Breaking News: The CHEERS conspiracy - News Paper

This article was brought to my attention yesterday by several of you loyal readers. Apparently there was a local sitcom in Boston in the late ‘70’s called PARK ST. UNDER that bore many similarities to CHEERS.

You can read the article here.

And of course I was asked to comment on it.

First off, I can’t speak for the Charles Brothers or Jim Burrows – the creators of CHEERS.

All I can do is talk from my experience, and I was there since pre-production of season one.  

I have never heard of the existence of this other sitcom until yesterday when I read the article. And that’s the honest-to-God truth.

No one ever mentioned this in the room. There were never any rumors about it. I have friends who lived in Boston and none of them ever brought it up. I was in Boston on several occasions for CHEERS-related events and no one mentioned it.

However, in the article Jim Burrows said the show was modeled somewhat after the radio series set in a bar, DUFFY’S TAVERN, and that I heard mentioned numerous times.

Also, in the original first draft of the CHEERS pilot Sam Malone was a former football player, an ex-Patriot. The switch was made to baseball when Ted Danson was hired and it was more believable that he had been a ballplayer. Coach originally was addled because he suffered so many bone-jarring gridiron concussions (it’s not like this is a new phenomenon in the NFL). Frasier wasn’t brought on until season three. Carla was created specifically for Rhea Perlman, who the guys knew from playing Zena on TAXI and being married to Danny DeVito.  The Cliff civil service character evolved during the first season.  He had very little to do the first couple of episodes. 

And finally this – I’ve mentioned numerous times that when we were breaking stories on CHEERS, if we learned an element even approximated something done on another show we automatically threw it out. That was one of the Charles Brothers strictest rules. In eleven years I never saw them waver from it, not even once. So it seems odd to me that they would lift an entire series from an existing show that had aired. I can’t imagine them leaving themselves open to premiering the CHEERS pilot and have the whole city of Boston up in arms because they had stolen a show everyone there was familiar with. And by the way, there was no uproar. Not even a peep. No Boston papers brought it up in their reviews. Like I said, this is the first I’m hearing of it.

Why didn’t the creators of PARK ST. UNDER sue? It says in the article they didn’t think they’d win. Episodes of this show are not available on line. Apparently they’re very hard to track down.  There are just a few clips, which I've seen (and for a local production they are pretty good). 

From the article it sounds like there were definite similarities. And I wasn’t there when the Charles Brothers and Jimmy batted around ideas for this new show they were creating. All I can tell you is from my perspective on the inside, and knowing the integrity of Glen & Les Charles and Jim Burrows, any similarities were purely coincidental. And if Robert Mueller calls, I’m happy to go before the committee and say the same thing.

from By Ken Levine https://ift.tt/2pHudaY
Breaking News: The CHEERS conspiracy - News Paper