Which Cheers Character Are You?

Learn More About Cheers

Few sitcoms have earned the kind of permanent cultural real estate that Cheers holds nearly 45 years after its 1982 premiere. Created by Glen and Les Charles along with James Burrows, the show ran for eleven seasons on NBC, from 1982 to 1993, and spent seven of those years ranked in the top ten of the year-end Nielsen ratings, an extraordinary run for any series, let alone one that started out in 77th place its very first week on air.

The premise could not have been simpler: a Boston bar where, as the theme song promised, everybody knows your name. Ted Danson starred as Sam Malone, a former Red Sox relief pitcher and recovering alcoholic who owns and tends the bar, flirting his way through a rotating cast of regulars and a long, complicated on-again-off-again relationship with bar waitress Diane Chambers, played by Shelley Long. Interestingly, Sam was originally written as a former football player, but the role was rewritten around baseball once Ted Danson was cast, based on his build.

The bar’s other regulars became just as iconic as its stars. Cliff Clavin, the mailman with an opinion and a dubious fact about everything, and Norm Peterson, whose entrances were practically a running gag of their own, were both there from the pilot episode onward, along with Sam himself, making the three of them the only characters to appear in literally every episode of the show’s run. Bartender Coach, played by Nicholas Colasanto, was a beloved fixture of the early seasons until Colasanto’s death during season three, after which the show introduced Woody Boyd, played by Woody Harrelson, as his sweetly naive replacement.

Behind the scenes, Cheers almost did not survive its own first season. NBC’s ratings for the show were dismal enough early on that it took a direct intervention from network president Brandon Tartikoff to keep it from being cancelled outright. Ted Danson reportedly spent two weeks at an actual bartending school in Burbank to prepare for the role, and producers had at one point considered Bill Cosby for Sam Malone before settling on Danson.

Cheers also became one of television’s great launching pads. When Shelley Long left the series during season five, the show introduced Kirstie Alley as businesswoman Rebecca Howe to replace her, and the show’s success eventually spun off Frasier, following bar regular Dr. Frasier Crane to Seattle for an eleven-season run of its own that many critics consider just as strong as its parent series.

Whether your instinct is to hold court behind the bar like Sam, overthink everything like Diane, or just show up every single day like Norm, Cheers endures because its characters feel like people you have actually met. Check out our other classic sitcom quizzes for more all-timer matchups.

Cheers also holds the distinction of being one of the rare sitcoms to end entirely on its own terms, with NBC and the cast mutually agreeing the eleventh season would be its last. Its finale drew one of the largest audiences in television history at the time, a fitting send-off for a bar full of characters viewers had spent over a decade getting to know.