That '70s Show
The basement circle — six teenagers lounging while the camera spun lazily around them, over and over. That '70s Show made the '70s look retroactively cool and turned Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis into household names. Nostalgia about nostalgia: a show made at the turn of the millennium about 1976, set in a fictional Wisconsin basement everyone wished was theirs.
When That '70s Show premiered on Fox on August 23, 1998, it introduced Point Place, Wisconsin — a fictional town frozen in 1976–1979 — and a basement hangout that became the show's real main stage. The show centered on six teenagers: Eric Forman (Topher Grace), Jackie Burkhart (Mila Kunis), Michael Kelso (Ashton Kutcher), Steven Hyde (Danny Masterson), Donna Pinciotti (Laura Prepon), and Fez (Wilmer Valderrama). Created by Bonnie and Terry Turner and Mark Brazill, the show's signature image was the slow 360-degree camera pan circling the group — the same shot, repeated, for eight seasons. The theme was an adaptation of Big Star's 1972 song "In the Street," retitled "That '70s Song" and sung by Todd Griffin in season 1 and Cheap Trick from season 2 onward.
By season 5 (2002–2003), the show was a fixture, averaging 10.4 million viewers. It launched Kutcher and Kunis from television obscurity straight into Hollywood stardom. The formula worked because of its double layer: a show made in the late '90s and 2000s about a decade its audience's parents were already nostalgic for.
Topher Grace left after season 7 to pursue film, and Kutcher returned only as a guest in season 8's first four episodes. The show ended May 18, 2006, after 200 episodes across 8 seasons. A Netflix spinoff, That '90s Show, premiered January 19, 2023 and was cancelled after two seasons in October 2024.
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