The Haves and the Have Nots (sometimes referred to as Haves and Have Nots and abbreviated as HAHN) is an American crime drama and soap opera created, executive produced, written, and directed by Tyler Perry. The premise of the series is based on Perry's 2011 play of the same name.
The Haves and the Have Nots premiered on May 28, 2013, and ran for 8 seasons on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), for a total of 196 hour-long episodes. The series finale aired on Tuesday, July 20, 2021. As part of the show's finale, a two-part cast reunion special consisting of all The Have and Have Nots main characters in front of a live studio audience was televised, part 1 on July 27 and part 2 on August 3.
The Haves and the Have Nots was ranked among the top 2 scripted cable series with a majority African American cast. The soap opera led the ratings for OWN programming throughout much of its series run. It averaged 2.8 million total viewers across its 196 episodes. During its highest rated years from 2014 to 2017, the program averaged more than 3.1 million viewers each year. It was reported in June 2021 that the program is the most-watched scripted cable series among African American women and households.
The Haves and the Have Nots is the first scripted and first fictionalized television series to air on the Oprah Winfrey Network and is considered the network's first claim to fame. Amid struggles to keep her network afloat before debuting The Haves and the Have Nots, Oprah Winfrey was quoted in a 2012 interview as stating, “Had I known that it was this difficult, I might have done something else.” The success of The Haves and the Have Nots, however, opened the door to myriad other popular scripted dramas on Winfrey's network, including but not limited to Queen Sugar and Greenleaf.
Synopsis
The series follows three families and their lifestyles as they struggle to coexist among one another in Savannah, Georgia: the rich, powerful, and locally very public Cryer and Harrington families (originally regarded as "The Haves") and the poor and destitute Young family (originally regarded as "The Have Nots"). The Young family is headed by Hanna, a single mother who works as the Cryer family's maid and also serves as the best friend and confidante of the lady of the house, Katheryn. Included as part of The Have Nots is another domestic worker, initially for the Cryer family and later for the local hospital, Celine Gonzales.
The Haves and the Have Nots centers on the toxicity, conflicts, corruption, hardships and dysfunctional family relations similarly experienced between the underprivileged Young family and their well-to-do counterparts, who only ostensibly live the life of Riley. Drastically and destructively flawed character traits abound from both rich and poor, perpetually creating for multidimensional chaos, tension and calamity. Circumstances on the program are regularly resolved through wild acts of violence, sabotage, rape, framing, murder, arson and other criminal acts.
While the Young family versus the Cryer and Harrington families originally lead polar opposite lifestyles in terms of social class, economics, social status, and surroundings, they are each similar in that they lead exceedingly toxic, dysfunctional lifestyles with broken family units. At the root of the turmoil are deeply wounded, complex backstories among all the characters that precede the existence of this television series. Habitual fraudulence is also at the root of the turmoil, in which mass amounts of wealth are regularly misappropriated back and forth between the show's main characters. As a result, there are repeated shifts in which characters are regarded as "the haves" and which are regarded as "the have nots," extended through the entire course of the series.