Original opening title sequences are an endangered species on television — many TV shows just show a simple title card or, worse, rely on AI-generated graphics in a not-so-Secret Invasion of nonhuman artistry. Streaming TV revived the art form for a moment before platforms offered viewers the chance to bypass the credits.
“The ‘skip intro’ button simply means that fewer shows will have main titles now,” Patrick Clair, who worked on the titles for Silo, 3 Body Problem, and Fallout, told Variety last year. “But the good thing is that it is a very intentional choice for a showrunner to have main titles. If it is there, it is because they want it to be part of the story.”
Indeed, the best opening title sequences set the tone of the show, complement the narrative, or just serve as an entertaining diversion from the drama at hand. Here’s our pantheon of TV’s best opening title sequences of all time.
13. The X-Files
In a certain light, The X-Files’ opening titles look like a PowerPoint presentation run amok, with sci-fi images and keywords like “paranormal activity” zooming in and dissolving away. But echoey synth and eerie whistling of Mark Snow’s theme ties it all together to an iconic 45-second sequence.
12. Only Murders in the Building
This mystery series’ animated titles introduce us to the show’s trio of amateur detectives as the camera pans across the windows of their Upper West Side building. And in a treat for armchair detectives watching at home, the titles include Easter eggs for each episode.
11. Desperate Housewives
Put-upon women of art history get their close-up — and their comeuppance — in a sequence that animates classic paintings by Cranach, Van Eyck, Wood, Warhol, and more. These women, like the Wisteria Lane wives, shoulder undue burden to the ingratitude of their husbands.
10. Mission: Impossible
What’s impossible is not feeling a rush of adrenaline with this spy show’s ever-changing title sequence. Each episode’s version shows flashes of action from that hour as a burning fuse starts a countdown punctuated by Lalo Schifrin’s theme.
9. Peacemaker
Peacemaker really commits to a bit. After the dance party of Season 1’s opening titles, Season 2’s sequence boasts an even bigger spectacle. The show’s characters — a bald eagle, included — keep a straight face as they perform extravagant choreography and as James Gunn finds the perfect needle drop for the moment.
8. True Blood
This vampire drama’s opening titles felt like the show itself: pulpy, impious, and as steamy as a Louisiana swamp. But there’s substance behind the style: The imagery likens the show’s anti-vamp attitudes to humanity’s long history of bigotry.
7. Pachinko
This drama introduced new opening titles in Season 2, but both versions feature cast members dancing to Grass Roots oldies in a pachinko parlor, their exuberance bounding off the screen, before the title of the show appears in Korean, Japanese, and English. The sequence is an ode to joy — and a juxtaposition to the narrative’s hardships.
6. The Twilight Zone
The titles of Rod Serling’s classic anthology evolved over the years, but each version had viewers biting their nails as they dared to unlock a door with the key of imagination. (And as far as we can recall, this is the only TV show intro to be recreated in a Disney thrill ride.)
5. Mad Men
Like the best ad copy, Mad Men’s opening titles are deceptively simple: An office disintegrates around a silhouetted Don Draper, sending him tumbling into oblivion, falling past the 1960s-era advertising covering the facades of Madison Avenue office buildings.
4. The Simpsons
The animated hit packs so much exposition into its titles: We see a rascally Bart, an absent-minded Homer, a good-natured Marge, a prodigious Lisa, and a playful Maggie, plus various other Springfielders and an iteration of the show’s couch gag. Instant classic.
3. Dexter
The titular serial killer’s morning rituals mirror his nighttime crimes in this sequence, in which ordinary actions — like shaving, preparing breakfast, and even flossing — look sinister when photographed in extreme close-up.
2. Game of Thrones
Detailed maps of fictional realms are a fantasy staple, but never were they as intricate as the globe around which the Game of Thrones titles tour us, with Westerosi turrets and fortifications rising mechanically out of the landscape as we see pertinent locations from the show.
1. Severance
Especially in Season 2, Severance’s titles are as sanity-stretching as the show itself: a shifting dreamscape populated by Lumon employees and their shadowy overlords. You may be counting sheep during this sequence, but you’ll never be sleeping.