Best TV intro of all time?

BennyBlanco

aka IMurRIVAL69


I gotta go with Twin Peaks. The music. The saw mill sequence. Just does an amazing job at setting the tone for the show and I never skip it.

Other standouts to me:











If you had to pick one, what are you going with?
 
I nominate Crime Story (1986-1988). I think this one is from the second season, but I could be wrong.


Honorable mention to Sliders (1995-2000). This one is from the second season.
 
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Technically it was planned for a movie, but it got canned and shown on TV. So it counts IMO! Turns out, it wasnt released in theatres since Transformers Movie did bad so they balked. I remember seeing this on Buffalo29 as a two hour block on a weekend. I forget if it was Saturday or Sunday, but it was I think it was shown 5:00 to 7:00 pm.

 

Fuck, beaten. Loved how it would adjust based on events in the show. The one season with the kaleidoscope effects in the intro was confusing until a significant plot moment late into the season, and then it's like "ohhhh". The final season's version of the intro hits even harder, a culmination of a man who spent his whole life deflecting blame and avoiding lasting consequences having to face all the fuck-ups he made. Incredible show.
 


I gotta go with Twin Peaks. The music. The saw mill sequence. Just does an amazing job at setting the tone for the show and I never skip it.

I love how both the intro and show have a dreamy and nostalgic quality to them. I have not seen that anywhere else. Not even in sitcoms set decades before airing.
 
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Always loved how it was mainly timed just after some major fuck up or accident so it cutting to that part of Teardrop sounded like a slow ambulance siren and the visuals timed to it and shifting between the backdrops and old medical book images.
 
Six Feet Under

I'm kinda biased as it's my favourite show of all time and I love Thomas Newman's work:

Season 1-2 in 4:3


Season 5 in 16:9 (with extra sound cue @ 1:21)


But, it just gets me right in the feels. Cheery, playful music with perfectly timed cues in contrast to the stark, morbid imagery. Even the white fade into the death of the week and the subsequent Name/D.O.B-D.O.D in black text on a white background with the accompanying little sound idents. It just works.

Even though I watched the show a long, long time after the original airing (I was 10 when it started airing here). I have faint memories of it being around and -- I think -- coming on the tele. It's whole presentation paired with Newman's trademark sound it gives me heavy nostalgia, transporting me back to the early 2000s.
 
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I wish I could say something highbrow... but for me it's 80's TMNT.

I also still remember every word to the Captain Planet intro... which is peculiar.
 
Gotta add in The Sopranos. Like Six Feet Under I mentioned above, I watched it long after the original run, but got memories of the intro with Alabama 3's Woke Up This Morning coming on Channel 4 when I'd sneak up late at night.

 


Always loved how it was mainly timed just after some major fuck up or accident so it cutting to that part of Teardrop sounded like a slow ambulance siren and the visuals timed to it and shifting between the backdrops and old medical book images.


I'm in the UK and I only found out much later that House had Teardrop as its US intro much later.


This is the version I watched the show with when it broadcast here (strangely it's listed as the Singaporean intro, but it'd definitely the one we had originally):



Even though I absolutely love Teardrop and it totally works, my brain is basically hardwired at this point to only accept the UK/Singapore one even though it's more generic.


The rest of Europe got this bland thing:

 
I also think the Twin Peaks intro is glorious.

This thread is, however:

Do you remember this 90s (or older) tv intro?

And the resultant

"Oh God, I feel alive"
 
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