Off and on here, I'm going to link to videos of openings I liked for TV shows. In some cases, I didn't like the show but I liked the opening.
This is the original opening for The Odd Couple with Jack Klugman and Tony Randall. The voiceover is done by Bill Woodson, a charming and witty man who has been doing commercials and announcing for decades. I always thought it was odd that the text makes a point of saying that though Felix's wife had thrown him out, he knew in his heart that one day he would return to her. Why did they say that?
First of all, is it even true? I don't recall any such sentiment on the part of Felix in the Neil Simon play, the movie based on it or the series. In the play and movie, the idea was that Felix had to accept the notion that his marriage was over and that he had to begin building a new life for himself. In the series, it seemed like the roommate situation was a permanent condition except for one episode here and there. So I'm wondering why they felt they had to say he'd return to the woman who'd thrown him out.
The same season that The Odd Couple debuted, The Mary Tyler Moore Show premiered on another network. As has been oft-reported, its writers originally intended that Mary be starting a new life following a divorce. The CBS folks objected, saying that America wouldn't like her; that despite the high separation rate in America, the nation still preferred to think of marriage as the natural state of all decent people. So Mary Richards became a woman who'd never married. Was the same concern at work over on ABC with The Odd Couple? Obviously, given the source material and premise, they couldn't say that Oscar and Felix hadn't been divorced. But it's easy to imagine a meeting in which concern is voiced in this direction and someone says as a compromise/concession, "Don't worry…we'll put something in the opening titles that says that even though Felix left his wife, they'll eventually get back together."
Garry Marshall, who was one of the producers, often tells the story of when they filmed this opening and other exterior shots around New York. They had a limousine to transport Klugman and Randall around and for them to wait in while shots were set up. Unfortunately, they only had the one limo and Klugman — as yet unaware of what it would do to his voice — was smoking constantly. Randall was a militant non-smoker and kept complaining that Klugman was rendering the interior of the car uninhabitable. This was early in the association and so Jack and Tony got their new partnership off to a fitting start by arguing incessantly. It was a good training ground for the series which opened like this…