The New Pope
Nuns dancing in front of a neon crucifix to a house track, for two and a half minutes, entirely straight-faced. Paolo Sorrentino's sequel keeps the sequence that made the first series notorious and makes it longer.
The New Pope opens with a main title sequence of 145 seconds.
At 145 seconds, it opens well above the 50-second median for drama sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on HBO in 2020, when Curb Your Enthusiasm, In Treatment and The Jinx were also on the network.
The opening titles
Season 1
145sFrom HBO. Added under its own name because it is what searching for The Young Pope returns.
More drama opening titles from the 2020s
2 sequencesBridgerton
Engraved invitations, wax seals and bees, assembled like a society page being typeset — the gossip sheet that drives the plot, doing the credits.
- Season 1
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1 sequenceLandman
West Texas oil patch, filmed with the same proprietorial eye Yellowstone brings to Montana.
- Season 1
3 sequencesHouse of the Dragon
The parent show mapped a continent; this one traces a bloodline. Where Game of Thrones built cities, these titles follow blood running through stone channels and a tapestry recording who killed whom.
- Season 1
- Season 2
- Season 3
1 sequenceSlow Horses
London surveillance imagery over a theme Mick Jagger wrote for the show — a spy series whose titles are as shabby and unglamorous as its office.
- Season 1
1 sequenceBeef
A different David Choe painting behind the title card of every episode, so the opening is a gallery hung one canvas at a time across the season.
- Season 1
1 sequenceIndustry
Twenty-two seconds of type and glass. A trading-floor show whose opening is over before you have settled, which is roughly how the job is depicted.
- Season 1