There’s a lot of really wonderful ones, of course. Iconic, memorable, evocative: Mad Men, Sopranos, twilight zone, outer limits, Dexter, Se7en I’m sure there’s a contingent of people who would even hold up things like Gilligans Island and Brady Bunch
But for me, the credit sequence that is just flawlessly brilliant, endlessly watchable and listenable, that perfectly sets the mood and draws you into the story of the show is True Blood.
And I nominate it in spite of knowing that it’s about halfway ripped off from somebody else’s work, because it doesn’t change the fact that it’s just perfect for what it does and is for that show. I have never fast forwarded it watching the entire series the first time and in re-watching episodes and seasons in the years since. Never. It’s fun it’s watchable and it puts me right where I need to be to watch the show.
I’m partial to the credits on CLERKS 2. There was a special “thank you” to Rosario Dawson. Smith wrote (and I’m paraphrasing) “She’s such an awesome actress, she even made ME believe she’d fuck Dante!” Higher praise, I cannot imagine!
I never really appreciated other people’s appreciation… Everything went by too fast for me to take it in and think how cool it was. I always fast-forward through it cause I wanted to get to the episode!
A special mention for the opening credits on Francois Truffaut’s Fahrenheit 451 and the closing credits for Orson Welles’ The Magnificent Ambersons. Both are narrated, rather than written. The one for Fahrenheit 451 is especially appropriate, because the movie is about a post-literate society. Notably, while the offscreen voice is narrating the credits, the movie shows shots of television aerials on houses. Sadly, the point of that is probably lost in today’s straming cable TV culture.
The ones in Ambersons were done earlier, so get credit for originality. Orson Welles himself reads the credits, while the image shows something appropriate (such as a camera for cinematographer, a microphone for sound credit, etc.)
Anything by Saul Bass is worth watching, but I especially think his closing credits for Around the World in 80 Days (1956) deserves a lot of praise for being not only entertaining, but in lettin g you know who had which cameo without using words to explain it.
For me, that’s Season 1 of Peacemaker. A fun song, a great dance that gradually introduces all the major characters of the show, even if doing such a dance is a ridiculous notion for the characters, and so much going on that while you’re watching one thing, they pop something else up like sleight-of-hand, and so you have to re-watch it to see how they slipped that past you.
I was in a meeting, and someone came up with a plausible reason why something surprising had happened and the guy in charge said “Well, that might solve a mystery…”
“…or rewrite history!” I couldn’t help singing. But just loud enough that only the person next to me could hear. I don’t think they recognized it.
(See, I came in here to nominate some Saul Bass, but was thoroughly ninja’d, so thought I’d have some fun…) Duck Tales theme/earworm
The only TV opening credits I never once fast-forwarded or skipped through were for the show ‘What We Do in the Shadows’. I love the theme song, and the photo montage is interesting, wryly humorous, and subtly changed at times to reflect the current situations of the characters.
Maurice Binder did all but two of the James Bond title sequences from the first, Dr. No until License to Kill , but he also did other credit sequences that were memorable (as well as a mid-movie effect in the 1979 Frank Lengella Dracula). But I particularly like the one he did for 1963’s Stanley Donen film Charade:
Another old one – When I was a kid in the 1960s I saw The Mickey Mouse Club in syndication, and didn’t realize that the syndication opening credits were a poor, abbreviated version of the original opening credits (as often happened with syndicated shows). It wasn’t until the internet came around that I finaly saw the full opening credits (and song). As a bonus, Disney had animated it all in color. The original broadcast and the syndicated ones were in black and white.
The credits gave us the first look at an animated Uncle Scrooge 9who’d only appeared in comics until then). It also gave us an ever-changing “Donald Duck Gong” gag, where something different happened when Donald struck the gong at the end.
‘Way before Simpsons “couch gags” or “Blackboard gags”. Possibly the first TV opening credits rotating gag:
