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BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series
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Subject: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Will Fly Date: 29 Oct 13 - 03:18 PM I'm currently watching a re-run of "Cheers" - Series 1, with Coach as the bartender - on UK ITV4 TV - at the moment. It's an absolute joy - everything that good TV comedy should be: warm, witty, unpredictable, cynical... everything that British television comedy from the same era was not. Clever scriptwriting, on-the-spot direction and production. "Cheers" - I salute you - cheers! |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,sciencegeek Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:03 PM humor, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder... it would have been easier to take if it there had been some good Irish music to go along... but for anyone who endured an alcoholic parent, there wasn't much funny about a bunch of losers whose lives revolved around a bar. Our monthly sessions are at taverns/bars... and I'm no tea totaller.. but when the music's over we have a life to go back to. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:11 PM Will, I never missed it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:15 PM Accidentally cut off. I think I saw every episode. If it is available as a package, I may order. Losers? I saw people gathered to relax and enjoy being with each other. a |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Will Fly Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:37 PM sciencegeek - how many drunks do you actually see in "Cheers"? Not very many. The bar was just a comedy environment - it could have been any environment. They chose to set it in a bar to get a cross-section of a certain kind of life. I'm sorry for your personal family situation which prevents you from enjoying the comedy. I myself have spent roughly 50 years enjoying the company of people in pubs - the jokes, the badinage, and, yes, the music. One of the great times of the day for me is from 5.00pm to 6.30pm, two or three days a week, when the Old Gits Corner meets up in my local and talk bollocks. We don't get drunk, we don't wreck lives - ours or anyone else's - and we just have a laugh. Oh - and we have friendships that matter to all of us. And that's why, for me, "Cheers" is fun. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Bill D Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:39 PM It WAS a pretty good series early on......... but after a few years they started grasping for plots and ended up writing for the minor characters for spin-offs. I lost interest. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Will Fly Date: 29 Oct 13 - 04:42 PM One of the secrets of creating a good series, Bill, is to know when to stop. "Fawlty Towers" ran for just 2 series - then stopped. Quit while you're ahead, huh? Having said that, I quite liked "Frasier"... |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Bobert Date: 29 Oct 13 - 07:08 PM I was a Cheers-head... B~ |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: gnu Date: 29 Oct 13 - 08:05 PM I liked it until it got silly and a one theme or one story line thing. A lot of them do but there are only so many stories with the original cast. Kinda like Mudcat BS is becoming with the exception of the odd original non-contentious thread such as this one. Cheers had to end. MASH had to end. Mudcat BS doesn't have to end but it's headed that way if exceptions like this thread don't keep it alive. Just silly banter and fun without trolls and such. That is what it used to be. I miss that. I miss Cheers and Mash and Doctor In The House and Are You Being Served and......... Mudcat BS. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: ChanteyLass Date: 29 Oct 13 - 09:29 PM I enjoyed Cheers except for the final episode. What a disappointing way to end those shows. Before the final episode, a group of people I worked with each wrote our own ideas of how it should end. Every one of us wrote a better ending than the one we watched! I think I would have liked the series no matter in what city it was set, but since Boston is about an hour away from my Rhode Island home, many of the references were special for me. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Ebbie Date: 29 Oct 13 - 09:37 PM There have been a number of US tv series that I consider exceptionally well written. One was Cheers, another was a marvelous one named Soap. Another, I think, is Frazier. I don't watch much television in recent years but those stand out in my memory. Oh, and there was a British one I liked most awfully, she says archly. Don't remember the name but it was set in a retirement community, I think- was Judith Dench in it? |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: maeve Date: 29 Oct 13 - 10:11 PM Ebbie- Are you thinking of Graham Crowden as Tom and Stephanie Cole as Diana in "Waiting for God" ? |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Ebbie Date: 30 Oct 13 - 01:49 AM I think you are right, Maeve. Graham Crowden rings a bell. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,Musket getting nostalgic Date: 30 Oct 13 - 02:11 AM I must admit. I will get around to watching an episode or two because a few years ago I felt slightly left out. We were in Boston for a couple of days before driving up to Killington for the skiing. Like most of my compatriots, I like Boston because it is pedestrian friendly unlike some other US cities. Mrs Musket insisted on visiting the bar where the outdoor scenes and some of the indoor ones apparently were filmed. I was the only one in there who at that time had never even heard of the show. Does make you kind of curious. .... |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Joe Offer Date: 30 Oct 13 - 05:22 AM Once upon a time in the 1990s, I had to do a background investigation for a government security clearance for a screenwriter - I think he was going to work for Voice of America or something. It was fascinating, because I had rarely worked with Hollywood people. Everybody said what a terrific Cheers script this guy had written, so I became curious about the script. Turns out, the script was never produced or broadcast, and I'm not even sure that the guy tried to sell it to Cheers for production. But at the time, the show was so popular that every screenwriter had a Cheers script in his portfolio, because it was the lingua franca of screenwriting at the time. If you wanted to strut your stuff (to get a job), you had to have written a Cheers script. And in the process of all this, I got to talk to a lot of screenwriters, and I got the impression that screenwriters are really nice people who are really fun to talk with. The show ran for 11 seasons from 1982 to 1993 - a successful US TV series runs for 7 seasons, so 11 is phenomenal. And yeah, when I went to Boston, I had to go to the Cheers bar on Beacon Hill. But nobody knew my name there. -Joe- |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: sciencegeek Date: 30 Oct 13 - 06:36 AM Will... an alcoholic isn't alway's drunk... but their life does revolve around alcohol. The character that really turned me off was the fat guy who never had a kind thing to say about his wife. That bar was their "home"... they just couldn't sleep there. They were mostly harmless.. but still losers because keeping a barstool warm is not my definition of a life well spent. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: sciencegeek Date: 30 Oct 13 - 07:13 AM hit the button too soon... Your experience in pubs is fine... to be honest, dad never spent time in bars. There are plenty of other ways to get booze cheaper. I rarely find sitcoms funny... MASH was an exception. Cosby, Seinfeld had their moments... and watching Christopher LLoyd in Taxi or Tony Shaloub in Wings was a blast. The thing about Cheers is that there wasn't a single character that I would want as a friend. I have more in common with my Amish neighbors than I did with the type of folks written in that show or in Seinfeld. The Cagney film The Time of Their Lives was more interesting; I never saw the Jackie Gleeson version. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: catspaw49 Date: 30 Oct 13 - 11:40 AM Wow....I'll bet you're really a big fan of Amish Mafia then, huh? A station here is replaying WKRP in Cincinnati which had some of the funniest lines and situations ever...at least for me. "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." Spaw |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,sciencegeek Date: 30 Oct 13 - 12:12 PM Amish Mafia shows what can go wrong with fundamentalism... so I never did more than read the show description... there is another show I watched a few times that shows how hard it is to break away from the community. There are as many factions of Amish & Mennonites as there are other protestant denominations. There are also the Hutterites... and here in western NY there was once a thriving Shaker community. And can we ignore that the town of Palmyra gave us Joseph Smith... yikes! I forgot about WKRP... watched it from the start & the trukey line saved their "bacon" because the show was on the verge of cancellation. Great show with characters - in every sense of the word- that had multiple layers and were far more sympathetic than most. That was why it was slow to take off, it took time to develop the characters, which doesn't fit with the "instant hit" mode of network thinking. Since I've spent many years working with horses and have had contact with Amish & Mennonites over those years, they are not totally alien to me. Add in my geeky interest in cultural anthropology, I've made the effort to try and understand their way of life. Not one I'd embrace for myself, but one I can understand. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Richard Bridge Date: 30 Oct 13 - 12:24 PM I simply could not stand it. I only ever watched a few seconds of it when it was unavoidable. The usual crass stereotyped American grinning jackanapes. Nearly as bad as "Friends". |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Elmore Date: 30 Oct 13 - 12:29 PM Don't watch sitcoms anymore. However,when I retired 10 years ago, I had time to catch up with Cheers, Mash, Frazier, and Everybody Loves Raymond in reruns. It seems to me that these shows hold up well because of excellent writing, acting, and character development. Incidentally, the fat guy on Cheers, George Wendt, who played Norm is a fine actor. I wonder how these guys got along working together, because in real life their political views were miles apart. