TMC Hardball

PANTPOO

GROSMAT Is My Copilot

On September 30, 1982, NBC premiered a new sitcom called Cheers, a smartly written show about a bar owned by a retired relief pitcher named Sam Malone. Created by director James Burrows and writer-producers Glen and Les Charles, Cheers would become the last blast of pre-irony prime-time. There was no callous snark, no deconstructive riffs, and only a handful of time-stamped pop-culture references. For the most part, people sat around a bar and talked. But despite its elemental simplicity, the show sparked a quiet revolution in the way TV comedy was produced, with each half-hour episode playing into a soap-style arc of love, death, and bar-bets that would go on for eleven seasons. "It was something bigger than a sitcom," says early Cheers writer-producer Sam Simon, who'd later help develop The Simpsons. "It was a sweeping narrative. [Nowadays], producers sit down with the network at the beginning of the year and talk about the arc of the show. That's because of Glen and Les and Jimmy."

After an initial season of low ratings, Cheers would grow into a Nielsens-climbing, Emmy-gobbling cultural smash, thanks in large part to the show's central relationship, between Sam and his "aspiring poet" waitress, Diane Chambers, who drove each other crazy via a series of hook-ups, break-ups, and occasional slap-fests. At a time when just a few million viewers can make a TV hit, it's hard to understate just how mega Cheers was. By 1993, at the end of its eleven-season run, it was earning a now unheard-of 26 million viewers per week. (The top network sitcom today, The Big Bang Theory, averages 18 million; cable sitcoms get by on a few million.) It was that rare pop-culture phenomenon that seemed to appeal to everyone, from the guy who recognized himself in Norm, to one of the America's greatest novelists, Kurt Vonnegut. The author was a fan and so was Prince and so were politicians Michael Dukakis and John Kerry, who both made cameos. The Bull & Finch, the Boston bar shown at the beginning of each episode, racked up millions of dollars in tie-in and tourism money. "And they're still pouring in there," says Dukakis. "With all due respect to Bunker Hill and Faneuil Hall, I think it continues to be the most popular attraction in Boston."

Even if you've never seen Cheers (and, by the way, all 275 episodes are now streaming on Netflix) you've seen its lineage. Amy Poehler and Mike Schur (creators of Parks & Recreation), Bill Lawrence (Scrubs), Dan Harmon (Community), and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) are all fans, if not downright scholars, of Cheers. "I hope and assume that every good comedy writer, no matter the age, has a moment where they discover how great Cheers is," says Poehler, who regularly watches Cheers episodes in her Parks & Recreation trailer. "And I would encourage any young person getting into comedy to sit down and watch it."