When comparing the quality of various shows, the credits aren’t what most people think of. Yet the opening credit sequence plays an integral part in every series. Whether long or short, stylish or simple, the credit sequence helps set the mood and establish the style of what is to come.
HBO is renowned for the quality of its original series, bringing–as its name implies–a movie theater experience to living rooms and phone screens. It has played host to numerous series over the years, differing in genre, mood, and scope. What they have in common is a commitment to the best of cinema. Here are the best opening credits HBO has to offer.
10 Big Love
The cracking ice and final image of the cosmos may feel a tiny bit forced and out of place, but that’s not enough to drag down the otherwise splendid opening of Big Love. The soft lighting, spinning camera, and tender looks shared between the cast members perfectly capture the show’s themes.
Season Four’s “fall into blackness” credit sequence is arguably a misstep, losing much of the visual and thematic interest of the original, but there’s no denying the power and intrigue of the sequence that started it all in Big Love.
9 Carnivale
As the camera dives into and leaps out of tarot cards, the images on those cards come to life: dust bowl farmers, people standing in soup lines, Klan members, and fascists twitch and flicker into motion. The combined effect is that of a collage or kaleidoscope.
Some series are more direct than others, and Carnivale makes it clear from its first moments that symbolism and what goes unsaid will be critically important. While it’s not necessary, strictly speaking, for an opening sequence to demonstrate that kind of thing, this declaration of the series’s intentions is a fun wink to returning fans and a beckoning hand to those watching for the first time.
8 True Blood
Like the opening of Carnivale, the opening of True Blood is a slickly edited montage of documentary images. Here, however, old clips are sandwiched in between modern ones of scantily clad bodies, biting snakes, and a decaying fox carcass.
The overall effect may be more modern, but it’s no less symbolic, a perfect match for the show. The opening theme music fits neatly as well, groovy and dark. Is the implied edginess and sexiness of it all a bit forced? Yes. That does little to detract from the opening’s overall effect, however.
7 Little Britain USA
The snide, sardonic, condescending narration of this show’s opening is the ideal complement to its rousing, inspirational music. Little Britain USA is a show that wants to mess with the audience, their views, and their expectations.
Why a mustachioed man standing on a suburban street wearing an astronaut’s suit is so disconcerting is hard to place, but it absolutely is, and that’s what the series wants. It doesn’t help that every actors’ facial expression is subtly wrong, disconcerting in the manner of those paintings that follow people with their eyes as they pass. Capturing the absolute weirdness of the series in 36 seconds is a feat, and these credits pull it off.
6 Rome
Blurry, slow-motion footage of people moving through the streets of ancient Rome, while graffiti shifts and moves on the walls behind them. The music accompanying Rome’s opening credits helps set the mood. It’s a moody, majestic piece.
The camera cuts too quickly for one to absorb the graffiti and the story it’s telling the first time one sees it, giving viewers a reason to watch the opening credits with each new episode. Many opening credits are satisfying on a visual or musical level, but Rome manages to be satisfying on a narrative level as well. It’s magical.
5 Six Feet Under
A good intro song can strengthen a show’s opening credits, but a great intro song can transform it altogether. The opening credits of Six Feet Under feature troubling images: a cemetery, ravens, rotting animals, and a dead body undergoing mortuary preparation.
If accompanied by horror movie strings or piano the likes of John Carpenter’s Halloweentheme, the opening credits could be slotted into most horror movies and feel at home. Instead, the music is thoughtful, whimsical, tense for the briefest of moments before becoming somehow uplifting. When people say “one of a kind,” they mean this.
4 The Newsroom
The Newsroom’s introduction is carefully calculated to cash in on viewers’ nostalgia for and romantic notions of bygone days of television journalism, when a handful of influential newscasters, supported by a tireless, indispensable, all-but-invisible staff, brought the day’s news to the public night after night. It is and feels like an Aaron Sorkin production. It is glossy, bustling, and thick with references.
Even the style of the cuts and transitions is meant to evoke a particular feeling of reverence for The Newsroom, and it does. Its dedication to this specific angle won’t please everyone, but when it’s this good it doesn’t have to.
3 Sex And The City
New York is more than just a setting in Sex and the City: it’s a constant presence in and influence upon the lives of the protagonists, so much so that it’s featured in the show’s title. The uniquely wonderful, and dysfunctional, aspects of New York are on display everywhere throughout the series.
The opening credits with their quick shots of skyscrapers, streets, and bridges, accompanied by energetic music, sets a tone that the plot picks up once the credits have finished rolling. Carrie Bradshaw’s gasp of surprise as a passing car splashes her with water, even as a bus ad featuring her own face rolls by, is the perfect synopsis of the character’s experience.
2 The Sopranos
The opening credits of Sex and the City and The Sopranos share a fascination with New York, but the tone and themes implied are worlds apart. With its focus on factories, power lines, and pizzerias, The Sopranos’s opening has a decidedly edgier tone.
Tony cruising between New York and New Jersey, cigar in mouth, past the Twin Towers and other landmarks of the era is a vibe that hits different from any other show. It doesn’t hurt that Alabama 3’s “Woke Up This Morning (Chosen One Mix)” is one of the most iconic intro songs of all time.
1 Game Of Thrones
As the camera soars over a lavish, interactive map of Westeros, in which clockwork versions of King’s Landing, Winterfell, and other notable places arise, one cannot help but be struck by the attention to detail that went into making the explosively popular HBO series what it was.
Game of Thrones needed to be every bit as epic as George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, and it all started with this legendary intro sequence. Even minor details like the rippling, fabric texture of the oceans, and the metallic sheen of the credits themselves are handled with care. No part of this sequence was overlooked, and the booming, transcendent music makes sure you know it.
