The striking colors and graphic style are what catch the eye first. Magpie Murders Opening Titles from HUGE on Vimeo.

Take a look at the 'Magpie Murders' main titles: 'That's the balance, isn't it? We need to work out what's going to allude to the story and what maybe is too far past that line.' 'I think they decided that was too much of a spoiler,' Hanbury said after showing Salon the confidential image. He acknowledges it's a bit of a tightrope act, one that required he actually remove one image that may have given too much away. Much like a murder mystery novelist, Hanbury must dole out just enough clues to fascinate and flummox. What does that mean and what does this means? And then maybe that would make more sense as we went along.' My hope would be that people would find it exciting and intriguing. 'We want the titles to be something which gets the viewer excited about what they're going to see and gives them a flavor of what it's about. 'I often think it's a bit like a book cover,' Hanbury told Salon. Ben Hanbury of the Emmy-winning Huge Designs, fittingly was reminded of the publishing world while creating the series' main titles. Murder, she edited: In PBS' 'Magpie Murders,' Lesley Manville is a publishing world mystery sleuthĪnthony Horowitz adapted 'Magpie Murders' for TV based on his own novel of the same name. By the end, two resolute figures stand side by side as the series' title flashes onscreen. Throughout, Murray Gold's sprightly theme song plays, giving an upbeat energy to the cozy mystery. Another body plummets, only to dissolve into a flurry of books. A fountain pen literally becomes a sword.

Fluttering manuscript pages assemble themselves into a staircase down which a body falls. The graphically bold main titles – told in bright red and black illustrations – blend images one into another, oscillating between murder and writing imagery. The 'Magpie Murders' opening credits sequence encapsulates this dual narrative, traveling between the pages of the 1950s-set whodunit to the real-life mystery at the heart of the writer's death. What's worse, the novel's author Alan Conway (Conleth Hill) has also died, taking all answers with him. In the series, publisher Susan Ryeland (Lesley Manville) discovers that the final chapter (and therefore the solution) of the murder mystery she's editing is missing. That goes double for PBS' 'Magpie Murders' because of its mystery-within-a-mystery format. 1 for a whodunit: Don't give away the ending too early.

The magpie murders