Where everybody knows your name
by Steve
Over here in the UK the TV channel ITV4 are working their way through the many series of Cheers. It has become required viewing in my household and I’m coming to the conclusion that it could easily be the best sitcom ever produced. I certainly can’t think of any other sitcom that managed to maintain its quality for so long.
I remember watching later series as a kid, but it has been great to watch the Coach years and Diane years – there have been plenty of episodes that have been new to me. What is really striking is how good Cheers was right from the first episodes of the first series. The characters and the relationships between them were in place from day one. There was no real need for ‘bedding in’ or tweaking, the writers and actors got it spot-on, right away, which I’m sure is rare for a TV show.
Sure, there are some standard archetypes in there, but the writers manage to avoid making them caricatures. The characters aren’t even completely loveable all the time, they don’t always play to the audience’s sympathies, and that makes them all the more real and easy to relate to. Like any real bar, Cheers is not occupied by faultless people, and is all the better for it.
It was also clearly a resilient show, and I guess it had to be to last as long as it did. Coach was such a lovely character, and perhaps the heart, the innocent, moral centre, of the show. So when actor Nicholas Colasanto died it must have been hard to work out how to carry on.
Bringing in the character of Woody was a masterstroke. He has the same qualities as Coach, being seemly naive, a foil for the more savvy and wise-cracking characters to bounce off of, a confidant for Sam. But rather than being a direct replacement, Woody is his own character. It would have been easy, I imagine, to bring in another older guy, but creating a character with Coach-esque qualities, just 40-odd years younger, I’m sure helped the show survive, and move on from the sad death of Colasanto.
A show like Cheers needs some degree of grit and irony to make it believable, but it also needs a Coach/Woody-type character to stop it becoming a completely cynical exercise.
Of course, Shelley Long and the Diane character would eventually depart too, but as ITV4 hasn’t got that far yet, I haven’t been able to see how well that transition worked. I’m sure I’ll find out soon enough.
Anyway, this was more an excuse to post this video of Norm-isms than anything else. Enjoy.
Apologies for the obvious blog post title, but I’m sure it is some sort of internet law that if you write about Cheers you have to use that particular title.
Wait until next year 
It’s been such a long time since I’ve seen Cheers! It might be on late-night TV somewhere. You’re lucky to catch it. The one I stumble across more often is its spin-off, Frasier. I think I liked Frasier more–but maybe that’s because I was old enough to get the jokes.
If you’re ever looking for a Cheers-like cynical exercise, you need to watch It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia. It’s a low-class Cheers with jerk protagonists. Even their Woody is unlikable. It’s pretty mean-spirited, but it’s my one of favorite shows on TV right now.
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I’ll have to check out It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia, sounds interesting. I absolutely loved Frasier too – it was one of those rare shows that made me feel a little cleverer for watching TV, just for getting the smarter references. They did a great job of building on essentially one of the lesser characters from Cheers. I like the theory I once read that Niles essentially became the Frasier-in-Cheers character so that Frasier himself could be a more balanced/nuanced character himself.
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I never watched many episodes when it was on but always laughed a lot when I did. For me one of the most successful long-running sit-coms was M*A*S*H which also had a great knack of coping when cast members moved on. Would I have seen it so much as a kid if my mum hadn’t had a barely concealed crush on Alan Alda? Probably not. Se chain ly cold not ‘take or leave it’ as the theme tune went (ouch!)
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Now M*A*S*H is a show I’ve never really watched but would love to see repeated. I really liked the original film, and I understand the TV show is a bit different (not least a different cast). I always remember the last episode being down as the most-watched TV programme ever according to my yearly copy of the Guinness Book of Records! Would like to see what all the fuss was about…
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The film is brilliant dark farce; the series slightly gentler in some respects but a fair bit of anti-war sentiment and plenty of gore on the operating table. I can quite believe it was watched by record breaking numbers at the end as it had become an institution. Lasted way longer than the Korean War which is its setting if I recall correctly.
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You guys are both from England, right? I’m asking because there aren’t that many people around my age here who watch these shows or followed them too closely. They’re great shows, but maybe it’s because they’re part of our subconscious or something. Anyway, I’m asking mostly because I wonder if there are US equivalents. Like, do people across the pond have the same reverence for shows like The Office, The IT Crowd, Mitchell & Webb, Upstairs Downstairs, Downton Abbey, Monty Python, Are You Being Served? Etc?
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Hard one to answer, and hard to generalise, but there is certainly some degree of reverence for classic UK shows, and generally speaking probably more than for US ones. There is probably a generational aspect too – men of a certain age can still recite whole Monty Python sketches.
Apart from mega-sitcoms like Friends, it feels a little like classic or quality US shows are a bit more of a niche interest. I think this is partly because they have often been scheduled at odd times and/or on obscure channels. There is also a pretty big audience for DVD boxsets – I think many people discover and enjoy shows that way, rather than tuning in each week for another episode.
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We have Monty Python quoters here too. That’s universal, I think.
Downton Abbey is the one getting all-star, prime time treatment right now. Even though this season is pretty boring, it’s given everyone in my office something to talk about. The rest get relegated to minor cable channels or late night on PBS. I’ve been able to catch up on quite a few of these shows thanks to Netflix’s streaming.
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Have you ever seen “Wings?” It’s become one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, even though I missed it during its original run in the 1990s. It takes place in an airport in Nantucket, and Frasier and Lilith show up, as do Norm and Cliff. It’s worth trying to find.
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Hi Julie! I’d never heard of Wings, but reading up about it, it sounds really good! I seem to remember Carla also having some sort of spin-off series. Including Frasier, Cheers seems to have had a pretty big ‘universe’ – I can’t thing of any other shows with this many spin-offs and/or guest appearance-type things.
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