The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera, first broadcast on CBS on March 26, 1973. It was created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell, who set their show in a fictional version of Genoa City, Wisconsin, a town near their annual vacation home in Lake Geneva.

When it debuted, the show originally focused on the personal and professional lives of two core families in Genoa City: the wealthy Brooks family and the poor Foster family. After a series of recasts and departures in the early 1980s, most of the original characters were written out and the show shifted to the Abbotts, the Newmans, and the Williams families. Y&R is one of the very few TV shows to successfully write out their original cast, and to replace them with new ones. One basic plot that has run throughout almost all of the show's history is the rivalry between Jill Abbott and Katherine Chancellor as well as the bitter rivalry between Victor Newman and Jack Abbott.

The series was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week. It was expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. Young and the Restless is currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television. As of 2008, it has appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen Ratings in that category for more than 1000 weeks since 1988.