How long did cheers last

Eleven years later, 80 million people tuned in to watch its series finale. Created by director James Burrows and writer-producers Glen and Les Charles, Cheers succeeded by replacing set-up and punchlines with smart comedy, conversations and characters, stories and structure in a sea of cut-and-paste formulas.

The show made the audience care. They went from leaving unreturned messages to taking meetings with some of the biggest names in Hollywood. They became the fifth Beatle. Cheers writers carry their experiences working on the sitcom as badges of honor.

The Charles brothers had always wanted to do their own show. With an on-the-air commitment for a series from NBC, their production company with Burrows now had a chance to do one. They were intrigued however, by one of those hotel sets: a bar. Les Charles co-creator : A bar is a place where everything that happens in life can end up. You go to celebrate, drown your sorrows, meet and fall in love, break up.

Next came the cast. So, he was offered to us as the bartender. But we had two rules. Glen Charles: We met with Sid Caesar too. He was interested in playing Coach, but that would have overweighed the show towards one character. Ted Danson had never bartended , attended a baseball game or been a womanizer before he won the role of Sam Malone.

But he brought a quality to Sam that he himself possesses: kindness and humanity. That went a long way toward the audience embracing Sam. Rob Long writer-producer : Sam was the coolest guy on TV. It just comes from his inhabiting this guy. He was never wrong. He could play a lot of colors. Sam had a dark side with his drinking problem and womanizing.

It made writing more challenging and fun. Everyone loved working with Danson. He could talk with anybody and joke around with everyone on the set.

Cheri Steinkellner writer-producer : Ted gave the most valuable notes an actor can give writers. He went straight to the feeling place, and we had to do the same.

Glen Charles: One of the things you hope to get with an actor is how well they work with other actors. He was extremely generous with other castmembers and played off them beautifully. It made for a beautiful relationship between Sam and Coach Nicholas Colasanto. You got a wonderful sense of Sam and Carla Rhea Perlman , a lot of subtext and natural affection. Danson was the first to admit that Shelley Long carried the show initially. She inhabited the complicated Diane Chambers, making Diane part of herself.

She brought a uniqueness to Diane that came out of her and she was totally willing to make the laugh be on her. Levine: I always felt that Shelley had the toughest assignment.

It would have been so easy to hate Diane. Les Charles: Doing a sitcom was hard for Shelley. Shelley always gave her best performance, even if she had doubts about the lines. Not Diane. She personalized it. There was an episode early on when Sam and Carla had a playful kiss and Shelley came into our office and broke down. Les Charles: She said Diane would be destroyed by this. While some of the other members of the cast were still feeling their way along, Shelley came in at full blast with energy and sparkle.

She was hilarious, loveable and the dynamic of the show. They came up with Carla Tortelli to represent the embittered working class. Les Charles: Carla was the one character we wrote for a specific actor.

Levine: Rhea was the complete opposite of Carla — quiet, a little shy, very sweet. I think she really enjoyed playing her.

It was an alter ego and she could really let loose. Long: I loved that character because she was the only one actually working for a living, moving around, carrying trays. She makes terrible mistakes with men, has a bunch of kids, no money and is mean because of those things. There was something fun and real about that. Steinkellner : Rhea could nail a joke like an Olympic gold medal gymnast sticking the landing.

Les Charles: We thought that was the subtext of their relationship from the beginning. Isaacs : Sam was the polar opposite of Diane. We used to say Diane thinks above the waist and Sam below. Glen Charles: Like most relationships, they had periods of attraction and repulsion, jousting with sexual undertone.

We enjoyed the banter. Bill Steinkellner : It was Tracy and Hepburn 2. Tracy was down-to-earth, unpretentious, a little rough around the edges, whereas Hepburn always seemed to have a little elevation, an attitude in which she kind of looks down on Tracy. Isaacs : Jimmy was excited about their potential. He told us directly to always land on Sam and Diane at the end of an episode, regardless of the actual story.

Glen Charles: The relationship was the spine that held everything together. The writers had no plan for Sam and Diane other than the inevitability of their getting together, which occurred at the end of season one. Levine: The timing just felt organically right. It becomes silly. Glen Charles: We wanted to end the season with them kissing, figuratively or actually. Cheri Steinkellner : Once they consummated the relationship that was only the beginning of their problems. They were still who they were.

You have to put pressure on the relationship to get comedy. The courtship of Sam Malone and Diane Chambers crackled with an electric — and often hilarious — sense of combativeness. He was the womanising jock who owned a bar Ted Danson ; she was the intellectual waitress with delusions of grandeur Shelley Long.

I hate you! But Cheers was too smart, too ahead of its time, to play such dysfunction entirely for laughs. The jokes stop. The studio audience falls silent. Then Sam turns and exits the scene deeper into the bar, into darkness, into Cheers. And then things got sloppy AF. It is a TV trainwreck of the highest order, and if you need to something to yank you out of the emotional deep-end after that beautiful finale scene, this does the job.

The highlights for us, lowlights for Leno are plentiful. Leno was right. They were smashed. Inside the pub, the cast has zero patience for whatever cute celebration The Tonight Show planned. Perlman shoots Leno with a soda gun from behind the bar, a spitwad contest breaks out, and Woody Harrelson makes a joke about performing oral sex on Ted Danson. May 20, was a day in TV history worth remembering, especially in years that end in multiples of 5.

Because 25 years ago, Cheers delivered the perfect sitcom finale—and then spent an hour punking Jay Leno on live television. Cheers really could do it all. Where to stream Cheers. Where to Stream: Cheers. More On: Cheers. Tags Cheers Netflix.