Maybe the show’s opener is simply a beautiful introduction to characters and places you love. Maybe the theme song is *chef’s kiss.* Maybe it’s something you cannot quite put your finger on that makes those 30, 60, or 90 seconds so compelling. But you watch those credits every time.
What TV show do you never fast-forward through the opening credits?
This weekend’s question is inspired by the fact that The Many Saints of Newark sent me into a spiral of watching the opening credits of The Sopranos over and over again. They are perfection:
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For me, that would be a tie between Twin Peaks, with Angelo Badalementi’s haunting tune, and Six Feet Under, with the more classical instrumentation by Thomas Newman. The gleeful anticipation of whatever was going to happen in each upcoming episode probably helped to imprint tunes and visuals such as these in my emotional memory.
https://youtu.be/w5JkGY1qC8Y
YES to both! I will be very curious to see if anyone responds with a show that is less than 10 or 15 years old, because interesting opening credits sequences seem to have gone by the wayside in recent years.
I forgot how mesmerizing the Six Feet Under theme is.
I think I mentioned some shows younger than that. :-)
I think interesting credits sequences are making a comeback, especially on limited streaming series. The trend seems to be to feature evocative graphics and animated sequences, rather than actors’ faces or scenes from the show. I mentioned Game of Thrones; off the top of my head, a few more favorites below.
(And I *really* love the credits for The Good Fight with the exploding-object motif, including exploding TV sets showing the latest news. Those images, combined with the medieval-lute-music-with-yelling-chorus, really capture the show’s unique mix of playful satire and political rage. And the show has fun making lots of tweaks to those opening credits depending on the plots of specific episodes.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KFYFh8w4758&ab_channel=MarvelEntertainment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83Anf2riXFw&ab_channel=Cinemax
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2716z5-UR-E&ab_channel=HBO
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSfVUAtVx7w&ab_channel=PaulColclough
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWmyIce5P3w&ab_channel=LuisM
The opening credits to Cowboy Bebop. Dynamic, effortlessly cool, noirish animation, coupled with Yoko Kanno’s iconic jazz score. The upcoming Netflix live-action version pays homage to it; I’m still trying to make up my mind whether it’s successful in doing so, but it has also made me revisit and re-appreciate the original.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EL-D9LrFJd4&ab_channel=Funimation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yq2N-9EmedA&ab_channel=Netflix
There are also excellent TV opening credits that incorporate subtle (or dramatic!) changes to reflect the ongoing plot, so it’s almost a new experience watching each time. Game of Thrones famously has its ever-changing map, cluing you into all the locations featured in each episode (and the graphics of self-assembling castles are just done so well). She-Ra and the Princesses of Power changes its character tableaus, and even characters’ facial expressions, based on how relationships are shifting in the story. And of course WandaVision’s drastically different opening credits are a must-watch every time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STa1YUSoFvo&ab_channel=SylvieNatitaRomanoff
I also have a soft spot for some of the old 80s TV show opening credits, mainly because of the indelible theme songs. Knight Rider, The A-Team, Perfect Strangers, Family Ties. And I absolutely loved (and still love) the haunting theme song to Starman. Definitely sat down to watch it every time, and taught myself the opening arpeggio on keyboard. :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otx1ucwgl4I&ab_channel=DianaDeltaVenus
Oh, Starman! One of the loveliest, gentlest, most perfect sci-fi shows ever. Such a shame it didn’t last beyond one season.
Back in my pre-Flick Filosopher days, I published the first Starman fanzine. I’m still very proud of that. :-)
I never fast forward through any credits, but the best opening credits of all time may be from a lesser-known TV show:
https://youtu.be/ivFAuqpeaz4
The opening credits to What We Do in the Shadows are something I never fast-forward through. I love the retro 60’s folk-rock vibe of the song, and the visuals show us the vampires’ lives before they came to America, their voyage to America, and a little of their lives in Long Island.
Another show with a really great intro was True Blood. I seriously have never seen an intro that captures the southern Gothic mood better. “I wanna do bad things with you ….”
Someone else mentioned Game of Thrones, which of course had a wonderful song. The visuals changed every season and illuminated some of the action that would take place that season.
Luke Cage. https://youtu.be/La_ArLTXYCg
When I was a kid, it was the intro to Barretta that I really liked, but, altho’ I remember the song well, when I looked for the intro on YouTube, I couldn’t find a real one. They all seem to be pastiches or reconstructions.
I haven’t owned a television for decades (#notliketheothergirls), and almost never watch streaming shows; however, I remember as a child switching stations on Saturday mornings or afternoons after school to watch intro songs without sticking around to watch the episodes.
Like Bluejay and Jan, I loved the Perfect Strangers and Twin Peaks openings and also really dug the Reading Rainbow and Laverne and Shirley themes while being respectively too old and too young to have any interest in the shows. As a toddler, I was hypnotized by Shuki Levy’s Inspector Gadget and Wheeled Warriors openings despite never watching the cartoons.
I’ve always enjoyed beginnings more than middles and endings (of shows, films, and games) because there are still so many possibilities to spin out of a promising opening. A good intro suggests a vast scope and complexity to the worldspace that the products themselves often cannot fulfill.
More recently, I’ve enjoyed the Dark intros, partially for the music, but also because it’s fun to try and identify some of the more ambiguous images through the distortion of the Kaleidoscope/mirror effects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUiifh_aCLU
A Chuck Lorre sitcom, surprisingly or not, has had two of the best credits sequences of all time. The two (so far) very different seasons of B Positive have two very different sets of titles. You can watch both here, if you click a link or two, and be amazed at the superheroine that is Annaleigh Ashford:
https://www.justjared.com/2021/10/27/cbs-b-positive-has-new-opening-credits-for-season-2/
If the show were more willing to acknowledge that it’s about mortality and emotional wreckage, instead of trying to make senior citizens look adorable, I might be more willing to watch these days, for reasons other than staring at the wonder of Ashford.