One of the most popular sitcoms of the 1980s, Cheers, is set to return to our television screens. The show is set for a revamp, except now it will be uprooted from Boston and transposed to a pub in Britain. This is obviously a terrible idea, for a few logistical reasons – and for one large cultural reason.

Comedy wasn’t a slave to politics back then

The main scriptwriter for the UK remake is reported by the Daily Telegraph to be our own Simon Nye, the brains behind Men Behaving Badly, while it’s being developed by Big Talk Studios. Its chief executive Kenton Allen explains that it will be no mere repeat performance of the original:

‘The attitudes of Cheers in the 80s are very different to the attitudes of today, so there’s a massive amount of work to be done around taking inspiration from the original characters but creating something fresh.’

That statement alone should have alarm bells ringing loudly for aficionados of the original series.
The makers face many obstacles even before the writers put pen to paper or cameras start to role. For one, attempts to transport comedy shows from one side of the Atlantic to the other have an awful track record. Men Behaving Badly was........

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