The shows where everyone knows your name

Picture: Paramount

In the history of television’s greatest shows reaching the end, there’s an accepted list of those that bowed out with the right mixture of pathos, completion and even a little intrigue. Leading this parade is The Sopranos - not only the best series ever to grace the small screen, but one which ended with brilliant, ambiguous flourish: mobster Tony Soprano, long-suffering wife Carmela and their children Meadow and Anthony Jr taking their seats in a New Jersey diner, its front door opens and Tony looks up, slightly pensively...before fading to black, and Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing cuts in to lower the curtain on a modern masterpiece.

Just as The Godfather is regarded as one of the greatest pieces of 20th Century film-making, with Goodfellas its rightful heir, The Sopranos dipped into the same gene pool, coming to be universally thought of as the catalyst of a golden era of cinematic storytelling in television, on a scale never previously achieved. Over six seasons, the epic HBO show coincided with the emergence of non-broadcast platforms and the artistic boldness that new players like Netflix would approach televised drama, giving us programming that was less formulaic gogglebox fodder as compelling novels in video form. 

Concurrent with The Sopranos, we had The West Wing, followed by the expansive arced narratives of The Wire, Breaking Bad and its spinoff Better Call Saul, the latter of which both ended with epic finales of their own. All are indebted to The Sopranos and, in particular, its 2007 finale. While such shows invariably carried a grim subtext (murder, drug dealing, violence, etc), they had a wit about them that television drama had rarely displayed before. Moreover, they could be compared to sitcoms for their depiction of strong, memorable and clearly defined characters. 

The best sitcoms are those with which we enjoy kindred familiarity (or aversion) with the cast, their on-screen personas and the situations they find themselves in. And the best sitcoms, too, concluded with a tear and a knowing look. It’s also why they have been televisual events. 

In 1983 105 million Americans tuned in to watch ‘Goodbye, Farewell And Amen’, the final episode of M*A*S*H, the series that had combined comedy with a moral conscience (having been spun out of Robert Altman’s anti-war film of the same name which, despite being set during the Korean conflict was clearly a statement on the contemporary battle raging in Vietnam). Over 11 seasons, viewers adhered to Hawkeye, BJ, Hotlips, Klinger, Colonel Potter and Charles Winchester with a sense of in-the-trenches camaraderie as they wisecracked their way through the horrors of an attritional war. The finale was as perfect an ending as those 11 years deserved. Obvious comparisons can be drawn with the ending of another war comedy, Blackadder Goes Forth, set amid the senseless slaughter of 1917 France, which signed off with that poignant ‘over-the-top’ order, before dissolving to a field of towering poppies.

Only Fools And Horses embedded itself in British national culture, with its cast, characters and their catchphrases acquiring a familiarity that made them extended members of our own households. Fools will forever be prefixed by the phrase “much loved”. No wonder its final episode, on Christmas Day 2003, attracted more than 24 million viewers - the highest recorded audience in the UK for a comedy, and roughly half the country’s viewing population at the time. The difference between Fools and American sitcoms is that it was written by just one person, John Sullivan. US shows tend to be written by squads of writers, but the effect is much the same, with the characters and their catchphrases becoming our own friends. Which inevitably leads me to Friends, which ended in 2004 with ‘The Last One’, concluding ten years of fun with the six New Yorkers who became, well, friends to all of us. In so many ways Friends was a spiritual successor to Seinfeld which, a few years earlier, had also focused on an equally dysfunctioning group of New York apartment-dwelling chums, their insecurities and mania, in a show that had prided itself on being about nothing at all. Over two episodes - the show’s 179th and 180th, respectively - ‘The Finale’  drew a US audience of 76 million.

Most of us will never be members of a New Jersey crime family, but many can identify with the ordinariness of suburban life at Casa Soprano (yeah, I know we don’t all have a stash of Uzis in the loft, but we have taken teenagers on tours of potential colleges, albeit without a rival being ‘whacked’ along the way). Ultimately, this affinity comes from the discernible gallery of individuals with whom we whom we might associate ourselves either partially or completely. Sitcoms, generally, bae this game easier to play: are you more Chandler than Joey? More Monica than Rachel? Del Boy or Rodney? George or Kramer?

