABC's Wide World of Sports and American Bandstand were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
59sThe opening alone, Efrem Zimbalist Jr against the flag. The other copies are a nine-season montage and an opening-and-closing pair.
More crime opening titles from the 1960s
2 sequences
Batman
Cartoon versions of the cast run at the camera and fight their way through the rogues' gallery, because the budget for that in live action did not exist and the animation is funnier anyway. Neal Hefti's twelve-bar riff has an eight-voice chorus whose entire lyric is the word Batman.
- Seasons 1–2
- Season 3
1 sequenceHawaii Five-O
The wave, the zoom onto the hotel balcony, and one of the four or five most recognisable television themes ever recorded.
- Season 1
1 sequenceRandall and Hopkirk (Deceased)
A private investigator and his dead partner, who only he can see, in a white suit.
- Season 1
1 sequenceAdam-12
One patrol car, one shift, from the Dragnet producer.
- Season 1
1 sequence
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.
- Season 1
2 sequences
Twin Peaks
A bird, a sawmill blade and a waterfall, over Angelo Badalamenti at a tempo no network would approve today — ninety seconds of a town being described before anyone in it speaks.
- Seasons 1–2
- Season 3