Soap is an American sitcom that originally ran on ABC from 1977 into 1981.

The show was created as a night-time parody of daytime soap operas, presented as a weekly half-hour prime time comedy. Similar to a soap opera, the show's story was presented in a serial format and included melodramatic plot elements such as alien abduction, demonic possession, murder, and kidnapping. In 2007 it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME," and in 2010, the Tates and the Campbells ranked at number 17 in TV Guide's list of "TV's Top Families".

The show was created, written, and executive produced by Susan Harris, and also executive produced by Paul Junger Witt (Harris' future husband) and Tony Thomas. Each returning season was preceded by a 90-minute retrospective of the previous season. Two of these retrospectives were made available on VHS in 1994.

The show aired for four seasons and 85 episodes. The final four episodes of the series aired as one-hour episodes during the original run on ABC. These hour-long episodes were later split in two, yielding 93 half-hour episodes for syndication.

In chemistry, soap is a salt of a fatty acid. Soaps are mainly used as surfactants for washing, bathing, and cleaning, but they are also used in textile spinning and are important components of lubricants. Soaps for cleansing are obtained by treating vegetable or animal oils and fats with a strongly alkaline solution. Fats and oils are composed of triglycerides: three molecules of fatty acids attached to a single molecule of glycerol. The alkaline solution, often called lye, brings about a chemical reaction known as saponification. In saponification, the fats are first hydrolyzed into free fatty acids, which then combine with the alkali to form crude soap. Glycerol, often called glycerine, is liberated and is either left in or washed out and recovered as a useful by-product according to the process employed.

Soaps are key components of most lubricating greases, which are usually emulsions of calcium soap or lithium soaps and mineral oil. These calcium- and lithium-based greases are widely used. Many other metallic soaps are also useful, including those of aluminium, sodium, and mixtures of them. Such soaps are also used as thickeners to increase the viscosity of oils. In ancient times, lubricating greases were made by the addition of lime to olive oil.

A television program (usually television programme outside North America), also called television show, is a segment of content intended for broadcast on television. It may be a one-time production or part of a periodically recurring series. A single program in a series is called an episode.

A television series that is intended to comprise a limited number of episodes is usually called a miniseries or serial. Series without a fixed length are usually divided into seasons or series, yearly or biannual installments of new episodes. While there is no defined length, US industry practice tends to favor longer seasons than those of some other countries.

A one-time broadcast may be called a "special", or particularly in the UK a "special episode". A television movie ("made-for-TV movie" or television film), is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in cinemas or direct-to-video, although many successful TV movies are later released on DVD.

A program can be either recorded—as on video tape or other various electronic media forms—or considered live television.

series (singular/plural) may refer to anything of a serial form:

See also: sequence