Cheers is CBS' sitcom television franchise was produced by "Charles/Burrows Productions" in association with Paramount Network Television, and was created by the team of James Burrows and Glen and Les Charles for the CBS family. The plot of the franchise starts as a set in a real-life bar and namesake "Cheers" in Boston, where a group of locals meet to drink, relax and socialize. The franchise also has it's own tv-spinoffs like The Tortellis, Wings, the original Frasier tv series and then the 2023 Paramount+ remake of the Frasier.
Characters[]
Before the Cheers pilot "Give Me a Ring Sometime" was completed and aired in 1982, the series consisted of four employees in the first script. Neither Norm Peterson nor Cliff Clavin, regular customers of Cheers, were featured; later revisions added them as among the regular characters of the series.
In later years, Woody Boyd replaced Coach, after the character died off-screen in season three (1984–85), following actor Nicholas Colasanto's death. Frasier Crane started as a recurring character and became a permanent one. In season six (1987–88), new character Rebecca Howe was added, having been written into the show after the finale of the previous season (1986–87). Lilith Sternin started as a one-time character in an episode of season four, "Second Time Around" (1985). After her second season five appearance, she became a recurring character and was later featured as a permanent one during season 10 (1991–92).
Original main characters[]
- Ted Danson as Sam Malone:
A bartender and proprietor of Cheers, Sam is also a lothario. Before the series began, he was a baseball relief pitcher for the Boston Red Sox nicknamed "Mayday Malone" until he became an alcoholic, harming his career. He has an on-again, off-again relationship with Diane Chambers, his class opposite, in the first five seasons (1982–1987). During their off-times, Sam has flings with many not-so-bright "sexy women", yet fails to pursue a meaningful relationship. After Diane is written out of the series, he tries to pursue Rebecca Howe, with varying results. At the end of the series, he is still unmarried and faces his sexual addiction with the help of Dr. Robert Sutton's (Gilbert Lewis) group meetings, advised by Frasier. - Shelley Long as Diane Chambers:
An academic, sophisticated graduate student attending Boston University. In the pilot, Diane is abandoned by her fiancé, leaving her without a job, a man, or money. Realizing that one of her few practical skills is memorization, which comes in handy when dealing with drink orders, she reluctantly becomes a barmaid. Later, she becomes a close friend of Coach and has an on-and-off relationship with bartender Sam Malone, her class opposite. During their off-relationship times, Diane dates men who fit her upper-class ideals, such as Frasier Crane. In 1987, she leaves Boston behind for a writing career and to live in Los Angeles, California. Diane returns to Cheers to cure Sam of his drinking. Diane's biggest enemy is Carla, who frequently insults her, but Diane's lack of retaliation serves to annoy Carla even more. - Nicholas Colasanto as Coach Ernie Pantusso:
A "borderline senile" co-bartender, widower, and retired baseball coach. Coach is also a friend of Sam and a close friend of Diane. He has a daughter, Lisa (Allyce Beasley). Coach listens to people's problems and solves them. However, other people also help resolve his own problems. In 1985, Coach died without explicit explanation, as Colasanto died of a heart attack. - Rhea Perlman as Carla Tortelli:
A "wisecracking, cynical" cocktail waitress, who treats customers badly. She is also highly fertile and matrimonially inept. When the series premieres, she is the mother of five children by her ex-husband Nick Tortelli (Dan Hedaya). Over the course of the series, she bears three more, the depiction of which incorporated Perlman's real-life pregnancies. All of her children are ill behaved, except Ludlow, whose father is a prominent academic. She flirts with men, including ones who are not flattered by her ways, and believes in superstitions. Later she marries Eddie LeBec, an ice hockey player, who later becomes a penguin mascot for ice shows. After he dies in an ice show accident by an ice resurfacer, Carla later discovers that Eddie had committed bigamy with another woman, whom he had gotten pregnant. Carla sleeps with Sam's enemy John Allen Hill to Sam's annoyance and anger. - George Wendt as Norm Peterson:
A bar regular and occasionally-employed accountant. A recurrent joke on the show, especially in the earlier seasons, was that the character was such a popular and constant fixture at the bar that anytime he entered through the front door everyone present would yell out his name ("NORM!") in greeting; usually this cry would be followed by one of the present bartenders asking Norm how he was, usually receiving a sardonic response and a request for a beer. ("It's a dog-eat-dog world, and I'm wearing Milkbone underwear.") He has infrequent accounting jobs and a troubled marriage with (but is still in love with and married to) Vera, an unseen character, though she is occasionally heard. Later in the series, he becomes a house painter and an interior decorator. Even later in the series, Norm secures his dream job, tasting beer at a brewery. The character was not originally intended to be a main cast role; Wendt auditioned for a minor role of George for the pilot episode. The role was only to be Diane Chambers' first customer and had only one word: "Beer!" After he was cast in a more permanent role, the character was renamed Norm. - John Ratzenberger as Cliff Clavin:
A know-it-all bar regular and mail carrier. He lives with his mother Esther Clavin (Frances Sternhagen) in first the family house and later an apartment. In the bar, Cliff continuously spouts nonsensical and annoying trivia, making him an object of derision to the bar patrons. Ratzenberger auditioned for the role of a minor character George, but it went to Wendt, evolving the role into Norm Peterson. The producers decided they wanted a resident bar know-it-all, so the security guard Cliff Clavin was added for the pilot. The producers changed his occupation into a mail carrier as they thought such a man would have wider knowledge than a guard.
