El Chavo del Ocho

El Chavo ("The Kid/The Boy", Spanish chavo), also known as El Chavo del Ocho ("The Kid/Boy from Number Eight") is a Mexican television sitcom created by Chespirito and produced by Televisa. It premiered on February 26, 1973, and concluded on January 7, 1980, after 8 seasons and 312 episodes, and aired across Latin America and Spain.

A poor orphan boy known as "El Chavo" played by the show's creator, Chespirito, chronicles his adventures and tribulations, and those of his friends, frequently leading to comedic confrontations among the other residents of a fictional low-income housing complex, or "vecindad" ("tenement"), as it is known in Mexico. The sitcom explores the problems that many impoverished children face daily, such as hunger, sadness, loneliness, and a lack of adult supervision and attention, in a comical manner. Each episode uses comedic strategies, such as slapstick, irony, recurring jokes, and funny situations in which the characters are usually getting into. It includes the use of pre-recorded laughter tracks to emphasize comic scenes. Some episodes conclude with a lesson, such as to not judge a book by its cover or to maintain good hygiene.

The series theme song is a rendition of Ludwig van Beethoven's Turkish March, rearranged by Jean-Jacques Perrey and retitled "The Elephant Never Forgets".

Chespirito, produced by Televisión Independiente de México (TIM), debuted El Chavo as a skit in 1972. Produced by Televisa, it began as a weekly half-hour series in 1973 after Telesistema Mexicano and TIM merged. In the mid-1970s to 1980, the show averaged 350 million Latin American viewers per episode, The show continued until 1980 when it became a segment of Chespirito. A Brazilian Portuguese dub titled "Chaves" has been broadcast by Brazilian television network SBT since 1984 and featured on Brazilian versions of Cartoon Network, Boomerang, and Multishow. In the United States, the show debuted on Spanish International Network (now Univision) in October 1974, it continues to air on the network as well as UniMás.

A successor to El Chavo was produced by the same creator, Chespirito, in an animated style. The show titled El Chavo Animado, aired from October 21, 2006, to June 6, 2014, just a few months before Bolaños' death.

El Chavo continues to be popular with syndicated episodes averaging 91 million daily viewers in all markets where it is distributed in the Americas. Since it ceased production in 1992, it has earned an estimated US$1.7 billion in syndication fees alone for Televisa. El Chavo is available on Netflix in select countries. It was removed in 2020, but was added back on August 11, 2025.

The titular character, nicknamed as "El Chavo" (meaning "the kid or "the boy"), whose real name is never revealed, is an eight-year-old orphan boy who lives in a neighborhood where he and several other characters, both residents and non-residents, interact with each other daily.

The central courtyard is the setting for most of the episodes. Surrounding it are the homes of Doña Florinda and Quico in #14, Doña Clotilde in #71, and Don Ramón and Chilindrina in #72, and episodes from 1982 onwards, Jaimito "El Cartero", who lives up the stairs in #23. The hallway on the right between #71 and #72 leads to another other courtyard, which has a fountain in the middle. On the street facade at the left, a corner store and a barber shop are shown adjacent to the neighborhood's entry.