Gilligan's Island

Gilligan's Island is an American sitcom created and produced by Sherwood Schwartz. The show's ensemble cast features Bob Denver, Alan Hale Jr., Jim Backus, Natalie Schafer, Tina Louise, Russell Johnson and Dawn Wells. It aired for three seasons on the CBS network from September 26, 1964, to April 17, 1967. The series follows the comic adventures of seven castaways as they try to survive on an island where they are shipwrecked. Most episodes revolve around the dissimilar castaways' conflicts and their unsuccessful attempts to escape their plight, with the ship's first mate, Gilligan, usually being responsible for the failures. Gilligan's Island ran for 98 episodes. All 36 episodes of the first season were filmed in black and white and were later colorized for syndication. The show's second and third seasons (62 episodes) and the three television film sequels (broadcast between 1978 and 1982) were filmed in color. Gilligan's Island received solid ratings during its original run, then grew in popularity during decades of syndication, especially in the 1970s and '80s when many markets ran the show in the late afternoon. Today, all of the characters of Gilligan's Island are recognized as American cultural icons. Premise The two-man crew of the charter boat SS Minnow and five passengers on a "three-hour tour" from Honolulu run into a storm and are shipwrecked on an uncharted island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. (The exact location is said to be in conflicting longitudes/latitudes in three episodes.) Their efforts to be rescued are typically thwarted by the inadvertent conduct of the hapless first mate, Gilligan. In 1997, show creator Sherwood Schwartz explained that the underlying concept, people with different characters and backgrounds being in a situation where they need to learn how to get along and cooperate with each other to survive, is still "the most important idea in the world today".