Subsequent main characters[]
- Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane:
A psychiatrist and bar regular. Frasier started out as Diane Chambers' love interest in the third season (1984–85). In the fourth season (1985–86), after Diane jilts him at the altar in Europe, Frasier starts to frequent Cheers and becomes a regular. He later marries Lilith Sternin and has a son, Frederick. After the series ends, the character becomes the focus of the spin-off Frasier, in which he is divorced from Lilith and living in Seattle. - Woody Harrelson as Woody Boyd:
A not-so-bright bartender. He arrives from his Midwest hometown of Hanover, Indiana to Boston, to see Coach, his "pen pal" (as referring to exchanging "pens", not letters). When Sam tells Woody that Coach died, Sam hires Woody in Coach's place. Later, he marries his girlfriend Kelly Gaines (Jackie Swanson), also not-so-bright but raised in a rich family. In the final season, he runs for city council and, surprisingly, wins. - Bebe Neuwirth as Lilith Sternin:
A psychiatrist and bar regular. She is often teased by bar patrons about her uptight personality and appearance. In "Second Time Around" (1986), her first episode, also her only one of the fourth season, her date with Frasier does not go well because they constantly argue. In the fifth season, with help from Diane, Lilith and Frasier begin a relationship. Eventually, they marry and have a son, Frederick. In the eleventh and final season, she leaves Frasier to live with another man in an experimental underground environment called the "Eco-pod." She returns later in the season and reconciles with Frasier. However, in the spinoff Frasier, the couple have divorced, with Lilith maintaining custody of Frederick. - Kirstie Alley as Rebecca Howe:
She starts out as a strong independent woman, manager of the bar for the corporation that bought Cheers from Sam after his on-off relationship with Diane ended. Eventually, when Sam regains ownership, she begs him to let her remain, first as cocktail waitress and later as manager. She repeatedly has romantic failures with mainly rich men and becomes more and more "neurotic, insecure, and sexually frustrated". At the start, Sam frequently attempts to seduce Rebecca without success. he loses interest in her. In the series finale, after failed relationships with rich men, Rebecca marries a plumber and quits working for the bar. In the Frasier episode "The Show Where Sam Shows Up", she is revealed to be divorced and back at the bar. When Frasier asks whether this means that she is working there again, Sam says "no, she's just back at the bar."
In season 11, Bebe Neuwirth is given "starring" credit only when she appears.
Character table[]
| Character | Actress / Actor | Role at Cheers | Occupation | Seasons | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | ||||
| Sam Malone | Ted Danson | Owner/Bartender | Former baseball player | colspan="11" Main | ||||||||||
| Carla Tortelli | Rhea Perlman | Waitress | Mother | colspan="11" Main | ||||||||||
| Norm Peterson | George Wendt | Customer | Accountant; house painter; interior decorator | colspan="11" Main | ||||||||||
| Cliff Clavin | John Ratzenberger | Customer | Mailman | Recurring | colspan="10" Main | |||||||||
| Ernie "Coach" Pantusso | Nicholas Colasanto | Bartender | Former baseball player and coach | colspan="3" Main | colspan="8" | |||||||||
| Diane Chambers | Shelley Long | Waitress | Graduate student, writer | colspan="5" Main | colspan="5" | Guest | ||||||||
| Woody Boyd | Woody Harrelson | Assistant Bartender | Actor; politician | colspan="3" | colspan="8" Main | |||||||||
| Rebecca Howe | Kirstie Alley | Owner/Manager | Businesswoman | colspan="5" | colspan="6" Main | |||||||||
| Frasier Crane | Kelsey Grammer | Customer | Psychiatrist | colspan="2" | colspan="2" Recurring | colspan="7" Main | ||||||||
| Lilith Sternin | Bebe Neuwirth | Customer | Psychiatrist | colspan="3" | colspan="2" Guest | colspan="4" Recurring | colspan="2" Main | |||||||
The Franchise's Setting[]
:Main article: Cheers Beacon Hill
The franchise's main setting is mostly based on the Cheers Beacon Hill in Boston, Massachusetts (USA).
