Lost is an award-winning serial drama. It follows the lives of plane crash survivors on a mysterious tropical island, after a commercial passenger jet flying between Sydney, Australia and Los Angeles, United States crashes somewhere in the South Pacific.
Each episode typically features a primary storyline on the island as well as a secondary storyline from another point in a character's life. The series was created by Damon Lindelof, J. J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber, and is filmed primarily on location in Oahu, Hawaii. The pilot episode was first broadcast on September 22, 2004. Since then, four seasons have aired. Due to its large ensemble cast and the cost of filming in Hawaii, the series is one of the most expensive on television.
In May 2007, it was announced that Lost would continue for its fourth, fifth, and sixth seasons, concluding with the 117th produced episode in May 2010. These three final seasons were planned to consist of 16 episodes each, running weekly in the spring uninterrupted by repeats. However, due to the 2007–2008 Writers Guild of America strike, the fourth season was shortened to 14 episodes, including a three-hour season finale.
The fourth season premiered in the United States on January 31, 2008, and concluded on May 29, 2008. An additional consequence of the strike has been ABC's decision to extend the final two seasons of Lost by adding a seventeenth episode to each remaining season. Episodes from the first four seasons of the series began airing in off-network syndication in the U.S., distributed by Disney-ABC Domestic Television, beginning in September 2008.