Gilligan’s Island is an American television situation comedy originally produced by United Artists Television. It aired for three seasons on the CBS network, from September 26, 1964 to September 4, 1967. It was originally sponsored by Philip Morris & Company and Procter & Gamble. The show followed the comic adventures of seven castaways as they attempted to survive and ultimately escape from a previously uninhabited island where they were shipwrecked. In 2002, Gilligan’s Island came back as a reality show, similar to Survivor, in which seven contestants were shipwrecked on an island. They then had to re-create the original Gilligan’s Island sitcom with costumes and props.

Gilligan’s Island ran for a total of 98 episodes. The first season (consisting of 36 episodes) was filmed in black-and-white, though colorized in later syndication. However, the next two seasons (62 episodes) and three television movie sequels were filmed in color.

Enjoying solid ratings during its original run, the show grew in popularity during decades of syndication. Today, the title character of Gilligan is widely recognized as a comedic American popular culture icon.

Premise

The two-man crew of the charter boat S. S. Minnow and five passengers on a “three-hour tour” run into a tropical storm and are shipwrecked on an uncharted, uninhabited island somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. The episode “The Pigeon” places the island approximately 300 miles (480 km) southeast of Hawaii, while the episode “X Marks the Spot” gives a location near 140° longitude, 10° latitude, which puts it about 1,200 miles (1,900 km) to the southeast. In the episode “Big Man On a Little Stick,” however, the Professor gives the position as “approximately 110° longitude and 10° latitude”. Executive producer Sherwood Schwartz believed in avoiding exposition, and so he composed the sea shanty-style theme song, “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Isle,” as a capsule summary of the castaways’ predicament. This was done so that first-time viewers would instantly understand the premise (studio executives were reportedly afraid that viewers would be confused about the show’s concept without some form of explanation). He took the same approach with the themes to The Brady Bunch and It’s About Time.