Television Media[]
Television Pilot[]
:Main article: Give Me a Ring Sometime (Cheers)
The pilot episode introduces the characters at the Cheers bar in Boston: employees Sam Malone, Diane Chambers, Coach Ernie Pantusso, and Carla Tortelli; and regular customers Norm Peterson and Cliff Clavin. In this episode, Diane, brought in by her fiancé, meets the employees and patrons of the bar. When she realizes that her fiancé has left her alone in the bar, Diane accepts Sam's offer to be the bar's waitress to start over. The creators of Cheers (and the crew of Taxi), co-writers Glen and Les Charles and director James Burrows, created a sitcom project in 1981. Initially set in a hotel, the setting changed to a hotel bar and finally a "Boston neighborhood bar".
Fortunately, The cast of the pilot episode introduces employees of the bar, Cheers, the ones from Boston, Massachusetts had a very decent run-in.
Television Series[]
- Main article: Cheers (television series)
After finishing the very first episode of the show, the series that ran on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, with a total of 275 half-hour episodes across 11 seasons. Before the Cheers pilot "Give Me a Ring Sometime" was completed and aired in 1982, the series consisted of four employees in the first script. Neither Norm Peterson nor Cliff Clavin, regular customers of Cheers, were featured; later revisions added them as among the regular characters of the series. Nearly all of Cheers took place in the front room of the bar, but the characters often went into the rear pool room or the bar's office. Cheers did not show any action outside the bar until the first episode of the second season, which took place in Diane's apartment.
Television Specials[]
Television Films[]
| Film | Plot | Original release | Goofs (or Notes) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cheers: Strange Bedfellows | Sam dates the local councilwoman Janet Eldridge (Kate Mulgrew), who is campaigning for her re-election. Diane accuses Janet of exploiting Sam as part of her campaign. | May 1, 1986 | Goof: There is no Hurley's Market in Boston. |
| Cheers: One for the Road | The episode begins with Frasier writing a political speech for Woody, who has trouble doing it himself. Rebecca accidentally rejects Don Santry's (Tom Berenger)[1] proposal because she is too excited to accept it, causing him to break up with her. Diane Chambers, making her first appearance on the series after six years, appears on television, accepting an award for outstanding writing of a television movie, surprising Sam. Diane calls Sam at night to thank him for the congratulatory telegram he sent earlier and accepts Sam's invitation to return to Boston, but Sam doubts that she will actually come. | May 20, 1993 | Note: Tom Berenger's character Don Santry first appeared in the previous episode, "The Guy Can't Help It". |
Spin-offs, crossovers and cultural references[]
Some of the actors and actresses from Cheers brought their characters into other television shows, either in a guest appearance or in a new spin-off series. The most successful Cheers spin-off was Frasier, which featured Frasier Crane following his relocation back to Seattle, Washington. Sam, Diane, and Woody all individually appeared in Frasier episodes, with Lilith appearing as a guest on multiple episodes. In the season nine episode "Cheerful Goodbyes", Frasier returns to Boston and meets up with the Cheers gang, later attending Cliff's retirement party.
Although Frasier was more successful, The Tortellis was the first series to spin off from Cheers, premiering in 1987. The show featured Carla's ex-husband Nick Tortelli and his wife Loretta, but was canceled after 13 episodes and drew protests for its stereotypical depictions of Italian Americans.
In addition to direct spin-offs, several Cheers characters had guest appearance crossovers with other shows, including Wings and St. Elsewhere (episode "Cheers"). Cheers has also been spoofed or referenced in other media, including The Simpsons (spoofing the title sequence and theme song in "Flaming Moe's"; actually visiting the place with vocal role reprises of the majority of the principal cast in "Fear of Flying"), Scrubs (episode "My Life in Four Cameras"), Adventure Time (episode "Simon & Marcy"), the 2012 comedy film Ted, and the 2011 video game Dragon Age II.
