This show is an absolute classic! All these years later Cheers is still hilarious. The jokes, stories and characters hold up today.Not many shows can last that long and choose to go out on top. The cast was amazing.Despite a lot of cast changes the show stayed great, which is very hard for TV shows to do.I think most people will love this show after the first season which is kind of slow. It dips a bit in the later seasons as well but not much.

It was my brother who first encouraged me to watch Cheers almost 30 years ago, in 1987. In fact, I think it was actually this TV-show that encouraged him to pursue a career in psychology :) Being 11 years old at the time, I initially had some reservations though; the constant ping-pong between womanizer Sam Malone and pseudo-intellectual Diane Chambers not quite catching my fancy. Two year later that changed however; one of the alpha guys in my school unexpectedly outed himself as a Cheers fan in class; in response our conservative South African English teacher reproached him, saying that the mature themes of this TV-show were unsuitable for boys our age. That was of course a big incentive in my peer-group to watch Cheers. But apart from that, this TV-show really was a trailblazer in comedy during that time; the lead actors competing with each other who was able to make himself into the biggest idiot; a contest which probably Kirstie Alley won, pushing the boundaries perhaps even a bit too hard, but certainly one of the best female comedians of the 80's and 90's, with some innovative acting techniques (which usually involved her wild bunch of hair) Also, what made this already good comedy into a brilliant comedy, where classy support actors such as Roger Rees (who recently passed away) and Jackie Swanson, adding depth to the show, such as the conflict between the Boston Working Class and Upper Class. e.g. Sam: "Woody wants to buy you a wedding ring, Kelly; that's why he's working 20 hours a day and is so exhausted." Kelly: "Oh, is that a lot? I'm not part of the work force." In fact, I also got involved with a Kelly figure when I was at university in Austria, in Social Work School; a cute, cultured girl from the Vienna Upper Class, also not part of the 'work force', but slumming with us working class people, many who drank beer like water, similar to the bunch in Cheers. It was then that I realized that Cheers also had some educational merit, and began watching the show again :)

I adored "Cheers" on its original release in the early 80's and have lately been revisiting my adoration in catching re-runs right back to the first series. Like the best series, it makes you stay with it, through series after series, cast changes or not, like other American favourites of mine "The Mary Tyler-Moore Show", "Rhoda" "M.A.S.H." "Taxi" "Newhart" and more recently "Friends". Indeed it's easy to see "Cheers" influence on the latter, both fixing much of the action on a popular drinking hole. This was back in the days when writers wrote laugh-out-loud jokes and characters you could empathise with unlike today's post modern ironic shows where the odd line might make you smile at best. "Cheers" always kept you watching for the next line, which more often than not brought forth a laugh. Set-bound as it was, like, say, the bridge on the Starship Enterprise, familiarity bred content as you got to know the characters and their surroundings. The characters were great from the start, Sam "Mayday" Malone, pseudo-intellectual barmaid Diane, the feral barmaid Carla, permanent bar-stool residents Cliff and Norm and best of all the dotty bar manager Coach, with a heart of pure gold. Newer characters entered as the series progressed, especially oddballs Frazier and Lilith Crane, Carla's combative husband Nick and later, the dim young barman Woody Harrelson's "Woody"(a great replacement for Coach) and Kirsty Alley's "Backseat Becky" (ditto for Diane). Great as the smart direction and comedic delivery were, it was all about the writing. Great writers like Heidi Perlman, the Charles brothers, David Lloyd and Earl Pomerantz kept the quality high, season after season as I'm sure my end-to-end re-viewing will testify. 7 down, 244 to go!

I do love sitcoms, and Cheers and its spin-off Frasier are two of the best sitcoms there are in my opinion. Cheers is a comedy classic, I have been a fan of it for quite some time now and never got round to reviewing it until now. The production values are of top notch quality, there's nothing cheap or dated about Cheers, not then, not now. The story lines, springing from a simple but good concept, are outstanding in their ideas and in their execution and Cheers has some of the best, funniest and creative writing I have heard and seen in a sitcom. The characters are wonderful, timeless and best of all real, all of them are easy to relate to and one of the main reasons, aside from the writing, why Cheers is such a hit for me. My favourite is the eloquent Frasier Crane, but I love them all equally. The acting is superb as well, not just from Ted Danson and Rhea Perlman but also from Kelsey Grammar, I can't choose who's the best as this is one of the rare sitcoms in my opinion where nobody gives a bad performance. Overall, a comedy classic that has stood the test of time. 10/10 Bethany Cox