My Name Is Earl is an American television sitcom created by Greg Garcia for NBC. It aired for four seasons from September 20, 2005, to May 14, 2009, with a total of 96 episodes. It was produced by Amigos de Garcia Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television, and starred Jason Lee as the title character, Earl Hickey, a small-time thief with a messed-up life. The series also starred Ethan Suplee, Jaime Pressly, Nadine Velazquez, and Eddie Steeples.

Earl Hickey is a small-time thief, living in the fictional rural town of Camden, who loses his winning $100,000 lottery ticket after being hit by a car while he celebrates his good fortune. Lying in a hospital bed, he learns about karma during an episode of the talk show Last Call with Carson Daly. Convinced he has to turn his life around to be happy, Earl gives himself over to the power of karma. He makes a list of every bad thing that he has ever done and every person that he has ever wronged, and makes efforts to fix them all. After doing a first good deed, he finds the $100,000 lottery ticket that he had lost. Seeing this as a sign of karma rewarding him for his commitment, Earl uses his new-found wealth to do more good deeds according to his list.

Earl's wife, Joy, throws him out, keeping her two children — Dodge, whom she conceived before getting together with Earl, and Earl Jr., who was fathered during their marriage, but not by Earl. Earl moves into a motel and lives with his brother Randy, and they meet Catalina, the motel's beautiful maid who illegally migrated from somewhere in Latin America. Earl works on the list which mostly involves strangers and old acquaintances he has wronged, but also contains items involving his family. Initially, Joy plots to kill or blackmail Earl for his lottery winnings, but later gives up. Joy marries Darnell Turner, a mutual friend who works at a local restaurant called the Crab Shack, and with whom she had been having an affair. Until late in Season Four, it is generally accepted that Darnell fathered Earl Jr. In the Season One finale, Earl discovers he had bought the lotto tickets using money he stole from another person, but when he tries to return his winnings to that person, the latter is inflicted with bad karma, so he returns the money to Earl.

The second season has Earl continuing to work on his list. Joy gets in trouble when she steals a delivery truck, and ends up kidnapping and assaulting the member of staff who was inside. Joy is arrested for felonies that would put her in prison for life because it was her third strike. To soften the jury, she decides to have a surrogate baby for her half-sister Liberty Washington and Liberty's husband Ray-Ray. Meanwhile, Catalina has been deported. Earl and Randy visit her home village in Latin America, and Randy marries Catalina in a green card marriage so she can return to the United States. In the season finale, Earl sacrifices himself at Joy's trial by confessing to all of her crimes and is sentenced to two years in a state penitentiary.

In the third season, Earl is still imprisoned, but continues to do good deeds despite not having his list on him. He meets Frank, from whom he had rented the trailer in which Joy and her husband Darnell now live, while Randy gets a job as a prison guard to be closer to Earl. Meanwhile, Joy gives birth to Liberty and Ray-Ray's baby. Earl's good deeds attract the attention of the state warden, Jerry, who offers Earl a reduction in prison time for helping him resolve his issues. When Earl is about to leave, Jerry revokes Earl's reductions as he would lose such a productive helper, but Earl eventually gains the upper hand and forces Jerry to honor his early release. After leaving prison, Earl loses his confidence in the list; he has spent years and the last of his lottery winnings doing good things, but he has nothing to show for it and is insistent that karma should have given him some kind of lasting reward by now. He reverts to his old, malicious ways, doing cruel and illegal things. Frank's ex-girlfriend Billie Cunningham hits Earl with her car and puts him into a coma, then is subsequently struck by a car as well. Randy is able to revive Earl by working on the list. Earl finds Billie and marries her, thinking she is karma's reward for his years of effort. When Earl and Billie argue over the list, and Earl chooses the list over her, Billie goes into a rampage that undoes his good deeds. However, when Billie hides in the Amish-like "Camdenite" settlement, she has a change of heart. She divorces Earl and gives him the rest of her insurance settlement money, which helps him continue the list.

The fourth season goes back to focusing on Earl doing good deeds to cross off his list. A major story arc during this season was that Darnell, who is actually a former assassin from a secret government agency, blows his witness protection cover. He, Joy, and his family are forced to change identities and relocate until Darnell's father, who is also from the agency, goes on a mission with Darnell which clears Darnell's family of needing protection. In the season finale, Earl and the gang learn, from DNA test results, that Earl is actually Dodge's biological father. Earl still has not finished his list as of the season's conclusion, and there is a cliffhanger: It is proven that Darnell is not Earl Jr.'s father, revealing that Joy had another affair.

Creator and head writer Greg Garcia wrote the pilot while working on another sitcom, Yes, Dear. He initially pitched the series to Fox, which passed on it. He then approached NBC, which optioned the pilot on a cast-contingent basis, meaning they would order the pilot provided a suitable cast could be assembled. Jason Lee was approached for the lead role, but was uninterested in working in television and passed on the series twice before finally agreeing to read the pilot script. Though he liked the pilot, he was hesitant to commit to his first TV starring role until meeting with Garcia, after which he signed on to play Earl Hickey.

My Name Is Earl is set in fictional Camden County. Creator Greg Garcia says:^{[citation needed]}