10 TV title sequences that make you be like "damn"
Especially for you
OK you piss swilling toad stompers, Aerial Telly is aware that you like your "lists" of "things" and while he has longtime made a point to ignore everything you say, do and care about he has nonetheless graciously compiled a top 10 of memorable title sequences. Some will be visually impressive, some will successfully distil the essence of the show into 30 seconds, some will just be laffs. But rest assured that these are the definitive top 10 and that anyone who disagrees with this is a sick piece of shit with no more right to call himself a human being than Shane Meadows has to call himself a reliable chronicler of the English working class. Hit it.
Carnivale
My Name Is Prince kicked Wendy and Lisa out of The Revolution and has been a bug-eyed shivering crock of shit ever since. The pair waited two decades to exact revenge with this theme to HBO‘s dustbowl-of-the-weird Carnivale. The stirring air accompanies A52’s stunning graphics depicting global depression, European fascism and, yes, the eternal conflict of good versus evil. There’s tarot cards, the KKK & Jesse frickin’ Owens with art from Michelangelo, Raphael and Doré. Kind of puts the New Power Generation in perspective doesn’t
it?
John from Cincinnati
Nobody could explain what John from Cincinnati was about and the title sequence gives us few clues but as quasi-religious surfing dynasty drama opening credits go it is in a class of its own. Joe Strummer sang, some beach bums surfed and the world was all "huh?" You had to be there.
Battlestar Galactica
It’s about mankind being chased across space by genocidal monotheistic robots so of course Galactica was introduced each week by a woozy operatic Sanskrit prayer over scenes from the Holocaust on the colonies. Bear McCreary made it so.
True Blood
Jace Everett growls "I want to do bad things to you" over cut-and-spliced scenes: writhing bodies dancing at a bar; a charismatic white preacher laying hands on a black congregation; a Venus fly trap engulfs a baby frog; maggots devour a stop motion wolf ; a butterfly struggles from its pupa; red lips inhale some intoxicating smoky hell. Sex, death, rebirth, decay – it’s all there. The lengthy parade of grotesques that is the American South.
Deadwood
It was the world’s greatest show and the moody fiddle strewn titles give you a taste of what to expect: horses, whiskey, muck, blood, whores and gold. That and some seriously shitty dentistry.
The Shield
It may only last 10 seconds like the show itself it is an assault on the senses: raucous, manic, yelling and then it’s OUT.
Dexter
It’s just another day for serial killer Dexturd Morgan. I bet you could murder some bacon, Dex? You want blood orange with that?
Mad Men
Don’t look out the window Don – there’s a clumsy allegory out there! The Falling Man plunges down through a PowerPoint of modern American mythmaking, grabbing a 2008 Emmy award for Outstanding Main Title Design
along the way as the walls between external glamour and internal squalor disintegrate around him.
Veronica Mars
The greatest detective show in history needed a noir theme and in its final season it got one – the Dandy Warhols remix augmenting the new improved moody titles. If they sound sad it’s because they knew – nothing would ever be this good again. Did I mention you suck for not watching it?
Weeds
Look, we’re not saying that suburbs are identikit homogenous shitboxes that drive recently widowed moms to sell pot – what’s that? Oh, we are? OK then, carry on.
Imagined: Friday 25 February 2011