Little House on the Prairie (1974)

This long-running NBC drama was based upon the best selling "Little House" series of books by Laura Ingalls Wilder.

The show follows the lives of a simple farming family, the Ingalls: Charles, Caroline, Mary, Laura, Carrie and then Grace and the later adopted Albert, James and Cassandra, who settle into a quaint little house on the banks of Plum Creek near the small town of Walnut Grove during the late 1800s. The majority of the shows were narrated by Laura and the series follows her from when she and her family arrive to Walnut Grove until her adulthood with Almanzo Wilder with whom she starts a family of her own.

Even though the series is based upon the books that were the real life of Laura Ingalls Wilder, the majority of the series plots are very loose adaptations, with only key events and elements of fact surviving the transition from book to TV series, the most important being Mary's eventual blindness, and Laura's future. Several other fictitious (some factual) characters make up the friendly community of Walnut Grove, including teacher Miss Beadle (succeeded by two other teachers, then Laura, then Etta Plum), Dr. Hiram Baker, Rev. Robert Alden, Mr. Hanson (of the Hanson lumber mill), and the well-to-do Olesons, owners of the local mercantile, and also the primary rivals of the Ingalls family (except the Oleson patriarch). Family friends include the Edwards family, the Garvey family and the Carters, who, in the final season, move into the Ingalls' little house.