Amrutham (lit. 'Elixir') was an Indian Telugu-language television sitcom created and produced by Gunnam Gangaraju. It originally aired on Gemini TV for six years from 18 November 2001 to 18 November 2007 in 313 episodes. It is widely regarded as the greatest Telugu comedy TV series of all time. Most of the episodes were written by Gunnam Gangaraju along with Vasu Inturi who also played the character of Sarvam. Amrutham is especially noted for its clean, family-friendly humour and its satirical takes on everyday issues. The topics of satire are diverse — soap operas, popular films, competitive exams, superstitions, game shows, contemporary politics, current affairs etc.The show centers on four characters: Amrutha Rao and Anjaneyulu (Gundu Hanumantha Rao), childhood friends and owners of the restaurant Amrutha Vilas in Hyderabad who come up with quirky and creative ideas to improve their restaurant business and get rich, but fail with hilarious consequences each time; Sarvam (Vasu Inturi), cook and server at Amrutha Vilas who is a migrant from Tamil Nadu; Appaji (Sivannarayana), the rapacious, exploitative landlord of Amrutha Vilas who subjects his tenants to unreasonable penalties.Initially, Sivaji Raja played the role of Amrutha Rao. After that, Naresh replaced him in some episodes before Harsha Vardhan took over and played the character in over 200 episodes out of the total 313 episodes. The title song was composed and sung by Kalyani Malik with lyrics penned by Sirivennela Sitarama Sastry. Director Chandra Sekhar Yeleti, cinematographer K. K. Senthil Kumar, production designer S. Ravinder, and music composer Kalyani Malik who would later become established film technicians, worked in Amrutham in the beginning phase of their career.Amrutham was originally broadcast every Sunday on prime time 8 PM slot on Gemini TV. At the time of its inception in the early 2000s, Telugu television was mostly centered around melodramatic soap operas. Amrutham is variously described as a "phenomenon", "sensation" for breaking the norms and became one of the most successful Telugu TV shows of all time. The show was cancelled by the choice of the makers when it was at its peak due to a dearth of writers and new ideas. After the end of its original run, Amrutham was re-telecasted multiple times on various TV channels and garnered good ratings each time. Currently, ZEE5 owns the digital rights of the series. A spin-off film titled Amrutham Chandamamalo was released in 2014. Its sequel, Amrutham Dhvitheeyam began streaming on ZEE5 from March 2020.