I think the Scrubs opening is pretty clever. Awfully complicated for a 10 second opening…
I also like Cheers and Everybody Loves Raymond.
And I was always in bed when my Mom would watch it on late night television, so I didn’t see the silhouettes until I was well into puberty. It made the hair stand up on the back of my neck every time.
Truly one of the great openings. What makes it even greater is that the entire sequence, except for the answering machine, is composed of still photographs. The power of editing…
Cowboy Bebop. One of the best opening title sequences I’ve seen on any show.
The closing credits of The Bullwinkle Show, especially when they blow up Jay Ward’s pseudonym Ponsonby Britt.
And the opening of Perry Mason used to scare me when I was a little kid.
Ok, so I’m a little old…
I love Buffy and Mystery!. Has anyone mentioned:
*The Addams Family
The Shield
The Adventures of Pete and Pete
Queer as Folk* (Both US versions)
I’m amazed it took this long for **Police Squad ** to be mentioned.
Yes, and in fact, the full line is
Goldfish shoals nipping at my toes
People have listed most of my favorites:
The Prisoner – I have the original opening on VHS, and it’s different. I hate it. The same scnese and music, but it’s cut differently. The standard opening is edited so much better. And the closing credits are great.
Hawaii Five o – really well-done montage and score
The Simpsons and Police Squad – each had its “joke of the week”. Actually, jokes of the week and musical reference in the case of the Simpsons. They siometimes throw in a joke at the end. Police Squad always did.
The Outer Limits – the original, with the Control Voice.
The Twilight Zone – all of the different ones on the original series, which managed to look wonderfully creepy over the years.
Here’s one no one’s Mentioned yet:
Suspense Theater – prime-time original dramas on a major network (NBC?) circa 1960. The opening featured animated almost-astick figures among geometrical backgrounds making dramatic movements and lunges. Great-looking stuf.
the Weird Al Show – actually, I’ve never seen it, but I heard the opening theme by Al Yankovic on his disc. I think he also did the original opening theme for Talk Soup, which is also on his record, although I never saw them use it on E!
Oh, and it’s strictly local, but the opening credits for WPIX’s Chiller Theater were cool. The original opening (or, at least, the oldest one I’m aware of) featured montages of shots from the cheapie movies they showed Over and Over and Over and Over:
The Ape Man
Attack of the 50-foot Woman
Plan 9 from Outer Space
The Cyclops
Forthunately, a video I purchased several years ago actually had this opening on it, so I can see it again after all these years.
The later opening , introduced in the mid- to-late 1960s, was in color, and was animated. It had a six-fingered hand rising out of a pool (of blood? mud?) and moving around while a voice said “Chilllllll-errrrrrrrrrrrrrr!”
The theme to the Jeeves and Wooster series.
Holy cr*p, Cal , did you ever just take me back! I loved both openings (Though I preferred the first)! Please, please, please tell me where you got that video!And wasn’t the theme music from yet another cheapie?
World at War and Inspector Morse. Also the opening theme from Angel.
Lots of great pieces of music mentioned here.
I don’t know what you mean by that. They always have a couch gag at the end of the Simpsons credit sequence. It’s the blackboard gags, at the beginning, that have been thin on the ground lately.
Jamie and the Magic Torch
At Home with the Braithwaites
The Muppet Show
The Gummi Bears
I totally concur with “Twin Peaks”–gentle, yet oddly disturbing.And nobody’s mentioned “NYPD Blue”. Or the very beginning of the opening credits for “LA Law” with the car trunk slamming shut. BTW, did any fans notice that after Arnie bought a Bentley, the trunk changed to a Bentley logo?
well my favorite openings would be China Beach and the one for American Gladiators
What do musical zombies do?
Decompose.
Oh, yeah, the Walking Dead credits are pretty memorable, maybe more for the insistent strings than anything else.
(Carnivale. Treme.)
The theme’s back story: Hugh Wilson asked the song writer to compose a closing theme. The composer recorded the music with nonsense lyrics with the intent to come up with actual words later. Wilson liked the song as is so the nonsense lyrics stayed.