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This week, Watch With Us has decided to look back at some of our favorite shows of the 1980s.
If you’re still only beholden to modern television, you don’t yet know what delights await you in the 1980s.
The fact is that some of the best TV shows ever made came out in the ’80s. The seminal Cheers and Taxi, and the iconic Star Trek saga, The Next Generation.
The Watch With Us team has put together our five favorite ’80s shows and where you can watch them right now.
Sam Malone (Ted Danson), a former pitcher for the Boston Red Sox, runs Boston’s own popular watering hole, Cheers. Thus, Cheers follows Sam and the many diverse employees, customers and friends with whom he interacts every day on the job at his bar. The colorful characters include waitress Diane (Shelley Long), who works there while studying in grad school, psychiatrist Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and bartender Woody (Woody Harrelson).
Cheers was nearly canceled for poor ratings in its first season, but it became the ultimate comeback kid in subsequent seasons, consistently topping the ratings charts and winning an impressive 28 Emmys. The success of the show helped to kickstart the career of Harrleson, while also spurring the equally successful spin-off show, Frasier, centered on Frasier Crane and his life in Seattle. Cheers is still beloved for its comfy atmosphere and top-tier comedy writing.
This legendary sitcom led by Betty White, Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty and Rue McClanahan follows four much older women living together in Miami, as they experience the joys and irritations of aging. There’s the headstrong Dorothy (Arthur), her mother Sophia (Getty), the man-hungry Blanche (McClanahan) and practical-minded Rose (White). Together, these broads may butt heads, but they’re always there for one another when it counts.
The Golden Girls is an ultimate feel-good comfort sitcom, with top-to-bottom charismatic performances from the leading ladies and moments that are sure to make you laugh out loud. At the time, the show was groundbreaking for its progressive depiction of older women navigating things like sex, dating and friendship, smashing stereotypes about aging.
The Emmy-winning Taxi chronicles the lives of a group of New York cab drivers, the employees of the Sunshine Cab Company. Largely set in the company’s Manhattan fleet garage, the eclectic characters of Taxi include their overbearing dispatcher Louis (Danny DeVito), struggling actor Bobby (Jeff Conaway), aspiring boxer Tony (Tony Danza), receptionist Elaine and mechanic Latka Gravis (Andy Kaufman). Only Alex (Judd Hirsch) considers cabbing his profession, believing that it’s what he will spend the rest of his life doing.
Taxi is still widely regarded as one of the best comedy shows of all time and one of the best shows of all time, period. The show boasts a terrific blend of sharp, character-driven comedy and genuinely tender drama. The memorable performances, including those from Hirsch, DeVito and Christopher Lloyd in particular, have continued to be seen as iconic, in characters that are hilarious, complex and deeply relatable.
The galactic explorations of the crew aboard the USS Enterprise-D take center stage in this second live-action series in the Star Trek franchise. Nearly a century after Captain Kirk (William Shatner) finished his original five-year mission, Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) now carries on Kirk’s legacy as he explores brave new worlds with his eclectic crew, including Commander William T. Riker (Jonathan Frakes) and Lieutenant Commander Geordi La Forge (LeVar Burton).
The massive success of Star Trek: The Next Generation brought with it not just an all-new generation of viewers into the Star Trek fandom, but also helped to lay the groundwork for the subsequent spinoff shows that have continued on for the past few decades. It is still frequently considered one of the best TV shows of all time, praised for its well-written, intellectual sci-fi stories and terrific ensemble cast.
Former model Maddie Hayes (Cybill Shepherd) is scammed out of her money by her accountant and finds herself bankrupt and out of work. In an unconventional way to try to make money again, she opens up a private detective agency. Maddie partners herself up with a snarky P.I. named David Addison (Bruce Willis), and together the mismatched pair investigates cases at the Blue Moon Detective Agency — while also slowly falling in love.
Moonlighting served as the breakout role for Willis and helped to restart Shepherd’s career. It was also groundbreaking at the time for its ambitious combination of comedy, drama, mystery and romance; an atypical genre-mashup for a TV show back then, that was also notable for its deployment of fourth-wall breaking. In fact, Moonlighting is still considered one of television’s first successful “dramedies.”
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