Cheers was the longest-running and most critically acclaimed situation comedy on 1980s television. Combining physical and verbal gags with equal dexterity, Cheers turned the denizens of a small Boston bar into full-fledged American archetypes. By the end of the show's run, author Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was moved to call Cheers the "one comic masterpiece" in TV history. The author of many comic fiction classics added, "I wish I'd written [ Cheers ] instead of everything I had written. Every time anybody opens his or her mouth on that show, it's significant. It's funny. "

Cheers was set at a Boston bar of the same name owned by Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a good-looking former relief pitcher for the woebegone Boston Red Sox whose career was cut short by a drinking problem. His alcoholism under control, he reveled in his semi-celebrity and status as a ladies' man. Tending bar was Sam's old...