If quality TV was your thing, you were quids-in on Friday nights back in the late 1980s. Channel 4 was supplying the goods: first there was ‘The Tube’, then, later on, it was ‘Cheers’. Happy days.

The Boston-set sitcom, created by director James Burrows and writer/producers Glen and Les Charles, ran between September 1982 and May 1993.

The evocative credit sequence, featuring Gary Portnoy’s theme song (check out some scrapped early versions here) and Russell Lee’s 1937 ‘Saturday Night In A Saloon’ photo, promised a lot, and ‘Cheers’ certainly didn’t disappoint.

Ted Danson’s ex-Red Sox pitcher Sam Malone was a superb performance against type (he won a Golden Globe in 1990). Apparently he had never tended a bar nor been to a baseball match in his life when he got the role. He brilliantly dialled down the IQ (in Jack Nicholson style) and dialled up the womanising and alcoholism. He was a great physical comedian too.

Shelley Long – playing Diane Chambers – was a marvellous comedienne, reminding many of Lucille Ball. Diane was the polar opposite of Sam, a feminist, fan of psychoanalysis, poetry and literature. There was great chemistry between Danson and Long, and their union reminded the show’s creators of Spencer Tracy’s work with Katherine Hepburn. Shelley won a 1983 Emmy for her terrific performance.

Rhea Perlman turned in a great performance as Carla (winning an Emmy in 1984) – she was also apparently pretty much the opposite of her character. Nicholas Colasanto beautifully portrayed the dim-witted Coach – he was a journeyman actor who had played a particularly memorable turn in ‘The Streets Of San Francisco’.

Later, Woody Harrelson who came in as Woody, kind of a Coach surrogate. It was a clever writing device too – in explaining things to Coach/Woody, you were also explaining things to the audience (apparently ‘Grizzly Man’ environmentalist Timothy Treadwell came very close to snagging the role of Woody).

‘Cheers’ also originated some much-imitated sitcom ‘rules’: any touchy-feely or dark stuff is fine but must be followed by a zinger or one-liner. Another edict of the first few seasons was that each episode had to end with Sam and Diane. Also the ‘cold start’, usually featuring Norm, became a sitcom trope.

True, after season five, ‘Cheers’ was increasingly hit-and-miss (though only then really began getting large TV audiences, the last season garnering an astonishing 80 million viewers), arguably with far too much attention paid to the minor characters (The Guardian newspaper had a good pop at Frasier here) but Kirstie Alley proved to be a gifted comedienne who won an Emmy award in 1991 (and she’s also one of the best screen drunks ever).

Other treats? Craig Safan’s cool, Katy Lied-era Steely Dan-style incidental music, with clarinet or alto sax, piano, drums, bass (some of the later excerpts were composed by an uncredited John Beasley, keyboardist for the jazz/rock stars and leader of the acclaimed MONK’estra).

Then there were the classic cameos: Emma Thompson, John Cleese, PJ Soles, John Kerry, and a host of ‘Hey it’s that guy/lady!’ actors of the early 1980s, many also often seen American movies of the time.

Favourite episodes? All of the five season-closers featuring Sam and Diane, plus ‘The Executive’s Executioner’, when Norm is reluctantly transformed into a hatchet man by his accountancy firm; ‘Look Before You Sleep’, when Sam gets locked out of the bar and his apartment and has to visit each of his friends’ houses in an attempt to get a night’s sleep; ‘Fear Is My Co-Pilot’, where Diane’s madcap friend takes her and Sam up in his airplane.

Not sure about you, but the daily early-morning reruns of ‘Cheers’ (in the UK) have been a real boon to this writer over the last year. Cheers to ‘Cheers’…