The Guardian
A corporate lawyer sentenced to community service in child advocacy, which turns out to be the real job.
The Guardian rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–3, running between 44 and 53 seconds.
It arrived on CBS in 2001, when Candid Camera, Guiding Light and As the World Turns were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The Guardian did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 1
44sThe first season's opening.
Seasons 2–3
53sThe later sequence, labelled for the two seasons after it and nine seconds longer.
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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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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Gilmore Girls
Carole King's 'Where You Lead' rewritten as a mother-and-daughter duet, over a small Connecticut town in every season at once.
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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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