For some reason, I’ve always been really interested in TV show’s opening credit sequences. So after I recently finished ordering my the 101 TV Shows I Love the Most (which turned into 102 because I realize I’d forgotten Seinfeld, and would have been 103 if I’d remembered Pride and Prejudice before I’d finished), I found myself thinking about those 101+ opening title sequences, and which the most awesome.
(When I told my friend Rod about this he suggested it might amount to evidence of my occasional suspicion that maybe I’m a little bit on the autism spectrum).
Obviously, opening title sequences have been around as long as there have been TV shows (at least I assume so–I wasn’t around back then) and there have been lots of different approaches to designing these over the years. This is part due to programming formats evolving and general styles and tastes just changing, but if we’re willing to engage in sweeping generalities then we can identify some broad categories, and pick out some of my 101+ shows that fit into them (of course, in reality, many shows will fit into more than one category).
So I’m going to do that first, and then I’ll follow this up with another post where I identify the series which have my actual favorite opening title sequences.
If you are interested, you can read through my list of shows starting here.
A Song Which Explains the Show
This used to be pretty popular back in the old old days, but generally seemed to fall out of fashion maybe by the time the 70s rolled around (see below for what it looks to have evolved into). Shows like The Brady Bunch or The Patty Duke Show had pretty famous versions of these, but they aren’t on my list. What did make it onto my list were things such as The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis and Land of the Lost. Gilligan’s Island might be the most famous version of this ever, but one of the more interesting, and more recent, is Mystery Science Theatre 3000, whose last season (at least so far) streamed in 2022.
“Love Theme from Mystery Science Theatre 3000” tells in a catchy but unpolished tune (that’s not a criticism, it’s the vibe the whole show is going for) the evil designs of whichever mad scientist was part of the show at the time, and the plight they put whichever hapless fellow or lady into–forcing them to watch bad movies as a way of experimenting on them. It gave rise to one of the show’s most iconic quotes: “If you’re wondering how he eats or breathes or other science facts, just repeat to yourself “It’s just a show, I should really just relax.”
Sequences which use other means to explain the show’s premise
Pretty much all title sequences are there to invite the viewer into the show, but some are more direct at explaining what the show is about than others. And only some of those use the song lyrics to do so.
One of the most common alternate approaches to this is the use of narration. Probably the most famous of these is Star Trek, but you could also look at other examples from my list like Star Trek: The Next Generation (which used nearly the same narration), Babylon 5, and Avatar: The Last Airbender. Max Headroom uses audio from the show’s dialogue in some of its credit sequences to make sure the concept is clear, and of course in a show like Saturday Night Live (at least in the seasons I’ve watched) this was done simply by means of a vocal announcement.
Battlestar Galactica uses additional text on the screen to do the same thing. An interesting facet of this is that the text would change through the show’s run to keep abreast of the story’s developments, especially in the listing of the number of human survivors remaining in the ongoing conflict with the Cylons.
Songs which don’t specifically explain the show, but more evoke a sense of the vibe or tone
As I mentioned above, the idea of outright explaining a series concept via the theme song is not as common as it once was. What seemed to take its place were opening sequences built around songs with lyrics which more gave a sense of the show’s tone without actually detailing the concept, even if the lyrics contained the show’s title. So in the 70s you had things like One Day at a Time or Three’s Company (not on my list).
My list does include WKRP in Cincinnati and The Young Ones, whose song lyrics include the shows’ title, and Smallville, whose song doesn’t. I have a lot of fondness for the song used in Firefly (“The Ballad of Serenity” by Joss Whedon, performed by Sonny Rhodes), but maybe the catchiest actual tune from my list is “Believe it or Not” by Joey Scarbury, from The Greatest American Hero. And one my favorite such title sequences is probably the one for Community, which featured an animated paper fortune teller rolling around a desk and opening to different pages to reveal the names of the show’s actors. The song it uses is “At Least It Was Here” by The 88.
A catchy tune with a montage of clips from the show
When I was a young TV viewer in the 70s and 80s, this was probably the bread and butter of opening title sequences. You’d have an instrumental musical theme (almost always jaunty) set to images from the show, usually including a little montage of each actor being credited, sometimes involving them smiling awkwardly at or past the camera.
This style of credits overlaps with a lot of the others that I have or will mention, but by itself it’s probably the most common style of credits on my list, having been used in one way or another in the likes of Quantum Leap, Gravity Falls, Parks and Recreation, St. Elsewhere and more. Both of the Stargate series that I chose (SG1 and Atlantis) were like this, at least most of the time, as was Red Dwarf after the first couple of seasons.
