Last year, Kanye West embarked upon a self-aggrandising seven-minute monologue during an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show. As this monologue hit full speed, West bellowed the following statement to nobody in particular: “Picasso is dead, Walt Disney is dead, Steve Jobs is dead. Name someone living that you can name in the same breath as them.”
This question has remained unanswered … until now. Because, although I don’t know the name of the genius in question, an heir has finally been discovered. The pattern now goes Picasso, Walt Disney, Steve Jobs and whoever invented Netflix’s “skip intro” button.
I’m increasingly of the persuasion that this tool is the greatest invention of the 21st century so far. It’s certainly the most satisfying. If you’re yet to experience its magnificent wonders, let me walk you through it, step by glorious step. You turn on Netflix. You choose a show. Its interminable title sequence lurches into action. A little rectangular button pops up in the bottom right of the screen. It says “skip intro”. You hit it. As if by magic, the title sequence goes away and you’re slap-bang into the show itself. It’s miraculous.
One little-discussed downside of Peak TV is that 95% of all title sequences are terrible. This is because there are too many prestige dramas and they’re all trying to prove that they’re more prestigious than the others. The fastest way for them to do this is to hurl every last ounce of pretension they can at the opening sequence. The signifiers have almost become rote now: if there’s atonal music and tiny writing and you start to lose the will to live about halfway through, you know this must be a really important series.
Prestigious opening titles have become such a lazy trope that lesser shows are starting to misuse them. The intro to Star Trek: Discovery, for instance, is as toweringly self-important as anything since the first series of The Leftovers. It is a monument to codswallop, dripping with references to the Renaissance up to and including Michelangelo’s fresco of The Creation of Adam, set to the sort of ambient chiming they play in tall lifts to stop people from freaking out.
Worse still, just when you think it’s done – because the words “Star Trek Discovery” pop up – it lumbers on for 13 more agonising seconds. This would be good if Star Trek: Discovery was actually prestigious, but it isn’t. It’s a workaday spin-off of three or four better predecessors. Show me someone who wouldn’t skip the Star Trek: Discovery intro, given the chance, and I’ll show you a masochist.
Same with Mindhunter. Its title sequence is novel the first time around – hey, a tape recorder really does look like a bit like a dead person’s face! – but watching all 95 seconds of it 10 times in a row, and listening to the title music, which sounds like someone tuning a railway station piano as slowly as possible, is too much to ask. We just want to see some serial killers. Of course we’re going to skip the intro.
Netflix has toyed with intro-skipping before. It used to start episodes automatically once the opening titles were finished, but the lack of choice irritated some. Now, though, you need only hit a button and – bang – the whole thing blows up, never to be seen again. It’s destruction of the most satisfying kind. It’s the televisual equivalent of being a drone pilot. I can’t get enough of it.
In an ideal world, all title sequences would be as short as the one for The Good Place, which is just a momentary white-on-green screen. A sequence like that proves that the show is desperate to tell you as much story as it can before time runs out. It tells you there’s no time to waste. Its exciting. But, until that happens, at least we’ve got this magical button. Its unknown creator should step forward immediately, so we can all throw flowers at them.
