Indian soap opera

Indian soap operas or Indian serials are soap operas written, produced, filmed in India, with characters played by Indians with episodes broadcast on Indian television.

India's first soap opera was Hum Log, which concluded with 154 episodes. Yeh Rishta Kya Kehlata Hai is the longest running Hindi serial in the history of Indian television with 2365+ episodes as of 17th April 2017 (2009 - still running). Balika Vadhu is the second longest hindi serial with 2245 episodes (2008-2016).

The most common languages in which Indian serials are made in are Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil, Kannada, Odia, Telugu, and Malayalam.

Indian soap operas are also broadcast in South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa and francophone Africa.

India's first soap opera was Hum Log, which first aired in 1984 and concluded with 154 episodes, was the longest running serial in the history of Indian television at the time it ended. It had an audience of 60 million. Every episode was about 25 minutes long, and the last episode was about 55 minutes. At the end of every episode, veteran Hindi film actor Ashok Kumar would discuss the ongoing story and situations with the audience using Hindi couplets and limericks. In later episodes, he would introduce the actors who played characters in the serial and end his monologue with the Indian language versions of the words "Hum Log."

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