Will & Grace
Thirteen seconds and a piano vamp, from a sitcom confident enough not to explain itself.
Will & Grace rebuilt its titles: two distinct opening sequences are catalogued here across seasons 1 and 9, running between 13 and 15 seconds.
At 15 seconds at its longest, it opens well under the 38-second median for comedy sequences in this catalogue.
It arrived on NBC in 1998, when Another World, Columbo and Mad About You were also on the network.
Only 139 of the 2,618 shows catalogued here changed their titles at all; Will & Grace did so once.
All 2 opening title sequences
Season 1
13sThe first season's intro.
Season 9
15sThe ninth season — the 2017 revival, which restarted the count where the 1998 run left off.
More comedy opening titles from the 1990s
1 sequence
Friends
A fountain, an umbrella and six people who are not, on any reading of the physics, getting less wet.
- Season 6
1 sequence
Sex and the City
A tutu, a bus and a splash of dirty water — an opening whose entire joke is that New York does not care who you think you are.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Mr. Bean
A man dropped from the sky in a spotlight while a choir sings about him in Latin, every week, for a character who never explains himself.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Everybody Loves Raymond
A brass sting and a family photograph, in forty-eight seconds that promise nothing more complicated than what you are about to get.
- Season 1
1 sequence
Teletubbies
A baby's face in the sun, four aerials and a narrator counting them in — over two minutes of titles for a programme aimed at people under three.
- Season 1
1 sequenceThat '70s Show
The cast singing 'In the Street' from the back of a Vista Cruiser, re-recorded and reshot every season — plus one-off Halloween and Christmas versions.
- Seasons 1–8