“Where you’re always glad you came …” Some shows become classics. Very few become timeless classics. Cheers, set in a Boston bar in the 1980s and revolving around the lives of an unforgettable cast of loveable characters—from Norm to Cliff to “May Day” Sam Malone, plus Diane and Carla and many more—earns its place as one of the greatest television shows. To call it a sitcom is to reduce it to a formula. Because if it were a formula, the show’s success—predicated on the chemistry of the singular actors who bring their characters to life—would have been copied and replicated time and again. The feeling of Cheers, the humor of it, has never been replicated. Its success is a magic act. Not much happens in the bar, when you think about it. But then you realize: what happens in Cheers is what happens in any of our favorite bars: you see friends, you talk about life, you help each other solve life’s problems. Most of all, you laugh. And laugh again. Out loud. And you come away feeling better about life and the world. All in 22 minutes. —Michael Hainey

Michael Hainey is a Writer at Large at AIR MAIL