A melodrama is a dramatic work that puts characters in a lot of danger in order to appeal to the emotions. Language, behaviour, or events which resemble melodramas are also called melodramatic. Melodrama is based around having the same character in every scene, often a hero, damsel in distress, a villain. In scholarly and historical musical contexts melodramas are dramas of the 18th and 19th centuries in which orchestral music or song was used to accompany the action.

Melodrama is a style of drama that has been applied on the stage, in movies and television, and radio formats, from the 18th century to the present. Because of the long timeframe in which the style has existed, it is difficult to derive a precise definition. The term melodrama is most often used pejoratively, to suggest that the work the term is applied to lacks sophistication or subtlety.

The term originated from the early 19th-century French word mélodrame, which is derived from Greek melos, music, and French drame, drama (from Late Latin drāma, which in turn derives from Greek drān, to do, perform).