Cheers
Of course, it’s highly likely we wouldn’t have had Friends at all without its trendsetting predecessor, a show that consumed viewing figures as hungrily in the 80s as its successor did 10 years later. (Let’s not forget the neat shout-out in the Friends London segment where Joey watches Cheers on TV.) Running from 1982 to 1993 and revolving around the titular Boston bar where “everybody knows your name”, the show featured star-making turns from Ted Danson, Rhea Perlman and Woody Harrelson, although the real breakout was of course Kelsey Grammer whose character Dr. Frasier Crane eventually got a hugely successful sitcom spin-off of his own.