Arguably the greatest example of sitcom ensemble casting reached its own finale 30 years ago today, when time was called on Cheers. I hold a particular affection for this show as, over its 11 series, it became the anchor of my Friday night viewing here in the UK, thanks to Channel 4. Even when I wouldn’t have been old enough to buy a pint in a British pub, let alone an American bar, Cheers was - and remains - the perfect half hour of gags and characters you couldn’t help love.

TV & Satellite Week, 18 May 1993

When it ended in 1993 I wrote a piece for TV & Satellite Week magazine in which I drew on Cheers’ status as the wittiest, most intelligent, most sophisticated television comedy of its time. And, possibly, since. This reverence, I argued, had much to do with the way it challenged the established order of sitcoms, being comprised of a group of somewhat disparate people linked by locale, not family. 

Cheers redefined the sitcom, abandoning the safe predictability of wholesome domesticity (i.e. The Cosby Show, Family Ties, et al), by abandoning the home to set itself in a downtown bar (the original concept was for the show to be set in a hotel as a US version of Fawlty Towers). 

In this setting, where punters went to escape their home life, Cheers presented a gallery of distinct personalities, generating laughs by exploiting these personas, either to prick the lasciviousness of Ted Danson’s Sam Malone, the pretentiousness of Shelly Long’s Diane Chambers, the slovenliness of George Wendt’s Norm Peterson, the dullness of John Ratzenberger’s Cliff Clavin, the naivety of Woody Harrelson’s Woody, the causticity of Rhea Perlmann’s Carla, the pomposity of Kelsey Grammer’s Dr. Frasier Crane, and latterly, the unfulfilled ambition of Kirstie Alley’s Rebecca Howe. But more than just being a platform for jokes about or from these characters, humour came from pitching their interactions - Sam’s pursuit of Diane, Norm’s bafflingly interdependent bromance with Cliff, Carla’s inverse bullying of everyone, Woody’s apprenticeship of adulthood with all of them, and so on.

Sexual and even social tension became a constant theme on Cheers, again in sharp contrast to the confected safety of American network television’s usual conservatism. The show also made much of the fact that it was set in a place of both work and recreation. Although many episodes featured scenes set away from the titular Boston bar, most were concentrated in the one set, giving the show a theatre-like environment. 

Not for nothing, Cheers won 28 Emmy Awards (and was nominated for a colossal 111). In its final episode, Sam would fix his final date; Carla would dish out her last barb; Cliff would regurgitate his one unused irrelevant fact; Woody would draw on his only remaining recollection of life “back in Hanover”; and Norm would down his last beer, though there is no record of him finally settling his bar tab (over 273 episodes he managed to avoid paying for a single drop of beer). 

That it got to that point after 11 years, growing to regularly commanding audiences of 83 million a week in the US, is testament to the perseverance by the US network NBC that ran it. Its first season, in 1982, suffered from poor ratings, but winning five Emmys, coupled with critical acclaim kept it going.

Picture: Netflix

What finished the show was Danson’s desire to concentrate on his film career, but also the intention to quit while Cheers was still at its peak (he was also earning a then-record $450,000 an episode). Most of the principle cast would go on to enjoy significant success elsewhere, though arguably it was ‘new boy’ Harrelson who would have the most critically successful career. Following Danson’s decision, the remaining cast members contemplated making a 12th series without him but they, too, concluded that Cheers would never be better.

Grammer, of course, would take his character Frasier Crane into his own eponymous sitcom which, for UK viewers, would also find a home in Channel 4’s Friday night fixture. It too - in its original run - enjoyed an 11-year run of ratings success, adopting both the traditional domestic formula with Cheers’ workplace setting. Frasier gave a somewhat lesser Cheers character a life of his own - in Seattle - creating with brother Niles, father Martin and his carer Daphne, radio producer Roz and standout star Eddie the dog another beloved ensemble (with Niles’ social-climbing but never seen wife Maris repeating the gag established by Norm’s Vera in Cheers).

‘Event’ finales like those of Friends, M*A*S*H and Cheers are unlikely to ever occur again. TV consumption has changed out of all recognition. 30 years ago, Cheers’ final episode became the 1983 season’s most watched show with over 93 million Americans watching it - some 40% of the entire US population. This had been partly engineered by clever marketing by NBC, which had promoted the episode as “the television event of a lifetime“ and television’s “greatest night”. Others got in on the act: Massachusetts governor William Weld (in the manner of The Simpsons’ publicity opportunity-seeking Mayor Quimby) declared 20 May 1993 the state’s ‘Cheers Day’. In the show’s fictional home, giant video screens were set up on Boston Common so crowds could watch the finale. Jay Leno even broadcast a live episode of his Tonight Show from the city’s Bull & Finch pub, the Cheers bar’s supposed location (the show was, of course, shot in Los Angeles). NBC devoted most of its programming that evening to Cheers, leading right up to the ‘One For The Road’ episode.

