The Twilight Zone is an American television anthology series created (and often written) by its narrator and host Rod Serling. Each episode (156 in the original series) is a mixture of self-contained fantasy, science fiction, or horror story, often concluding with an eerie or unexpected twist.

The program followed in the tradition of earlier radio programs such as The Weird Circle and X Minus One and the radio work of Serling's hero, dramatist Norman Corwin.

A popular and critical success, it introduced many Americans to serious science fiction and abstract ideas through television and also through a wide variety of Twilight Zone literature.

The success of this original series led to the creation of two revival series (a cult hit series that ran for several seasons on CBS and in syndication in the 1980s, and a short-lived UPN series that ran early in the new millennium), a feature film, a radio series, a comic book, a magazine and various other spinoffs that would span five decades.

Writers for The Twilight Zone included leading genre authorities such as Charles Beaumont, Richard Matheson, Jerry Sohl, George Clayton Johnson, Earl Hamner, Jr., Reginald Rose and Ray Bradbury. Many episodes also featured adaptations of classic stories by such writers as Ambrose Bierce, Lewis Padgett, Jerome Bixby and Damon Knight.

The New Twilight Zone is the popular nickname for the 1985 revival of Rod Serling's acclaimed 1950/60s television series, The Twilight Zone; it was officially titled the same as the original. It ran for two seasons on CBS before producing a final season for syndication.

The Twilight Zone is an American television series created by Rod Serling. The original series ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964 and remains syndicated to this day. As an anthology series, each episode presented its own separate story, often a morality play, involving people who face unusual or extraordinary circumstances, therefore entering the "Twilight Zone." Rod Serling served as a head writer, executive producer and host of the program, delivering on-or-off-screen monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. Orson Welles was originally considered, but the producers felt he asked for too much money.

Except for the season's final episode, Serling's narrations during the first season were off-camera voiceovers – he only appeared on-camera at the end of each show to introduce previews of the next episode.

CBS wanted Orson Welles as the narrator/host, but the producers felt that he asked for too much money.

Serling, Rod invited any viewers to submit a script. He was flooded with over 14,000 scripts, and he actually got around to reading 500 of them. But only two were any good, and he couldn't use them because they didn't fit the format of the show.

The original version of the Twilight Zone pilot featured narration by Westbrook Van Voorhis. Van Voorhis' narration was replaced by that of Rod Serling when the show actually aired.

Produced by Cayuga Productions, Inc., in association with the CBS Television Network. Most episodes filmed at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. Pilot episode filmed at Universal-International Studios. Some second season episodes (1960-61) were videotaped at CBS Television City. Originally syndicated by CBS Films and then by its successor, Viacom, now Paramount Television.

All episodes in Seasons 1, 2, 3 and 5 were thirty minutes in length. Episodes in Season 4 (airing from January to May 1963) were one hour in length.

Some episodes of the series were shot on videotape.

Of the 3 "Twilight Zone" TV series over the years, this is the only one which does not include Rod Serling's image during the opening credits. Of course, this is the only one of the series to have the opening voice-over performed by Serling.

A comic book version of this series, "hosted" by the artistic image of Rod Serling, ran until 1982 - long after the real Serling had died.

Ranked #8 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Top Cult Shows Ever!" (30 May 2004 issue).

Rod Serling was ranked #1 in TV Guide's list of the "25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends" (1 August 2004 issue).

Due to budgetary constraints in its second season, the network decided to cut costs by shooting some episodes on videotape rather than film. Because videotape was a relatively primitive medium in the early 1960s, the editing of tape was next to impossible. Thus, each of the 6 episodes was "camera-cut" as in live TV, on a studio sound stage, using a total of four cameras. The requisite multi-camera setup of the videotape experiment, pretty much precluded location shooting, severely limiting the potential scope of the story-lines, and so, the short-lived experiment was ultimately abandoned. The 6 videotaped episodes were titled: "The Lateness of the Hour" (12/2/60); "Static" (3/10/61); "The Whole Truth" (1/20/61); "Night of the Meek" (12/23/60); "Twenty-Two" (2/10/61); "Long Distance Call" (3/3/61)

The first image in Twilight Zone history was of a lone man walking on a road (the episode "Where Is Everybody?"). Rod Serling's first lines of narration were, "The place is here. The time is now. And the journey into the shadows that we're about to watch could be our journey."

An updated version of the famous 1960's TV series created by Rod Serling. Each week presents one to three tales about some unusual situation that turns out to be even more unusual than initially suspected. Whether the tone of the story is horror, suspense or humor, there is always a surprise twist at the end. Written by Jean-Marc Rocher

An image of Rod Serling can be seen during the opening title sequence in the TV version only. Rod's image was replaced with a spiral vortex on the DVD release.

Although originally aired as a one-hour series, each segment is set up to be aired as separate half-hour installments.