Longest Running US Drama Shows

List of the longest-running TV drama shows in US history. These dramatic TV series have more episodes than any others in American television. Some of the shows ran and have since gone off the air or been canceled, while others remain ongoing and are still being produced. Typically, these shows were collected into "seasons" of television, each with a pre-set amount of episodes. Sometimes, these seasons were broken up, in some cases with years between production of the series, while still being considered the run of a single TV show. (Spin-offs and other shows that were reinvented and debuted as new series - for example, the "Law & Order" franchise - are not considered.) This list contains all the longest-running shows in the history of TV drama.

Of the longest-running drama series in United States TV history, only a few examples are still on the air, and all are from the police procedural genre. "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation" is currently the longest-running dramatic show, with 229 episodes spaced out over 11 seasons. The second-longest-running current show as of the writing of this list was "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," with 224 episodes over 10 seasons. (The original "Law & Order" series ran for 20 seasons before airing the series finale on May 24, 2010.)