Like I said, there is obviously a lot of overlap in these different credit styles–many shows use multiple approaches at once. For instance, both Smallville and The Greatest American Hero use the montage of clips but also have songs whose lyrics evoke the show’s concept. And Hill Street Blues had a strong title sequence which used clips of the actors that were taken from the show, along with sequence of police cars driving out in response to a call–in other words, essentially a narrative sequence, as described below.
A narrative sequence
A lot of shows use not just a montage of clips, but an actual narrative sequence. Examples include the latter three seasons of Blackadder, Little House on the Prairie, The Simpsons, and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin (part of which was actually used in the final scene of the show, as a dark daydream Reggie has). Many seasons of Roseanne featured a tailor-made shot of the Conner family all interacting around the kitchen table, and Taxi just had a repeating shot of a taxi cab driving over a bridge. Barney Miller used this approach, sort of, in that it showed Barney arriving at the station and then just showed the various other characters sitting around at their desks interacting. But you could also argue that it was just “a montage of clips from the show” as mentioned above, or even an introduction to a setting, as described a couple of categories below.
Possibly the most epic narrative sequence to be used as a show’s opening was The Prisoner, whose credits told the entire story of the unnamed agent played by Patrick McGoohan driving to his work, storming in to have it out with his boss, slamming down his resignation papers, and then going home to pack a suitcase only to be gassed and brought to the mysterious “Village” for his troubles. This would then be followed by a sequence of images of the Village while some other episode-specific credits would play, over a conversation between McGoohan’s Number Six and the current Number Two (basically a different person each episode), which helped to cement the concept and themes for the show. Whether that last part “counts” as part of the opening credits is another question, but taken together it amounted for a pretty elaborate bit of storytelling to kick off the show each week.
No credit sequence as such, just a logo over the show
As the time taken by commercials increased, the actual programming time for actual stories decreased,. This resulted in a lot of shows forgoing the opening title sequences all together, replacing them with a logo and main credits that would play over the first scene of an episode. You saw this in shows like Everybody Loves Raymond, Murphy Brown and Seinfeld.
Columbo was also like this, since it was actually just one element of a rotating series called the NBC Sunday Mystery Movie, which had its own opening and theme. When you just see an episode of Columbo now, Peter Falk’s name and the title just runs over the story with very little fanfare.
Exclusively or primarily just text
A variation on the above are the shows that did have a credit sequence, but it’s just text, or nearly just text. You see in Chernobyl, Brideshead Revisited, and V (at least The Final Battle). Endeavour sort of does this too, by intercutting plain titles with the episode’s opening scenes, usually where the mystery is being set-up.
A very quick banner
Some of the more recent broadcast shows won’t have a real credit sequences, but they will have a very quick banner with which they show the series’ title and logo, usually set to a brief musical fanfare. My favorite version of this might be from Castle, as both the logo and the fanfare are pretty unique and help to give the vibe of the show, but you also see it in a lot of superhero shows like The Flash, Superman and Lois and Stargirl, and it’s also the approach taken by the second and third seasons of Young Justice. Non-superhero examples include Lost and Andor, and some animated shows with really short episodes like Over the Garden Wall and Infinity Train do this almost out of necessity. Finally, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is one of the few examples of a show from the streaming era, although it also mixes up the actual banner that it uses on a regular basis.
Welcome to a location
Some shows, whether their approach is “Narrative Sequence” approach of the “Montage of Clips” approach or something else focus more than anything on introducing the show’s setting than it does on the characters or plot. In fact, often you don’t get a look at the characters or actors at all.
We see this int he likes of the images of the town and its environs that make up the credits for Twin Peaks (the original series anyway, I have no idea what the revival looked like), or of the Yorkshire Dales and Darrowby in All Creatures Great and Small. Newhart showed a car driving through Vermont to the inn that much of the show took place around, which worked really well even though those shots were apparently borrowed from the film On Golden Pond. You could argue that this is the style of credits for Miss Marple, which included a montage of illustrated images of an idyllic English town (St. Mary Mead, perhaps?) which also provide glimpses of the murder and suspicion that characterise those stories. And I’ve got to give a big shout out to Northern Exposure, whose titles were done over shots of a moose wandering out an otherwise empty Alaska streets of Cicely in one of the more ingenious applications of this idea.
You also see a variation of this in many Star Trek series (ie Voyager, Deep Space Nine or Lower Decks), where the titles focus on a ship exploring space or on the station just floating there doing its business. And some shows bring you into a time as much as a place, such as both Star Trek Enterprise and Lost in Space, which both feature montages of ships and travel before eventually getting to the launching of the main spaceship from both shows.
