True Detective
LA-based Australian Patrick Clair won the 2014 Emmy for the haunting title sequence of HBO's brilliant drama. The 90-second sequence is visually arresting and complex, featuring double exposures, dissolves, industrial landscapes and superimposed, manipulated shots of the faces of Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, who play the burned-out Louisiana detectives making one last and desperate bid for salvation.
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American Horror Story
Eek. Kyle Cooper's (Se7en) 60-second sequence taps into a collective nightmare of subliminal horror. It's violent, confronting, unsettling and raw, and leaves viewers in no doubt of what lies ahead.
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Breaking Bad
An example of a sequence where simplicity and thematic relevance is rolled into one. In 18 seconds, the elementary table and the smoke of a meth lab render the letters of the title. A short and sharp entree to the thrilling and nervous world of Walter White.
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Dexter
As we watch the eponymous Dexter (Michael C. Hall) undertake his morning ablutions, we are treated to seemingly disparate images: a razor blade slicing through Dexter's stubble; a cooking knife dissecting raw meat; an egg splattering on a frypan; blood dripping into a basin; a mosquito obliterated mid-meal... The effect is visceral and queasy, macabre and hilarious, repellent yet alluring, much like the dark hero of the piece.
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Elementary
Network dramas are notable for their absence in the title sequence category of the Emmy awards, but this was a notable departure. A Rube Goldberg contraption is deployed to illustrate the unorthodox yet rigorously logical, cause-and-effect working of Sherlock Holmes' over-stimulated brain.
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Game of Thrones
Oscar-winning Australian editor Angus Wall created the attention-grabbing title sequences of Carnivale, Rome and Big Love before this striking Emmy-winner, which uses maps, Leonardo's machines and exquisitely rendered models of medieval cities to create the fantasy world of Westeros.
Mad Men
For a show that pulses to the mood of Madison Avenue circa 1960, it's fitting that Mad Men's Emmy-winning credit sequence would be reminiscent of Saul Bass's remarkable work on films such as Hitchcock's North By Northwest and Vertigo. The sequence shows the black-and-white silhouette of a businessman arriving at his office, which then implodes, dispatching him through a canyon of skyscrapers lined with advertising images.
Six Feet Under
By now we all know how Alan Ball's show ended – a teary six-minute flash-forward foretelling the deaths of the extended Fisher family. Yet from its first moments back in 2001, Danny Yount's Emmy-winning title sequence provided a roadmap of that finale. Yount says he initially pictured a day in the life of a mortician after hearing Thomas Newman's lyrical score.
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The Sopranos
This sequence might not rate as the most inventive, but it marked a new departure for TV. Tony Soprano's journey from Manhattan to his home in New Jersey references everyday urban locales, the ordinariness of which is a brutal counterpoint to the messy deeds that unfold in the mob drama.
True Blood
This sequences begins and ends in a primeval swamp, quite literally; in between comes a feast of icky imagery featuring outcasts of the human and animal races; hungry reptiles, hooded klansmen, good ol' boys, religious zealouts. It's one-part Dracula, one-part southern gothic.
