Little House on the Prairie is an American Western 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.

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