Cheers

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name — especially when that place is as funny and as indelible as the bar on Cheers, the long-running NBC sitcom that essentially wrote all the rules of modern television romantic comedy. 

Created by brothers Glen and Les Charles, and directed by sitcom legend James Burrows, Cheers starred Ted Danson as ex-Red Sox relief pitcher Sam Malone, a recovering alcoholic running a sports bar and trying to sleep with every available woman in the greater Boston area. Into his uncomplicated life walked Shelley Long as Diane Chambers, a pretentious graduate student in need of a job after being dumped by her fiance/mentor. The sparks between the mismatched pair created the very idea of a slow-burning, will-they-or-won’t-they TV relationship. 

Long left after the first five seasons, but the show survived, and even thrived, without her and with Kirstie Alley as new bar manager Rebecca. It helped that the Charles brothers surrounded the leads with some of the most endearing, quotable sidekicks any sitcom has ever had, including George Wendt as barfly Norm, Rhea Perlman as hostile waitress Carla, Kelsey Grammer as aloof psychiatrist Frasier (later to get his own long-running spinoff), Woody Harrelson as naive young Woody, and John Ratzenberger as insufferable know-it-all mailman Cliff.  —Alan Sepinwall