TV Openings

I miss lengthy TV openings.
A lot of shows now do that very short title burst, like Lost. In Lost though, it does work, as you have a great cold open, followed by a series of events so improbable and confusing that you need as much time and information as possible to unravel its mystery. On the other hand, every episode of Battlestar Galactica seems to have two openings. One to talk about the events of the past few episodes, and then followed by the main title which tells you pretty much everything that's happened since the very beginning of time. Let's be honest, if you didn't know that there were robots who kill humans and blew up some planets and now everyone lives on big ships fleeing from said robots then you probably jumped into the series a little too late.
I am, at this moment, watching the opening of Deadwood, and that is the sexiest opening I've seen in a long time. It's so well composed that combined with the quaint yet exciting fiddle music, you get the same feeling of enthrallment from one damn fine looking horse and some glittering gold as you do from bearded men hacking pigs apart and other men pulling teeth from their own mouths over the communal water trough. I feel certain that they could have put in a disturbingly close up shot of a heavy set man with a newspaper on the toilet and nobody would notice.

Also, at the end, the mighty fine horse turns out to be a ghost. This is awesome.

Another great opening is for Dexter; the serial killing vigilante, not the small boy genius who owns a laboratory (although the combination of those two could make for some great TV) (OK I just realised that that would be basically Batman). Anyway, the opening for Dexter is great, not only because of the obvious murderous connotations in his morning ritual, but also because of the great use of high speed camera, because everyone loves high speed camera. Fortunately, however, the creators decided against having Dexter stand underneath a large water balloon as it is popped,


or shoot a melon.