Watch the Six TV Title Sequences That Could Win an Emmy This Year

TV show title sequences are more than just something to fast-forward through, sometimes they’re just as fun to watch as the show itself. And this year’s nominees for Outstanding Main Title Sequence are just that—entertaining in their own right, while giving viewers a sense of what their show is about. So without further ado, here are this year’s nominees:

American Horror Story: Freak Show (FX)

The fourth installment in the anthology series, which focused on the struggles of a fading-with-the-times carnival freak show, garnered the cable network its third nomination in the category. The creepy theme tune—reminiscent of a circus gone terribly wrong—coupled with stop-motion footage of various broken clown dolls serve as a great teaser of the terrifying Twisty the Clown, while also capturing the show’s freak show aesthetic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFLKPMLdR2c

Marvel’s Daredevil (Netflix)

The streaming service’s first foray into the superhero show genre focused on bringing popular hero Daredevil to the small screen. The series follows the blind Matt Murdock, a Hell’s Kitchen lawyer by day, a masked vigilante by night as he attempts to dole out justice—often bleeding in his quest to fight the corruption slowly seeping into New York City. Daredevil‘s opening title sequence perfectly captures this as it shows blood falling onto different invisible New York City landmarks, rendering them visible, before eventually culminating in a reveal of the hero himself in his iconic red costume.

Halt and Catch Fire (AMC)

The tech-inspired period drama may have missed the cut off for last year’s round of nominations, but this year the show’s opening sequence made its way onto the nominee list. Building on the show’s focus—the personal computer revolution in the ’80s—the title sequence brings to life the spark of innovation and sees it race past glitchy, red imagery of the cast, all at once showcasing the competitiveness of the era, while also harkening back to 2001: A Space Odyssey‘s all-knowing supercomputer HAL.

Manhattan (WGN)

The cable network’s second original series follows another historical technology race, only this one centers around the research and development of the atomic bomb. The period drama’s title sequence deftly manages to combine the scientific with the human as the town’s layout gets transformed into blueprints and footprints make their way through equations, before underscoring the show’s subject matter with an explosion of dots that are revealed to be silhouettes of humans gathering.

Olive Kitteridge (HBO)

A picture contain a thousand words, but the opening sequence of this HBO miniseries only offers up a few clues as to who this titular character is. Between a doughnut’s powdery sugar being translated into a bleak snowy landscape and a flower made of pills, viewers know to expect the tale of Olive’s inner sadness.

Bosch (Amazon)

The adapted-for-streaming cop drama puts its home city of Los Angeles front and center with its opening sequence, where it offers up two opposing angles to each shot. This perfectly embodies the procedural’s propensity for showing that there is more than one side to each story.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYXPEcE4yVk

And don’t forget to visit the TV Insider Emmys page for more coverage.

The Primetime Emmy Awards, hosted by Andy Samberg, will air September 20 on Fox.