Just as the Friends finale would do a decade later, Cheers concluded with character closure. Woody entered public life as a Boston city councillor, getting Norm an accountancy job at City Hall in the process. Cliff got a promotion at the post office. Rebecca finally achieved her ambition of marrying a rich man. And TV’s greatest will-they, won’t-they romance, between Sam and Diane was revived…briefly, before calling last orders on one of the best sitcoms of all time by remaining, like that Sopranos ending, delightfully, ambiguously unresolved.

Still listening?

Picture: Paramount/Gale Adler

The history of cherished TV shows being revived long after they’ve disappeared in their prime has not always been a happy one. For every success - a Doctor Who, say - you could cite the disappointing Open All Hours, relaunched without the deceased Ronnie Barker, or the recent attempt at reviving Will & Grace. Half the problem is that TV companies, much like their first cousins the film studios, have an interest in retreading something old and familiar rather than commission something new. 

Inevitably, this risks messing with the very magic that made a property much loved to begin with (the 2016 Dad’s Army film did just that - an awkward homage that failed to justify its rationale of updating a TV series that has arguably never been bettered). Some expired properties live on as spinoffs: you could easily argue that Better Call Saul is actually better than Breaking Bad, of which it serves as a prequel. 

Some, though, don’t live up to expectation. Matt Le Blanc’s Friends offshoot Joey was never the snappy ensemble piece of its parent. Even that highly anticipated one-off Friends reunion - planned for last May but shelved by the pandemic - hasn't exactly had people holding their breath in anticipation. Don't get me wrong, Friends was wonderful, 30 years ago in its pomp, and still holds its own in endless syndication, but are we really that desperate to see Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe and Ross in middle age? The whole premise of Friends was a group of twentysomethings living in New York. When it ended, with parenthood and suburban living, it felt like it had run its natural course.

So it’s with some apprehension that we read that Frasier is coming back, 17 years after it came to a timely end in one of the greatest sitcom finales ever. Paramount announced this week that Kelsey Grammer will reprise his role as Dr. Frasier Crane for a brand new run as an anchor of its new digital streaming service Paramount+. 

Demand may, then, meet supply in helping Paramount+ off the ground with a much-loved property like Frasier. But as Roseanne found, when it returned briefly, a revival is not helped if its principal then goes and does something stupid: Roseanne Barr brought it all abruptly to an end by posting a racist tweet (“repugnant”, in the words of the ABC Network president) that got her fired. 

That, though, didn’t hold back the reinvention of the show as The Conners - arguably the first ever spinoff of a reboot. It's still going, unlike Will & Grace which returned after 11 years away only to last three seasons before getting axed. In truth, it was no longer that funny, seemingly retreading old jokes around the central four characters and not offering much new. 

Frasier was, you’ll recall, a spinoff from the equally loved Cheers, and it’s still a matter of debate as to which was the better, both being blessed with faultless casting and faultless writing. Frasier ported one of Cheers’ supporting characters and turned him into the centrepiece of a new ensemble, built around the concept of the divorced and hoity-toity psychiatrist moving into a swanky Seattle apartment with his decidedly blue collar dad, and his scampish pet dog. The dynamic was brilliantly expanded by the addition of Crane’s younger and even more neurotic brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), and an English physical therapist, Daphne Moon, who looked after the brothers’ father while becoming the secret, and then not so secret love interest to the junior Crane sibling. Even Eddie the dog became a distinctive character in his own right, earning his own front cover on America's showbiz digest Entertainment Weekly. Rightfully, the show won 37 Emmy Awards over the course of 11 seasons, with Grammer and Pierce winning four between them, along with Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild gongs. 