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,Musket noting Date: 30 Oct 13 - 12:33 PM Jackanapes..... It pays to increase your word power. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Phil Cooper Date: 30 Oct 13 - 03:01 PM I liked Cheers, as well. Also Fraser I thought was a better series. And when Spaw brought up WKRP I had to agree,that show was great. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,the artist forsmeltingly noun as concerend Date: 30 Oct 13 - 03:16 PM the best thing ever to come out of America since the Simpsons |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,sciencegeek Date: 30 Oct 13 - 03:38 PM I remember the big deal it was when we got our very first TV set... it was 1955. Years later when our neighbors got a color TV, the first in the neighborhood, we were invited over to see Bonanza.... gasp... Ben Cartwright had blue hair! Variety shows with vaudeville names ruled the airwaves, along with shows that used broadway actors who later went on to fame. Being a horse nut from an early age, TV westerns were a must for me. We've just been watching the old F Troop DVDs... the first season was a who's who of old film & TV performers... plus lame plots that felt like those early TV skits. And VERY non PC... LOL but they used the old Warner western stage lot & must have still maintained the old stable of horses... which I appreciated. While dated a bit now, the old Dick Van Dike show was well written and performed... Maury Amsterdam & Rose Marie were great! And Mary Tyler Moore went on to do much better things herself... Well.. I guess I'm done with dating myself. The geek is a dinosaur.. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,MikeL2 Date: 30 Oct 13 - 03:46 PM Hi Will I am watching the same series now. I did see many of them first time around but to me they are just as funny seeing them after all these years. I think that the series suffered a little by the sad loss of "Coach". They never quite replaced him. I was also a great "Taxi" fan. Christopher Lloyd was great in it as were most of the main cast. Funny, we have an "old gits night regularly and only last week I was saying that the the episode where Rev Jim (Lloyd ) was keeping a horse in his room.....laugh...I thought my pants would never dry....lol Great Stuff Regards Mike |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST Date: 31 Oct 13 - 12:11 AM Thank you Red Sox! Glad Mayday Malone wasn't pitching. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,CS Date: 31 Oct 13 - 12:45 PM Nearly as bad as Friends? Surely nothing could be as bad as Friends! HIdeous hideous hideous. Oh, there is Sex and the City I suppose with those wealthy white women whining about the kinds of 'problems' only wealthy white people are privileged enough to suffer.. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: SINSULL Date: 31 Oct 13 - 01:25 PM Spaw - that Thanksgiving episode of WKRP was one of the funniest moments in TV> I cried I was laughing so hard. "Oh the Humanity!!!!" Waiting for God is my PBS favorite. Bitingly funny. Favorite US Series - Northern Exposure, the first two seasons. Cheers ran too long.Early on there were some classic episodes including a Thanksgiving food fight. Didn't Frazier grow out Cheers? |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: Q (Frank Staplin) Date: 31 Oct 13 - 01:41 PM Cheers, Taxi, WKRP, Fraser, and the great westerns. China Beach; to a WW2 vet like me, a much better series than Mash, yet Mash gets reruns. Marple, with Joan Hickson. I have DVD's. A superb actress, scripts not always the best. Can't stomach the Simpsons. Saw a few episodes of Coronation Street; perhaps a good series but some of it was foreign to my Canadian-American ears. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: GUEST,sciencegeek Date: 31 Oct 13 - 02:06 PM one of the funniest shows was the Muppets... heck, I remember when Rolf was an occasional "guest star" on the Jimmy Dean Show - always a blast. The Smothers Brothers was a hit, even with my registered Republican parents. All in the Family was never missed either. |
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Subject: RE: BS: 'Cheers' - what a great series From: catspaw49 Date: 01 Nov 13 - 08:54 AM Geeek, you and I are probably pretty close in age. We got our first TV in 1954 and it seemed that most other people where I lived were buying them as well. I was so young that everything was fascinating from that box. My grandfather loved the fights sponsored by Gilette (if you look around we had a thread about TV theme songs somewhere) and my old man loved Sid Caesar. Shows for me included Roy and Gene and Hoppy and the Lone Ranger and any old cowboy movies that be on. We had a cable set up out of Cleveland which meant we got better reception but also because of where we lived we could get antenna shows from Wheeling and Pittsburgh. Come to think of it, we had more channels available in east Ohio than we did when we moved to Columbus. I was a huge fan of Kukla, Fran, and Ollie. Tom Terrific was big for awhile and so was a show which may have been the first interactive TV game. It was called "Winky Dink and You." You bought this plastic overlay for your screen and used markers to write and draw on the screen as you played. I think my sense of humor came from an early addiction to "You Bet Your Life" which starred Groucho Marx. All good memories..... Spaw |
