Lost (2004 — 2010)

Lost was created by Jeffrey Lieber, J. J. Abrams, and Damon Lindelof, who share story writing credits for the pilot episode, which Abrams directed. Throughout the show’s run, Lindelof and Carlton Cuse served as showrunners and head writers, working together with many other executive producers and writers. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii, the series was one of the most expensive on television, with the pilot alone costing over $14 million. The fictional universe and mythology of Lost were expanded upon by a number of related media, most importantly, a series of short mini-episodes called Missing Pieces, and a 12-minute epilogue titled “The New Man in Charge”. Lost has regularly been ranked by critics as one of the greatest television series of all time. The first season had an estimated average of 16 million viewers per episode on ABC. During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode.

Season 1 begins with the aftermath of a plane crash, which leaves the surviving passengers of Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 on what seems to be an uninhabited tropical island. Jack Shephard, a spinal surgeon, becomes their leader. Their survival is threatened by a number of mysterious entities, including polar bears, an unseen creature that roams the jungle (the “Smoke Monster”), and the island’s malevolent inhabitants known as “The Others”. They encounter a French woman named Danielle Rousseau, who was shipwrecked on the island 16 years before the main story and is desperate for news of her daughter, Alex. They also find a mysterious metal hatch buried in the ground. While two survivors, Locke and Boone, try to force the hatch open, four others, Michael, Jin, Walt, and Sawyer attempt to leave on a raft that they have built. Meanwhile, flashbacks center on details of the individual survivors’ lives prior to the plane crash.