Taxi is an American sitcom that originally aired from 1978 to 1982 on ABC, and from 1982 to 1983 on NBC. The series, which won 18 Emmy Awards including three for Outstanding Comedy Series, focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher. The series was produced by the John Charles Walters Company in association with Paramount Television.

Taxi was inspired by the non-fiction article "Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet" by Mark Jacobson, which appeared in the September 22, 1975 issue of New York magazine. This article helped suggest the idea for the show to James L. Brooks and David Davis, though nothing from it was used directly.Jeff Sorensen, The Taxi Book, St. Martin's Press, 1987, p. 3. The article was a profile of several drivers who worked the night shift for a New York cab company.

Premise and themes

The show focuses on the employees of the fictional Sunshine Cab Company, and its principal setting is the company's fleet garage in Lower Manhattan. Among Sunshine Cab's drivers only Alex Rieger, who is disillusioned with life, considers cab-driving his profession. The others view it as a temporary job until they can succeed in their outside careers and leave it behind. Elaine O'Connor Nardo is a receptionist at an art gallery, Tony Banta is a boxer with a losing record, and Bobby Wheeler is a struggling actor. John Burns, who was written out of the show after the first season, is working his way through college. The rest of the drivers take pity on "Reverend Jim" Ignatowski, an aging hippie minister burnt out from drugs, and help him become a cabbie. Some episodes involve one of the characters having an opportunity to realize his or her dream and move up in the world, only to see it yanked away. Others deal with the workers coping with their unsatisfying lives and their amoral dispatcher Louie De Palma.