Ellen (TV series)

Ellen
Also known as	These Friends of Mine (season 1)
Created by	Neal Marlens Carol Black David S. Rosenthal
Starring	Ellen DeGeneres David Anthony Higgins Clea Lewis Joely Fisher Jeremy Piven Arye Gross Holly Fulger Maggie Wheeler
Theme music composer	Johnny McElhone Sharleen Spiteri
Opening theme	"So Called Friend", performed by Texas (seasons 3–5)
Composer	W. G. Snuffy Walden
Country of origin	United States
Original language	English
No. of seasons	5
No. of episodes	109 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producers	Mark Driscoll David S. Rosenthal Carol Black Tim Doyle Warren Bell Eileen Heisler DeAnn Heline Dava Savel Carol Black Neal Marlens Pamela Eells O'Connell Sally Lapiduss
Producers	Ellen DeGeneres Tracy Newman Jonathan Stark David S. Rosenthal Mark Grossan Richard Day
Camera setup	Multi-camera
Running time	30 minutes
Production companies	The Black/Marlens Company Touchstone Television
Original release
Network	ABC
Release	March 29, 1994 (1994-03-29) – July 22, 1998 (1998-07-22)[1]
Related
The Ellen Show (2001–2002)
Infobox instructions (only shown in preview)

Ellen is an American television sitcom that aired on ABC from March 29, 1994, to July 22, 1998, consisting of 109 episodes. Ellen DeGeneres stars as the title character of Ellen Morgan, a neurotic bookstore owner in her thirties. The title of the series was These Friends of Mine for the first season, but it was subsequently changed to avoid confusion with the NBC series Friends, which premiered in September 1994.

The series centered on Ellen's dealing with her quirky friends, her family, and the problems of daily life, set in Los Angeles. The series was one of the first in the US with a main character to come out as gay, which DeGeneres' character did in the 1997 episode "The Puppy Episode", which aired shortly after DeGeneres publicly revealed that she was gay in real life. This event received a great deal of media exposure, ignited controversy, and prompted ABC to place a parental advisory at the beginning of each episode.

The series' theme song (used in season 3 onwards) is a version of "So Called Friend" by Scottish band Texas with altered lyrics. A running gag during the third and fourth seasons was that each episode had a distinct/different opening credits sequence (often with singing and dancing and featuring popular celebrities as guest stars), resulting from Ellen's ongoing search for the perfect opening credits.