The Joy of Painting

Name: The Joy of Painting
Genre: Documentary

Rate it

Bob Ross finishing a landscape in twenty-six minutes, over thirty-one seasons and a permanent afterlife online.

The Joy of Painting kept one opening title sequence, 34 seconds long, across season 29.

It arrived on PBS in 1983, when Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, Reading Rainbow and 3-2-1 Contact were also on the network.

1 sequenceIMDb ↗

The opening titles

34s

The painters and the oversized brush. Placed at season 29 because the upload dates it to 1993 rather than to the 1983 opening.

1987–2002NBCDocumentary

Robert Stack in a trench coat, a synthesiser and a fog machine — the most frightening thing on American television that was not fiction.

1983–2006PBSDocumentary

LeVar Burton reading to children for twenty-three years, and "but you don't have to take my word for it".

1988–2013FoxDocumentary

The programme Fox launched itself on, and the one that turned a network into a switchboard.

1989–MTVDocumentary

Sixteen seconds and an acoustic guitar — a format whose whole argument is in the title card.

1986–ITVDocumentary

Say what you see, and a golden robot called Mr Chips who was the reason anyone watched.

1980–1988SyndicationDocumentary

The weekly chart countdown as a dance routine, with its own troupe named after it.