Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a U.S. television series loosely based on the original script for the 1992 movie of the same name. It was created by Joss Whedon, who also wrote the movie, and was produced by Mutant Enemy Productions. The show's title is often abbreviated simply to Buffy or BtVS.

The series followed the life and trials of Buffy Summers from the age of 16 to 22. A girl chosen by fate to battle against vampires, demons, and other supernatural foes, she was often aided by her Watcher and loyal circle of misfit friends.

The first five seasons of the series aired on The WB. When contract negotiations left the show's future in doubt, it was quickly picked up by arch-rival UPN, where it aired with decent ratings for two seasons.

Buffy Summers (portrayed by Sarah Michelle Gellar) is "The Slayer", one in a long line of (often short-lived) young girls chosen by fate to battle the forces of darkness. This calling also mystically endows her with dramatically increased physical strength, endurance, agility, intuition, accelerated healing, and a limited degree of clairvoyance, usually in the form of prophetic dreams. Buffy fights under the direction of her "Watcher", Rupert Giles (Anthony Stewart Head), who begins the series as the high school's librarian.

She is also assisted by several friends, who later in the series are nicknamed the "Scooby Gang" because of their distant resemblance to the teens in the cartoon Scooby Doo, and because they fight evil supernatural forces. Most prominent among these are wisecracking semi-geek Xander Harris (Nicholas Brendon) and shy computer-nerd Willow Rosenberg (Alyson Hannigan).

Other important members of the gang throughout the series include: seemingly vapid "alpha-girl" cheerleader Cordelia Chase (Charisma Carpenter); the ensouled vampire and Buffy's first love Angel (David Boreanaz); the first replacement slayer Kendra; the independent slayer Faith (Eliza Dushku); the taciturn werewolf band-guitar player Oz (Seth Green); newly-human, ex-vengeance demon Anya Jenkins (Emma Caulfield); black ops soldier Riley Finn (Marc Blucas); shy witch Tara Maclay (Amber Benson); reluctantly reformed vampire Spike (James Marsters); and Buffy's younger teenage sister, Dawn Summers (Michelle Trachtenberg), magically created in season five. Buffy lived with her recently divorced mother Joyce (Kristine Sutherland) until the middle of season five. The close relationships among these characters are at least as important as their ongoing battle against evil.

Gellar later played one of the actual "Scooby Gang" members, Daphne Blake, in the movies Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.

Buffy and Willow are the only two characters that appeared in every episode of all seven seasons.

- From Wikipedia