The Shield.
+1
This is hardly as rare as the OP suggests.
I think all of the Star Trek series had cold opens (I can’t speak to TAS, since I haven’t seen it since I was a little kid).
Yeah…Isn’t the answer “almost all of them”? I can’t think of any shows I watch now that don’t do a cold opening, nor any I’ve watched in the past 20 years that didn’t.
Monty Python did this regularly in the sixties. In one show the opening credits were almost at the end.
**NCIS
The Closer** pretty much dispenses with credits entirely.
Live from New York…It’s SATURDAY NIGHT (live)!!!
Eureka and Warehouse 13 both have extended cold openings.
Actually, upon further reflection, the thread topic might be slightly improved if we talk about specific gimmicks that shows used in their cold openings, such as somebody yelling “Live from New York…” etc.
The first few years of Monty Python Flying Circus, the show had a dishevelled old man (played IIRC by Palin) exclaiming “It’s…” right before the credits play (and an offscreen announcer identifies the show’s title.)
The show “Welcome Back Kotter” always began with star Gabe Kaplan (Kotter) at home with his wife, and him asking “Julie, did I ever tell you the story about [some relative]?” She would say no, and he would tell a corny joke story about some misadventure the relative in question.
I could only think of one that didn’t do it as a rule: The Sopranos, which IIRC did it exactly once.
MacGyver usually did the cold open with him at the end of a mission, and then after the credits on to his real mission for the week.
I don’t know about “cold openings” but in most teleplays, this part is referred to as the teaser.
Bri2k
30 Rock does it. Usually with an establishing shot of the eponymous building.
The X Files
I think that’s a function of CBS, rather than how it’s originally filmed. They’ll be a scene or two that are clearly supposed to be a cold open, but the show keeps going and the guest star credits show up, and then, finally, the opening sequence. Maybe the Canadian length of cold open is too short for them?
I laughed.
I don’t know this to be correct, but I think there’s a difference between a cold open and a teaser, in that the cold open is in some way detached from the narrative. For instance, Futurama used to do this a lot in its first couple seasons, and it would just be a one-off joke or, sometimes, a fake commercial.
A teaser, in contrast, is when the central conflict of the episode is established in dramatic fashion. (Star Trek being the king of this device.)
House and Supernatural, et al., are somewhat combined in that the first scenes typically show some never seen before characters who are about to suffer a terrible fate that the main characters soon arrive to solve over the next 40 minutes.
Shows where the credits sequence is simply pushed back until after the narrative is well underway aren’t the same type pf thing at all. (LOST is what comes to mind for me – it wasn’t uncommon for 10 minutes to go by before the title screen.)
–Cliffy
Pretty much everything I watch nowadays.
A better question might be “Who doesn’t use it”.
Psych employs a cold open that starts with a scene from Shawn and Gus’s childhood/adolescence that shows the principal of detection that will come into play in the investigation of the episode, then segues into the present, with the crime of the week.
Cold Case also employed the “start with the past” cold open, showing the crime of the week (or the setup of it) back when it originally happened, with contemporary music (often misdated, bad research on that) as the backdrop. We always saw the file boxes with the case name and date being shelved in the cold case warehouse, then the segue into the present.
The cold open for Pushing Daisies also tended to start in the past, telling about some sad part of the childhood of The Piemaker or Charlotte Charles, denoting age in explicit detail, such as “The Piemaker was 10 years, 5 months and 19 days old when…”
The latest Batman cartoon, The Brave and the Bold.