Alice is an American sitcom television series that aired on CBS from August 31, 1976, to March 19, 1985. The series is based on director Martin Scorsese's 1974 film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. The show stars Linda Lavin in the title role, a widow who moves with her young son to start life over again and finds a job working at a roadside diner in Phoenix, Arizona. Most of the episodes revolve around events at Mel's Diner, where Alice is employed.

With more than 200 episodes over nine seasons, Alice was the longest-running American television sitcom to feature a woman in the starring role until it was surpassed by Roseanne in 1996.

After her husband Donald is killed in a trucking accident, Alice Spivak Hyatt (Lavin) and her young son Tommy (played by Alfred Lutter in the television pilot, reprising his role from the film, but portrayed by Philip McKeon thereafter) head from their New Jersey home to Los Angeles so Alice can pursue a singing career. Her car breaks down in Phoenix, and viewers meet her soon after she has taken a job as a waitress at Mel's Diner. (The later seasons' exterior shots were of a real diner, named Mel's, still in operation in Phoenix.) Alice works alongside Mel Sharples (Vic Tayback), the grouchy, stingy owner and cook of the greasy spoon, and fellow waitresses and friends, sassy, man-hungry Florence Jean "Flo" Castleberry (Polly Holliday), and neurotic, scatterbrained Vera Louise Gorman (Beth Howland).

Most scenes took place inside the diner, or less often in Alice's one-bedroom apartment in the Desert Sun apartment complex. Vera and Mel's studio apartments and Flo's trailer were occasionally seen. Two of the diner's biggest competitors – Barney's Burger Barn and Vinnie's House of Veal – were sometimes mentioned.

The diner had regular customers through the years, such as Tommy's basketball coach Earl Hicks (Dave Madden), local trucker Chuck (played by Duane R. Campbell), and Henry Beesmeyer (Marvin Kaplan), a telephone repairman who always joked about Mel's cooking. Henry's oft-mentioned wife Chloe was seen in one episode, played by Ruth Buzzi. Celebrities playing either themselves or other characters (including Martha Raye as Mel's free-spirited mother, George Burns, Robert Goulet, Art Carney, Desi Arnaz, Jerry Reed, and Telly Savalas) were a hallmark of the show.

Polly Holliday left the show to star in her own spin-off series, Flo. In the episode airing February 24, 1980, Flo leaves to take a hostess job in Houston. On the way to Houston, Flo stops at her hometown, Fort Worth, Texas (which she refers to by its moniker "Cowtown"). Flo decides to buy and run a failing roadhouse bar there, which she renames Flo's Yellow Rose. Polly Holliday never made a guest appearance on Alice after beginning Flo, although flashbacks including Flo were shown in the final episode of Alice. Vic Tayback made one guest appearance on Flo.

Diane Ladd, who received an Academy Award nomination for her portrayal of Flo in the film version, joined the cast in 1980 as Isabelle "Belle" Dupree, a hard-edged but kind-hearted woman. She had been a waitress of Mel's in the past, during which the two had a romantic relationship. Despite Ladd's Golden Globe-winning performance as Belle, the character was not retained for the duration of the series and was replaced early in 1981, the character making one last appearance in which she telephones the diner to inform everyone that she had taken a job as a backup singer in Nashville, Tennessee. No flashbacks of Belle were shown during the series' finale. Ladd left the $400,000 yearly job, saying it was an amicable and mutual decision, because her character hadn't developed the way she had hoped it would.

Theatre actress Celia Weston then joined the cast as the good-natured, boisterous truck driver Jolene Hunnicutt, who came from Myrtle Point, South Carolina. Jolene arrives as she and her male driving partner are in the midst of an argument over his unwelcome advances, during which she throws and breaks many of Mel's dishes. Mel agrees to hire her "temporarily" to work off the cost of the dishes, but she stays until the end of the series. Jolene frequently mentions her grandmother, "Granny Gums", who had only three or four teeth. Jolene also mentions her distant relative Jefferson Davis "Boss" Hogg, a character from the concurrent CBS series The Dukes of Hazzard. In one episode Sorrell Booke guest stars as Hogg, along with fellow Dukes character Enos (Sonny Shroyer).