Top Ten TV Show Opening Credits

Television is a fantastic storytelling medium.  Unlike movies (unless its a movie franchise), where you only get 2 hours to tell your story and flesh out your characters and make you want to emotionally invest in one of the characters, TV shows get 12 or 24 hours per season to do all that and more.  It has the ability to leave you hanging by a thread with cliffhangers and I think the medium allows for more freedom once your show becomes something the fans will watch.  Of course, television fans are fickle and many a great TV show has been cancelled because it might just be a little too niche.  There is an important part of TV shows that often is overlooked but can definitely enhance your investment with the show itself and the characters in it.  The opening credits.  This is something that for as long as you are watching will be in every single episode.  If its a bad opening, you will dread having to listen to that minute or minute and a half every single time.  If its good, you will sing along with the theme song and it will actually become a part of the show.  This is a list with my favorite 10 TV show opening sequences.  There are a lot of TV shows running at this moment and there are thousands that have already come and gone.  There's no way for me to see them all, but from those I have seen, these are my favorites.

Top Ten TV Show Opening Credits

Honorable Mentions

How I Met Your Mother

This is probably one of my favorite sitcoms ever.  While the new stuff might not always be up to par with the older stuff, there are still episodes that make you laugh out loud.  Its a funny show with some really memorable characters.  Since there are about 22 minutes of actual show, the opening has to be quick but still give you a sense of the show that you are watching.  The makers of this show made a perfect opening sequence that consists of pictures of the gang hanging out.  This is a show about friendship and life and the pictures portray exactly that.  Short and sweet.

Mad Men

This show about the 1960s and the people who work in the advertising agencies during that time really took the world by storm.  It's mixture of incredibly smooth performances with smoking and drinking and beautiful women and it just feels like you are really watching something from that era.  It was definitely going to be a test to be able to make an opening that fit the series so well, but what they did is pretty creative.  These Mad Men, as the series calls them, have to adapt or be left behind.  The opening has a black and white figure who enters and office and then is falling down the side of the building.  As he falls, he can see a bunch of different advertisements go by him on his way down.  In the end, there is the figure on a sofa, laid back with a cigarette in hand.  It's just a cool sequence that really fits the series.  The sequence coupled with the great intro of a song by DJ RJD2 fit perfectly together.

10)

The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air

Ahh, the 90s.  They brought us the grunge movement, the beginnings of reality TV, and the rise of Will Smith.  I have a love/hate relationship with the 90s.  If there was something that I really enjoyed about it, it was definitely The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.  It's a funny show about "Will" who moved to his uncle/aunts house because his mother was afraid that he would get into a lot of trouble in his hometown of Philadelphia.  Hilarity ensues.  The intro for the show was perfect.  The song that Will Smith raps to explains everything you need to know to start watching the show.  You never really need to begin the series with the back-story because everything is explained in the intro.  If someone grew up in the 90s and can't rap you this song (the video has the long version... but the short version) they should be taken outside and shot.  It's really a reminder of my youth and really takes me back listening to it.   

9)

Elfen Lied

I didn't really want to add animated stuff to this list because I would never finish watching stuff to make this damn list.  When I started thinking about opening sequences, this one definitely came up quickly.  Whatever you think about the anime itself (I personally think that it is amazing), the intro to it is so different from what I'm used to that it caught me by surprise the first time that I saw it.  Normally you would get some scenes of the anime along with some silly J-Rock or J-Pop or whatever that absurd music, that is impossible to tell apart from every other, is.  This time, I was met with a beautiful arrangement of piano and violin and the stunning voice of Kumiko Noma as she sings a song based on Bible passages and in Latin.  Not only that, but what we see is the characters of the series being used in the famous works of Gustav Klimt (famous for "The Kiss" among others).  It's an incredibly beautiful and creative introduction to the series. 

8)

Battlestar Galactica

It's safe to say that when the Sci-Fi Channel (or Syfy?) decided to remake the 1970s show, nobody thought it would be a good idea.  The original had run for just one season and it wasn't really considered to be an incredible series except for the small cult following it retained.  People were banking on this to flop incredibly.  It didn't.  Instead we got an incredibly interesting sci-fi series that was complex (maybe overly so at times) and nuanced.  It was full of twists and turns.  The opening credits were, in my opinion, top notch.  The whole series was composed by Bear McCreary and Richard Gibbs and the whole thing has some amazing music.  After the introduction narrated by Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos), a slow and subtle orchestra plays while two female voices sing unintelligible stuff.  After that, it switches completely into a very fast paced arrangement that gets you excited about what is to come.  While the music mostly makes it worthwhile, I like that they show scenes of episodes that have passed and then during the fast part, they show a teaser of what will happen in the episode that's about to be shown.  I don't think the video I put in there has it, but they also show how many survivors there are in the human race still, which I think is a nice addition since it changes with every episode.

7)

The Sopranos

In 1999, HBO brought us one of the most well done series in a long time.  The Sopranos dealt with New Jersey mobster Tony Soprano and how his personal life and his business is affected by a myriad of things.  It was a really good series (even though the finale was pretty lame) but it was made even better by the really cool intro.  HBO has always done well with most of their opening sequences (you'll see more later) and this is one of them.  We see Tony Soprano in his car emerging from the Lincoln Tunnel and passing through different landmarks around the area that the series is set.  While this is going on, Tony smokes a cigar and the song "Woke Up This Morning" by the British band A3 plays.  It's a good song and a nice introduction to the show.  Any time you hear the static of the HBO logo, you immediately think of coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel.