In the Cheers episode "Woody For Hire, Norman Meets the Apes" Woody shows and tells everyone how he was an extra on Boston based drama Spenser: For Hire. In the season 4 episode of Seinfeld titled "The Pitch", Jerry and George are presenting their idea for a sitcom to NBC executives. George is unhappy with their offer and feels that he deserves the same salary as Ted Danson which he claims was $800,000 per episode, being that Cheers is also an NBC show. Danson's reported salary was actually $250,000 per episode. At this point Cheers was in its 10th season and Ted Danson had won an Emmy and a Golden Globe the year before.
In the seventh episode of the second season of How I Met Your Mother, a coffee shop barista mistakenly hears Barney's name as "Swarley" and writes it on his cup. This leads to a running gag in which everyone mercilessly refers to Barney as "Swarley" despite his protests, which culminates in everyone in McClaren's bar shouting "Swarley" when he enters and playing the Cheers theme song. The credits are then shown in the "Cheers" style. In the season seven episode, In Tailgate, Ted and Barney are outraged with the price to get into MacLaren's on New Year's eve, so they offer for everyone to come upstairs. In the apartment, there is a puzzles sign that is designed to parody Cheers. Ted and Barney employ Kevin as their bartender, and they invent a theme song which also parodies the Cheers theme song.
In the 2015 video game Fallout 4, set in Boston, there is a bar named 'Prost Bar' near Boston Common which, when entered, is an almost exact replica of the bar used in the series. It includes two dead bodies sat at the end of the bar, with one of them wearing a mail carrier's uniform, a direct reference to regular barfly Cliff Clavin.
The eighth anniversary special of Late Night with David Letterman, airing in 1990, began with a scene at Cheers, in which the bar's TV gets stuck on NBC, and all of the bar patrons decide to go home instead of staying to watch David Letterman. The scene was re-used to open Letterman's final episode in 1993. A similar scene aired in the Super Bowl XVII Pregame Show on NBC, in which the characters briefly discuss the upcoming game.
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine character Morn is named for Norm Peterson.
In the season 2 finale of the NBC sitcom The Good Place, Ted Danson's character Michael appears as a bartender while wearing a blue plaid button-down, in a clear homage to Danson's character in Cheers.
In 2019 members of the Cheers cast, Rhea Perlman, George Wendt, John Ratzenberger and Kirstie Alley reprised their characters in an episode of The Goldbergs where they play customers of Geoff's short-lived food delivery business.
Spin-off Revival[]
- Main article: Frasier (2023 series)
On February 24, 2021, a revival series was greenlit for exclusive debut on Paramount+. Described as a "third act" and another spin-off, Grammer said he "gleefully" anticipated "sharing the next chapter in the continuing journey of Dr. Frasier Crane" as he had "spent over 20 years" of his "creative life on the Paramount lot". In October 2022, Paramount+ officially gave the series a season order of 10 episodes. In January 2023, Jack Cutmore-Scott joined the cast as Freddy Crane. It was also reported that English actor Nicholas Lyndhurst would be joining the cast. Anders Keith and Jess Salgueiro were later cast as Niles and Daphne's son and Freddy's roommate, respectively. In February, Toks Olagundoye was cast as Olivia.
Remake[]
In September 2011, Plural Entertainment debuted a remake of the series on Spanish television, also titled Cheers. Set at an Irish pub, it starred Alberto San Juan as Nicolás "Nico" Arnedo, the equivalent of Sam Malone in the original series. It also used the original theme song, rerecorded in Spanish by Dani Martín, under the title "Dónde la gente se divierte."
In December 2012, The Irish Film and Television Network announced that casting was underway on an Irish-language version of Cheers produced by production company Sideline. The new show, tentatively titled Teach Seán, would air on Ireland's TG4 and features a main character who, like Sam Malone, is a bar owner, a retired athlete and a recovering alcoholic. However, because of being set in Ireland, the barman is a "former hurling star" rather than an ex-baseball player.[2] As of August 2019, the Irish remake has not occurred.
Cheers: Live on Stage[]
On September 9, 2016, a stage adaptation called Cheers: Live on Stage opened at the Shubert Theatre in Boston. Comprising pieces of the original TV series, the play was adapted by Erik Forrest Jackson. It was produced by Troika/Stageworks. The director was Matt Lenz. It starred Grayson Powell as Sam Malone, Jillian Louis as Diane Chambers, Barry Pearl as Ernie 'Coach' Pantusso, Sarah Sirotta as Carla Tortelli, Paul Vogt as Norm Peterson, and Buzz Roddy as Cliff Clavin. The production was scheduled to tour through 2017, but was cancelled in 2016.
External links[]
- ↑ Tom Berenger's character Don Santry first appeared in the previous episode, "The Guy Can't Help It".
- ↑ "Irish TV channel to remake 'Cheers'".