14 TV Shows That Have Eclipsed 10,000 Episodes
In the ‘50s, you could sneeze out a show pitch and NBC would give you a 90-year deal
Jeff Goldblum can’t get a second season on Netflix, but Agriculture Vision has been pumping out episodes day after day since the ‘60s.
‘Barátok közt’ (10,000)
This Hungarian soap opera, about a fake neighborhood in Budapest, packed two separate episodes into every weekday of their 23-year run. They wanted to go out on top, so they scheduled a 40-minute primetime finale when ratings started to dip in 2020.
‘All My Children’ (10,000)
Prolific soap opera head writer Agnes Nixon started cooking up her fictional Philly suburban drama in the ‘60s, and finally got it on the air in 1970. It thrived for decades before fizzling out as a web series in 2013.
‘One Life to Live’ (11,000)
While she was still pitching All My Children, ABC assigned Agnes Nixon to come up with something more on-brand, and One Life to Live was rushed out of the oven two years before All My Children. The former has the latter beat by around 400 episodes.
‘Coronation Street’ (11,000)
The bigwigs at Granada Television almost passed on what would become a seminal piece of British culture. They’ve produced two episodes a week since 1960, then ramped it up to six per week in 2017. While not the most prolific, it’s recognized as the longest-running program in history.
‘Access Hollywood’ (11,000)
Our first non-soap opera. It started out being broadcast locally on various NBC affiliates around the country in 1996, and it quickly blew up. In the Trump era, it screwed around with various spin-offs and rebrandings that nobody asked for — for instance, it tried to call itself simply Access in 2017, before going back to Access Hollywood in 2019.
‘Des Chiffres Et Des Lettres’ (13,000)
This is the first and only game show to make the list — a mixture of word and number puzzles. It translates from French to “some numbers and some letters,” which is an appropriately nonchalant, laissez faire approach to TV production. When it debuted in 1965 it was even lazier — there weren’t numbers, only letters until 1972.
‘The Young and the Restless’ (12,000)
In production since 1973, this has turned into a rotating cast of various Wisconsin weirdos. But there’s one character, Jill Abbott, who’s been around for the whole thing, and her beef with Katherine Chancellor holds the record for longest soap opera rivalry.
‘Eat… Bulaga!’ (13,000)
This is a Filipino mid-day variety show. Hosts Tito Sotto, Vic Sotto and Joey de Leon have run the show since its inception in 1979, but they didn’t get paid for over a year at the beginning of their run, and the show was nearly canceled because of it.
‘As the World Turns’ (13,000)
This show has seen a lot of crazy shit, both in-universe and in the real world, since it started in 1956. The day Kennedy was assassinated, the actors overheard a camera guy say, “Don’t tell the actors what? The President’s been shot?”, and then had to continue acting for the live broadcast.
‘Days of Our Lives’ (14,000)
Days of Our Lives has been cruising nearly every weekday since it started in 1965, and has intersected with real life a bunch of times. High-profile fans have appeared on the show (Julia Roberts, Thurgood Marshall), while the show’s actors have made cameos on Days parodies on other shows (SCTV, Friends).
‘General Hospital’ (15,000)
General Hospital is runner-up on a whole lot of longevity lists, but it takes the cake in the awards department, holding records for the most overall Daytime Emmy Awards, and most Outstanding Drama Series wins (14).
‘Guiding Light’ (15,000)
Guiding Light aired from 1952 to 2009, making it the longest-running soap opera of all time (although General Hospital is closing in).
‘Krishi Darshan’ (16,000)
After all these freaking soap operas, here’s where things really get interesting. In a way. Krishi Darshan (or “Agriculture Vision”) was started as a public service broadcast in 1967, providing crucial information to farmers across India. The demand for this information has only increased, and in 2015 the show was moved to an entire farm-specific channel.
‘Unser Sandmännchen’ (22,000)
This is a series of kids’ bedtime stories produced using stop-motion animation. It’s incredibly impressive that this level of craftsmanship beat out all the schlocky, low-budget soap operas that infest this list, and by such a wide margin. In 1958, a West German broadcaster produced a special called, ominously, Sandmännchen’s Greeting to Children. A few weeks later, an East German broadcaster ripped it off. Both were a hit, and for a few decades, there were two parallel shows: Unser Sandmännchen (East Germany) and Das Sandmännchen (West Germany).
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