TITLE SEQUENCES SERIES

“Television shows in the last decade have become the predominant art form over cinema,” Kenworthy says. His favourite? The sequence for Cheers, which “settles you in and makes you feel like you’re going into a bar and welcomes you.” “It has exactly the right feeling,” he adds. “Countless knock-offs came in its wake,” Kenworthy says – noting the danger of copy and paste jobs within title sequences. When HBO’s True Detective aired – a gritty detective drama set in Louisiana’s swampland – it was accompanied by a set of title sequences (created by Elastic studio) that became almost as popular as the show itself. It manages to mock scriptwriters and photographers while also setting up the tone of the acerbic television show. Making fun of what Kenworthy calls the “shit graphic design” of the period, the titles are a mix of Banksy-esque visuals and clipart motion graphics. The show’s a parody of metropolitan creatives, based in the fictional borough of Hosegate.

TITLE SEQUENCES SERIES

One of Kenworthy’s career highlights has been working on the titles for Nathan Barley, a 2005 short-lived series from Charlie Brooker and Chris Morris. Shynola has created the title sequences for 2006’s The IT Crowd, which immerses the viewer into a pixelated that mixes videogame visuals with the mundanity of working life. It meant that for months, the team became experts in shadowpuppetry. For this, the studio made shadowpuppet animals, and created an elaborate sequence using these visuals. The variety is made clear by a recent sequence for the BBC, on 2020’s adaptation of Watership Down. Glow’s titles could conceivably be the title sequence for one of those shows, he says. The studio looked into sports shows from the period, for niche sports that had become mainstream such as ten pin bowling.

The research process is thorough, Kenworthy says. It sets you up, before the show even starts with the question: “What type of Dracula is this?”

The atmospheric titles takes you inside Dracula’s blood system as viewers witness the “gradual formation of Dracula through his devouring of different characters”. He was intrigued by the idea of Dracula as “absorbing knowledge from his victims”. The BBC’s Dracula was a three-part series from Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat, and an updated version of Bram Stoker’s classic (and frequently told) story. “It’s a great signifier of what’s to come.” “My view is that if the title sequence is a bit rubbish, the drama is going to be quite rubbish,” he says. The first is to “lead the audience into the world or story”, and the other is to act as a quality litmus test. This elucidates the two functions of title sequences, according to Anderson. Sometimes he wants to skip through them, but if he’s taken a break, they’re an invaluable way to be “transported” back into the show’s work. The time and place for a sequence depends, he believes, on how quickly you are binge-watching. Highlights include: Benedict Cumberbatch’s fast-talking Sherlock Holmes (2010), BBC’s Dracula (2020) and the 2017 adaptation Little Women. “There’s a time and a place for a title sequence,” says Peter Anderson, who runs the eponymous London-based studio, which has created some of the most recognisable sequences on British television.

Title sequences