Little House on the Prairie was an American one-hour dramatic television program, starring Michael Landon, about a family living on a farm in Minnesota in the 1870s and 1880s. The show was a loose adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s best-selling series of Little House on the Prairie books. It aired on the NBC network from September 11, 1974, to May 10, 1982. During the 1982-83 television season, with the departure of Michael Landon, the series was broadcast with the new title Little House: A New Beginning. The series itself was preceded by a two-hour pilot movie that first aired on March 30, 1974.

Series star Melissa Gilbert appeared in the majority of Little House episodes, and stayed throughout the entire run, missing 13 episodes, for a total of 190/203 episodes. Michael Landon appeared in all the episodes, for the first eight seasons, missing 4 episodes, and departed from the cast (when the show was retooled: Little House: A New Beginning), for a total of 179/203 episodes.