The Wire

Name: The Wire
Genre: Crime

2002–2008HBOCrime

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The same song recorded five different ways. Every season re-cuts the images and hands 'Way Down in the Hole' to a new artist, matching the institution that season is about.

The Wire rebuilt its titles: five distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1–5, running between 90 and 96 seconds.

At 96 seconds at its longest, it opens well above the 47-second median for crime sequences in this catalogue.

It arrived on HBO in 2002, when Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Sopranos and Arli$$ were also on the network.

Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; The Wire did so four times.

5 sequences14th most looked up of 479 in the 2000sIMDb ↗Official site ↗

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All 5 opening title sequences

Season 1

90s

The Blind Boys of Alabama. Surveillance cameras, payphones and pagers — the season about the wiretap itself.

Season 2

90s

Tom Waits. The docks: container cranes, welding sparks and stevedores.

Season 3

96s

The Neville Brothers. Towers coming down, campaign signs going up, and corner boys moved somewhere the police have agreed not to look — the season that sets city politics beside the drug trade and lets each explain the other.

Season 4

90s

DoMaJe, a group of Baltimore teenagers — the correct choice for the season set in a middle school.

Season 5

Steve Earle, who plays Walon in the show — the only one of the five performers to appear in it. Presses, plates and newsprint, for the season about the paper that was supposed to have been watching all of this.

More crime opening titles from the 2000s

1 sequence

Dexter

2006–2013ShowtimeCrime

Breakfast filmed as though it were a murder. A mosquito swatted, a blood orange crushed, a shaving nick, a steak sliced, floss drawn tight — every shot of an ordinary morning framed exactly as the violence the show never puts on screen this early.