Welcome to…not a location, exactly, but a storytelling environment
This is maybe a little subsection of some of the above categories which you get in shows that specifically focus on a workplace. You might get clips from the show and you might get a look at the characters as the actors names roll by, but the focus is either the work that they do or the place where they do it. Examples include The Newsroom, The Office (no surprise there), St. Elsewhere and even Barney Miller (although that one might be a bit more of a stretch).
There’s also The West Wing, which is a show also created by Aaron Sorkin. A lot of the time we’re just seeing the characters in closeups, but with the American flag graphic that constantly flows over the screen and the imagery of things like motorcades and Air Force One mixed in, it feels like it’s more of a look at the world of working with the US president than anything else.
An abstract or surreal look at the characters
There are a couple of sequences that feel like they are best described this way. A classic example is Mr. Bean, which is a short little sequence showing Mr. Bean apparently appearing in a beam of light, as if he is coming down from space or from heaven. Another example is The Avengers–the early seasons used a variety of still images of the main characters, but during the later “in colour” years, there were these highly stylized sequences of Patrick Macnee and either Diana Ring or Linda Thorson cavorting around with flowers, drinks and suits of armor.
You could argue that this is also what we see in some animated superhero shows that I’ve selected, like Young Justice (in the first and fourth seasons) and Legion of Super-Heroes, although some of these also used clips from the show.
One of the more interesting takes on this approach was with Star Trek Prodigy, which did the typical Star Trek thing of showing a ship flying through the stars, but included giant, abstract versions of the show’s characters as the landscapes and outer-space objects that the ship was flying around and past.
Extended sequences fuelled by extensive graphic design
In the 90s and 2000s, I was missing the good ol’ days of opening title sequences, but then streaming came along and changed everything. Suddenly, every second didn’t count, and shows could really go for it with their titles. The old “montage of clips” was no longer the preferred way to do it, so we began to get all sorts of symbolic, expressionistic and abstract imagery to set the stage for our series.
An unfortunate side effect of this is that a lot of these sequences became really long, and started to feature all sorts of names of behind-the-scenes personnel who worked on the show. You’d have the actors, like usual, but also maybe a dozen or more producers (executive producers, line producers, supervising producers, associate producers, and occasionally, just a plain ol’ producer producer). I know these guys are important for getting a show made, but unless the actual title sequence is really good, I find watching their names float past me to be pretty boring.
Some examples of this from my list include Severance, which is a show I like but a sequence I find boring and hard to watch. Also The Man in the High Castle and Daredevil. Examples from before the days of streaming also exist, and as such these don’t tend to list all the producers as part of the opening. This includes shows like Chuck or perhaps most famously, The Twilight Zone.
One of my favorite versions of this, streaming or not, is from the show The Mysterious Benedict Society, a show which got cancelled after two seasons and then fully removed from Disney+ in the great cost-saving purge that we saw in all streaming services in the last couple of years. The sequence featured a montage of a wide assortment semi-symbolic illustrated imagery–it’s the type of thing that I’ve grown tired of in other shows (ie Star Trek Discovery), but here the theme tune was so jaunty and the imagery so fun that it made me really excited for each episode.
Short, punchy, and often British mixes of abstract and literal imagery
If there is one thing the British know how to do, it’s how to make a series title sequences. Well, obviously there are lots of things the British know how to do, but this is one of the ones that really impresses me about their television.
I’m talking about sequences which generally make good use of a combination of graphic design and symbolic elements alongside more concrete imagery to introduce the show or give a sense of the story. But the key thing is that they are long enough to make their point but not so long that they outstay their welcome.
Examples include Sherlock, Shetland, Death in Paradise, Doc Martin, Foyle’s War and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, all of which do a good job of their openings. This is also true of Blake’s 7, even though none of its three title sequences were particularly good.
There are non-British examples of shows that accomplish the same thing on my list, such as Travelers and also Ted Lasso (which is apparently an American production, even though it feels like a British show).
Maybe one of the most interesting is Monty Python’s Flying Circus, which over its years featured four different bizarre animated openings by one of the show’s creators, Terry Gilliam. The surreal imagery set to the tune of John Philip Sousa’s “The Liberty Bell” effectively set the stage for the mix of intellectual and absurd comedy that was to follow.
And that’s it for this rundown, although I’m sure there are other ways of looking at categorising credit sequences. Next time I’m actually going to share my countdown of my favorite sequences from my list of favorite shows–none of which I’ve mentioned anywhere in here. See you then!