6)

Fringe

This show began in 2008 and it quickly caught the attention of science fiction fans with an incredibly interesting story and a fantastic performance from John Noble (as Dr. Walter Bishop).  I also have to admit that some of the stuff between Joshua Jackson and Noble are pretty nice.  They have good chemistry together.  So, this team uses fringe science to resolve things that are unexplainable by other means.  The intro to the series uses these fringe sciences (or ideas) like synesthesia, wormholes, and retrocognition among other things while showing different symbols and images within a blue/green background.  The cool thing about this intro is that during the series, there is a parallel universe that is part of the main story and every time an episode is in one of the two universes, it changes from the bluish green to red and vice versa.  If the episode takes place in both, it interchanges the colors during one intro.  The music is one of the things I like.  Only hearing the music lets you know that this is a sci-fi show that you are about to see.   

5)

Dexter

This is an interesting show in and of itself.  It's strange to me that a show about a serial killer could get such a huge fan base.  The thing about this show is that it gets you to root for someone who is obviously not such a great guy.  Even though he tries to channel it into killing people who are bad, he's still not a good guy.  Beyond the philosophy behind the show, the creators of this show knew that in order to make this character into someone the public could sympathize with, they needed to make this show funny.  Not funny in a ha-ha way, but funny in a dark and goofy way.  That is the reason why the intro works so well for me.  It shows Dexter's morning routine.  What it does is show different actions that might seem like he is hurting someone (eg. the tying of the shoelaces and the hot sauce on the eggs).  The music is incredibly goofy but with an edgy 'something bad is gonna happen' feel.  In the end, he leaves his place and gives you the goofiest grin that Michael C. Hall could muster... and if you see the picture above, you know he can look goofy as hell.

4)

Game of Thrones

I reviewed Game of Thrones some time ago and I got to the conclusion that it was a damn good series.  Having read the books (except the latest one) the series is based in, and having expected this series for a while now, I was happy with it.  The performances are fantastic and while not as 'magical' as stuff like The Lord of the Rings, it still has a sense of wonder.  This is a series about family, politics and war.  The intro for this series works incredibly well with the show.  What they did is used some really nice instrumental music composed by Ramin Djawadi while the the intro plays.  Something that is really important for any fantasy show/book/movie is to set up the world we are going to be spending time with.  A simple map almost always works.  In this specific show's intro, we get a map but we also get a birds eye view of the places that specific episode will take you.  Winterfell, The Wall, King's Landing, Vaes Dothrak, they are all there.  Not only that but the designs of those cities come of the flat ground like an incredibly cool pop-up book.  Not only do the creators let the viewer see what Westeros is like, but you can position yourself in there and better understand the locations.  You know what King's Landing is before you see the first episode.  Which is kind of neat.

3)

The X-Files

There are very few series whose music has become pop culture icons.  The X-Files is just such a series.  Originally I had this one at number one solely based on the music.  Back in 1993, the series began to air.  It dealt with two FBI agents who dealt with the unexplained and the supernatural.  After 9 seasons, it is one of the most well remembered series of all time and a must see for any science fiction fan.  The intro begins with the logo for the show and the creepiest music you can imagine.  During the intro, there are different images of just strange stuff.  We are presented with our two main characters Fox Mulder and Dana Scully when we see their FBI IDs.  It ends with the words that have identified this series, "The Truth is Out There".  It is a great introduction because it sets up the mood perfectly.  Back then there was nothing like it.  Nothing as incredibly creepy which is why it eventually became such a hit.

2)

Firefly

It has been a long time since I have seen a show have so much of an impact on pop culture, even when the series was never really finished and cancelled during its first season.  Joss Whedon's Firefly was a show about the renegade crew that travel and live in the "Firefly" class spaceship Serenity.  What made it incredibly interesting to me was the mixture between space opera and a western.  It was like nothing I had seen before and I fell in love with it quickly.  One of the things I loved most was the opening sequence.  Joss Whedon wrote the lyrics and then they used the voice of blues singer Sonny Rhodes to give it life.  The music uses a lot of elements form the Southern blues genre which fits perfectly with the mood and theme of the show.  I love how it ends with a shot of the Serenity flying over a team of horses.  I also liked that when they are introducing the cast members, they show some of the traits that set them apart from the rest of the characters.  It's just incredibly well done.

1)

True Blood

It would have been really hard not to pick this specific opening sequence as the number one.  I fought with myself over the positioning of the first three but eventually decided to go with this one.  While I had a really hard time dealing with the first few episodes of this series, after a while, it grew on me.  It deals with Sookie Stackhouse (a telepath) as she deals with different supernatural species, especially vampires, who have finally come out and told the world that they actually exist.  The opening sequence to the show was created by Digital Kitchen (also responsible for Dexter's opening) and it plays with the song "Bad Things" by country artist Jace Everett.  The sequence has a lot of different images but mostly the idea is to give the viewer the setting and the overall tone of the series.  All the images are trying to portray a South that is both sexual and religious at the same time.  With scenes of exorcisms and baptism interspersed with dancing at a bar and other scenes of the scenery and family life in the South.  And truthfully, I find it hard to think of a song that better fits this sequence than Everett's "Bad Things".  The song is a little less country and a little more rock but it is a grimy song with a wailing guitar and themes that fit with the show.  Also, Jace Everett's deep voice whenever he says "I wanna do bad things with you", is almost as if you'd see this being said by any character in the show.  It's just a perfect marriage of the imagery and song with what the show is all about.