I Dream of Jeannie is an American fantasy sitcom television series created by Sidney Sheldon and starring Barbara Eden as a beautiful but guileless 2,000-year-old genie and Larry Hagman as an astronaut with whom she falls in love and eventually marries. Produced by Screen Gems, the show originally aired for 139 episodes over five seasons, from September 18, 1965, to May 26, 1970, on NBC.

In the pilot episode, "The Lady in the Bottle", astronaut Captain Tony Nelson, United States Air Force, is on a space flight when his one-man capsule Stardust One comes down far from the planned recovery area, near a deserted island in the South Pacific. On the beach, Tony notices a strange bottle that rolls by itself. When he rubs it after removing the stopper, smoke spews out and a beautiful Persian-speaking female genie materializes and surprises Tony by kissing him.

They cannot understand each other until Tony expresses his wish that "Jeannie" could speak English, which she then does. Then, per his instructions, she "blinks" and causes a recovery helicopter to show up to rescue Tony, who is so grateful he tells her she is free. But Jeannie, who has already fallen in love with Tony after being trapped for 2,000 years, re-enters her bottle and rolls it into Tony's duffel bag so she can accompany him back home.

In one of the early episodes, Jeannie helps to break up Tony's engagement to his commanding general's daughter, Melissa, who, along with the general, is never seen or mentioned again. Producer Sidney Sheldon believed the romantic triangle between Jeannie, Tony, and Melissa would not play out well.

At first, Tony keeps Jeannie in her bottle most of the time, but he finally relents and allows her to enjoy a life of her own. However, her life is devoted mostly to his, and most of their problems stem from either Jeannie's love for him or her often misguided efforts to please him. She continues in her attempts, unbothered by Tony's obvious preference to do things for himself. Jeannie's magical mischief—and Tony's efforts to cover it up—constantly put him under the scrutiny of NASA's resident psychiatrist (and Tony's commanding officer), Colonel Dr. Alfred Bellows. A running theme throughout the series has Bellows as the only eyewitness to Jeannie's antics, while Tony (and sometimes his best friend and fellow astronaut, United States Army captain and later major, Roger Healey) are also present. Tony offers far-fetched explanations to Bellows, who then tries to prove to his superior officers that Tony is either crazy or hiding something. But his efforts typically backfire, and in the end his superiors never buy them. And, after Bellows is invariably foiled, he proclaims, "He's done it to me again!"

Another frequently used plot device is Jeannie's loss of her powers when she is confined in a closed space. For example, she is unable to leave her bottle while it is corked, and under certain circumstances the next person who removes the cork becomes her new master.

For the first 16 episodes, Roger is unaware of Jeannie's role in Tony's life, although they meet in episode 12. When Roger finds out she is a genie, he steals her bottle, thereby becoming her new master. Roger is good-natured but also girl-crazy, and often schemes to achieve a vain or selfish gain. He occasionally has hopes of becoming Jeannie's master so he can exploit her powers for selfish ends, but he is generally respectful of the relationship between Tony and Jeannie. Tony and Roger are both promoted to the rank of major late in the first season. In later seasons, Roger's role is retconned to portray him as having known about Jeannie from the beginning (i.e., as his having been with Tony on the space flight whose touchdown led to their discovering Jeannie).

Jeannie's evil twin sister, mentioned in a second-season episode (and also named "Jeannie"—since, as Barbara Eden's character explains it, all female genies are named "Jeannie"—and also portrayed by Barbara Eden in a brunette wig), proves to be scheming and underhanded starting in the third season (as in her initial appearance in "Jeannie or the Tiger?"), repeatedly trying to steal Tony for herself and to make herself Tony's real "master". Her final attempt in the series comes shortly after Tony and Jeannie are married, with a ploy involving a man played by Barbara Eden's real-life husband at the time, Michael Ansara. (In a kind of in-joke, while Jeannie's sister pretends to be attracted to him, she privately scoffs at him.)