This week's announcement placed Frasier’s revival as the headline act of Paramount+, and was accompanied by a suitably ‘corporate’ quote from Grammer, saying that he would “gleefully anticipate sharing the next chapter in the continuing journey of Dr. Frasier Crane.” However, it is not yet known who would be joining him on that journey: John Mahoney, the Lancashire-born actor who played Crane’s irascible ex-cop dad Martin, died of cancer in 2018; Jane Leeves, the other British cast member (who played Daphne, ironically as a Lancastrian, even though she was born in Essex), said earlier this month that had no intention of giving up her role in the US medical drama series The Resident to do the then-rumoured Frasier reboot. 

The joy of Frasier - much like Cheers - was that it was cleverly multi-dimensional. Frasier may have been the pivot - be it plot lines focused on his Seattle radio station, the relationship with Niles, or their dynamic with Martin - but there was also Martin's dynamic with Daphne, and Daphne’s ‘will-they-won’t-they’ relationship with Niles. For me, at least, it made Frasier ‘appointment TV’ on a Friday night. As for the new series, Paramount promised “more exactly the same than ever”, but wouldn’t be drawn on storylines or casting, including the likelihood of Pierce returning. Grammer himself had previously said that he wouldn’t revive the show without his on-screen brother, surely one of the most serendipitous casting decisions in television history (a happy accident - originally there wasn’t going to be a brother until a casting manager saw a 10x8 of Pierce and saw what appeared to be a strong family resemblance). 

In Cheers, the educated, pompous and ever-so slightly snooty Frasier Crane was the fish out of water amongst the bar flies he drank with in Boston. Frasier flipped personas in moving to Seattle, with his ex-cop dad and the Mancunian Daphne becoming the grounded points of reference, leaving the brothers to fuss over fine wines, Debussy and the cut of their well appointed suits.

Quite what the Frasier reboot will be like, then, remains wide open. When a potential return first surfaced in 2018, Grammer told The Guardian that there would be risks: “It would be quite a breathtaking failure to try to do it and not do it better than the previous show - and I think that’s almost impossible. To pick up that responsibility would be a very brave thing to do.” A year later the subject came up again, but this time Grammer put a little more substance behind ideas that were clearly under consideration, including setting the show in a city other than Crane's home town. “We’ll see how people respond to it because it’s not going to be the same place, it’s not going to be Seattle,” Grammer said in 2019. “It’s not going to be the same Frasier, it’s going to be the man in his next iteration.”  

That man has, in truth, gone through two reinventions, with his own show and a guest appearance by Grammer as the character in a crossover episode of the sitcom Wings. But what garnered all those Emmys during its run between 1993 and 2004, building to an audience of 37 million in the US alone for its final episode, was the combination of saturated creativity - a vast team of show runners, producers and writers - and a core ensemble cast who lived in our hearts for thirty minutes every week. Only Fools And Horses comes to mind as an equivalent (although that had just one writer behind it). 

Here lies the key to whether the reboot will work. “Great television is about creating characters that resonate with audiences and creating universes that viewers want to spend time within," Tim Glanfield, editorial director of the Radio Times said this week. And from that, he said, some shows create a genuine emotional need. “The characters are missed, the world it occupied is mourned for, a little gap is left in people's lives, and audiences often ask, 'why couldn't they have made more?’”.

Picture: NBC

The compulsion will be for Frasier’s producers to do their damnedest to bring back as many of the original cast as possible, simply as that was where the magic lived. Cryptically, when appearing on James Corden’s US chat show in 2019, he hinted that any reboot would be a “third act” rather than a continuation. “The same group of characters, but in a different setting,” he said. “Something has changed in their lives.” Quite what, we don’t know, but it's wise to suspect that it will not be the sort of franchised reinvention that Blackadder went through. All of the principle cast - if they commit - will have aged (even the lad who played Frasier and Lillith Crane’s son, Frederick, is now 32), which, like the Friends reunion, might either inspire the creative premise, or be its failure. Hopefully we will find out, if Paramount confirms details of when - and where - the reboot will appear.

The bigger challenge, arguably, is how Frasier will connect with its audiences. Unlike Friends, the show was never a feature of younger viewing habits. Since it came off air, anyone under the age of thirty will have become hooked on the myriad reality series that keep the streaming services afloat. But, like the Friends reunion, I’m sure there will be a quorum of viewers eager to recreate their Friday evenings in the '90s, settling down at 9pm in eager anticipation of that jazzy xylophone riff and an animated squiggle of Seattle’s Space Needle, welcoming us into Crane’s KACL radio studio. All followed by Grammer’s mellifluous baritone saying the words: “I’m listening”.