“Cheers” premiered on NBC on September 30, 1982, and nearly died there. It ranked 74th out of 77 shows in its first-season ratings, a number that would have ended most series. It ran for eleven seasons and 269 episodes instead, and its 1993 finale became the most-watched single TV episode of the 1990s. That turnaround is the story of the show, but it is not the reason to watch it.
Trailer, via Gary Portnoy – Topic.
Sam Malone and the Bar in Boston
The show is set in a Boston bar, and the man behind it is Sam Malone, played by Ted Danson. Sam is a former relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, and he is a womanizer. That is the premise, and the show never pretends otherwise.
Danson was not the first choice. The character was originally written as a retired football player, and Fred Dryer was slated for the part. Danson got it because he was younger and had more acting experience than Dryer. Once Danson was cast, the producers decided a former baseball player was more believable than a retired football player. Dryer still turned up in three episodes as sportscaster Dave Richards, an old friend of Sam’s.
Bill Cosby was considered for Sam early on, after the network recommended him. That is a strange thing to picture now, and it is worth noting only because it shows how little anyone knew what the show was.
Danson prepared seriously. He was sent to bartending school. He also had to learn, in James Burrows’s words, “how to pretend that he knew a lot about sports,” because Danson was not a sports fan and had never been to a baseball game.
Diane Chambers, Carla Tortelli and the First Script
The pilot, “Give Me a Ring Sometime,” began with four employees: Sam, bartender Coach Ernie Pantusso, and waitresses Carla Tortelli and Diane Chambers. Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin, regular customers, were added in revisions as the script was filmed.
Shelley Long was recommended to the producers for Diane by several sources. She wanted to be offered the part outright and had to be coaxed into auditioning. When she read, Glen Charles said, “that was it, we knew that we wanted her.”
Before the decision was final, three pairs were tested for Sam and Diane: Danson and Long, Fred Dryer and Julia Duffy, and William Devane and Lisa Eichhorn. The chemistry between Long and Danson was so apparent that it settled the roles.
that was it, we knew that we wanted her.
Rhea Perlman played Carla. George Wendt played Norm. John Ratzenberger played Cliff, a part created for him after he auditioned for Norm. He asked the producers whether they planned to include a “bar know-it-all,” and that became the role.
Coach Dies and Woody Boyd Arrives
Nicholas Colasanto played Coach. He died, and the character died off-screen in season three, which ran 1984 to 1985. Woody Harrelson came in as Woody Boyd to replace him.
Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane started as a recurring character in season three and quickly became permanent. That decision paid off for everyone involved, and it is the clearest example of the show’s habit of keeping what worked.
Rebecca Howe Replaces Diane
Shelley Long left after season five. Kirstie Alley joined in season six as Rebecca Howe.
Lilith Sternin started as a one-time character in the season four episode “Second Time Around” in 1985. She returned in season five, became recurring, and was a permanent character by season ten, which ran 1991 to 1992.
The ensemble is the point. A bar show lives or dies on whether you want to sit in the room, and this one kept restocking the room without losing the room.
Must See TV and the Ratings Climb
After that near-cancellation, “Cheers” became a Nielsen ratings juggernaut in the United States. It earned a top-10 rating in eight of its eleven seasons, including one season at number one. That was season nine. It spent most of its run on NBC’s Thursday night “Must See TV” lineup, which is where a generation of viewers found it.
The show was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions with Paramount Television. It was nominated for Outstanding Comedy Series in all eleven of its seasons.
The source material gives 269 episodes in one place and 275 in another. We are not going to pretend that discrepancy resolves itself. Either way, the number is large, and the show’s syndication record is the one that matters commercially.
What Actually Holds Up
Here is the part worth arguing about. “Cheers” is remembered as a warm show, and it is warm, but its first season is colder and stranger than its reputation suggests. Sam is not a lovable rogue in the early going so much as a man running out of options. Diane is not a manic pixie dream girl; she is a person who has decided she is better than the room and cannot quite leave it.
The show’s real achievement is structural. It built a workplace comedy where the workplace is also a refuge, and it let characters change without letting the show change around them. Coach dies. Diane leaves. Rebecca arrives. Frasier arrives. The bar absorbs all of it.
That is harder than it looks. This is a show that moved the furniture and kept the floor plan.
The weaker material is the later seasons, where the show leans on guest arcs and on Sam’s romantic restlessness in ways that start to feel like reruns of itself. That is not a scandal. Eleven seasons is a long time, and the show’s floor was high.
The Case Against the Canon
A 7.6 is not a knock. It is a precise placement. “Cheers” is a foundational American sitcom, and it is not the best one. Its influence is enormous, and the ensemble model it built is still worth studying.
But the show’s first season is genuinely shaky, and its middle seasons coast on charm in stretches. The Diane years and the Rebecca years are different shows wearing the same sign, and the handoff works better in memory than it does in sequence. That is our read, not the source’s.
What makes “Cheers” worth the score is that it earned its warmth. It started at 74th out of 77 and became a top-10 fixture in eight of eleven seasons. That is not luck. That is a show that knew what it had in Danson and Long, then in Alley and Harrelson, and then in Grammer, and kept making the bet.
Score: 7.6 of 10 (TMDB audience score, 709 votes).
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