Happy Days
It's from 1974, before you were born.
- Network
- ABC
- Genre
- Sitcom
- Premiered
- 1974
- Breakout character
- The Fonz
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About
As of 2026, it's 52 years old.
Happy Days served up a sunny, nostalgic vision of 1950s America and then accidentally created two pieces of permanent pop-culture vocabulary: the Fonz, the leather-jacketed coolest man alive who could fix a jukebox with a single punch, and 'jumping the shark,' the phrase for when a show goes one stunt too far (which it did, with an actual shark).
It made Henry Winkler's Fonzie such a phenomenon that a network briefly considered renaming the whole show after him.
Wholesome, iconic, and forever linked to a leaping shark, Happy Days is the comedy that gave us a leather-clad legend and the perfect term for going too far.
Happy Days season by season
Happy Days ran for 11 seasons (1974–1983) across 252 episodes. You're older than the seasons in green.
