EXCLUSIVE: It was the place where American viewers were always glad they came — and now the Cheers bar is hoping to open its doors to Brits.
Deadline can reveal that Big Talk Studios, the producer behind Stephen Merchant’s BBC/Amazon series The Outlaws, is pitching a UK version of NBC’s iconic comedy. Thirty years after Cheers’ last orders, Big Talk has enlisted Simon Nye, the British writer known for Men Behaving Badly and The Durrells, to adapt the series for a UK audience. Nye will be showrunner if Cheers is greenlit.
Cheers ran for 11 seasons and 275 episodes on NBC, depicting life in a titular Boston bar run by Sam Malone (Ted Danson). Regulars included Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) and Rebecca Howe (Kirstie Alley), and the show is consistently ranked among the best comedies ever made.
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Big Talk is in the early stages of pitching Cheers to British broadcasters after being permitted to develop an adaptation by distributor CBS Studios. Kenton Allen, Big Talk’s chief executive, said it was a “huge honor” to be entrusted with the comedy and it would be a “huge challenge” to get it right.
British comedies often take the well-trodden path to the U.S., with adaptations of The Office and more recently Ghosts proving to be hits with American viewers. Big Talk has walked this path, exporting Friday Night Dinner to Freevee as Dinner with the Parents (Season 2 remains in the balance) and piloting Raised by Wolves for CBS. It is currently developing an HBO version of Back, the Channel 4 show created by Breeders and Veep writer Simon Blackwell.
British broadcasters rarely adapt successful U.S. network shows and previous attempts have been ill-fated. For example, ITV canceled UK versions of The Golden Girls (The Brighton Belles), That ’70s Show (Days Like These), and Married… with Children (Married for Life) after just one season at various points in the 1990s.
“I might be insane,” Allen joked. He was reluctant to say too much about Big Talk’s plans for Cheers, but revealed that the series would be set in a pub. “The British pub is an endangered species, so there’s an answer for the ‘Why now?’ about it,” he said. “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.”
Perilous Scripted Market
Allen said Cheers is part of Big Talk’s efforts to diversify at a perilous time for British scripted production. The 29-year-old company prides itself on creating original series and, although this won’t change, Allen acknowledged that comedy is “prone to failure more than any other genre.”
He argued that middle-market shows, such as Big Talk’s BBC hit Him & Her, have all but vanished amid changing viewer habits and challenging economics. Turning to Cheers is an attempt to de-risk commissioning decisions and “weaponize” intellectual property.
Big Talk remains busy despite wider market difficulties. The ITV Studios-owned outfit starts shooting Season 2 of Apple TV+ comedy The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin this week, though Allen is coy about casting.
Last week, Big Talk launched BBC series Ludwig, a comedy crime drama starring Peep Show’s David Mitchell as a reclusive puzzle-setter who becomes an unlikely detective when his twin brother goes missing. Big Talk is close to finalizing a U.S. deal for the series.
Ludwig premiered with a slot-winning 2.7M viewers last week, has been the second most-watched show on iPlayer, and received warm reviews. Allen said it was an example of Big Talk serving viewer demand for so-called “cozy crime” and tapping into talent relationships. Big Talk has a joint venture with That Mitchell & Webb Company and Mitchell first mooted the idea while filming Back.
“He had a secret desire to play a TV detective,” Allen recalled. “Cozy crime is fine [as a description for Ludwig]. If we’re being compared to Only Murders in the Building and Richard Osman, that’s good company to be in.”
Filmed in Cambridge and created by Mark Brotherhood (Death in Paradise), Ludwig is produced for around £2M ($2.7M) an hour and Allen said this budget is a “sweet spot” for the company at a time when high-end scripted costs have ballooned. “Everything we do at Big Talk is designed to return. It’s called show business, not limited series business,” Allen said.
“A lot of my drama mates are wincing at not being able to raise £5M, but we’ve never produced at that level,” he continued. “We design shows to be made for the price point that we think we can hit and I think that comes out of our film and comedy nimbleness.”
He bemoaned the slowdown in buying, rising production costs, oversupply of producers, and complicated financing deals, arguing that these factors are eroding the success of the UK’s indie sector.
“We take out mortgages against distribution rights and we hope that the value created will pay back those distribution rights, plus a profit,” he explained. “That is the model that has built the brilliant British independent production sector, and that’s what is in danger of disappearing. We’re in a situation where we’re having to sell all those rights to get the show made.”
Allen echoed colleagues, including Doctor Who producer Jane Tranter, in calling for tax breaks to be extended to comedy and lower-cost drama, but said he was more focused on pulling levers in his control.
Netflix Animation
As well as diversifying with IP plays like Cheers, Big Talk is developing its first animated series for Netflix. Created by Ghosts writers Laurence Rickard and Ben Willbond, In Case of Emergency is set in a British hospital and will look to emulate shows including Family Guy. Allen said it was an attempt to engage with writers on a project that is not another live-action comedy.
Not that Big Talk is abandoning this territory. The company that made beloved shows including Spaced and Black Books is hoping to repeat the trick with Can You Keep a Secret?, which stars Dawn French as a widower with a hidden life: her husband (Mark Heap) is not really dead.
The BBC show was written for French by Simon Mayhew-Archer (This Country) and is her first situational comedy since Richard Curtis’ The Vicar of Dibley. Allen said it was a “career-long ambition” to work with French. The show’s wider cast is being set and CBS Studios is distributing outside of the UK.
Elsewhere, Big Talk is talking to U.S. buyers about adaptations of Mum, starring four-time Emmy-winner Laurie Metcalf, and We Are Not Alone, a sci-fi comedy originally created for BBC Studios-owned network U&Dave by Rickard and Willbond. The company has also hired its first creative director of drama in the shape of Jenny van der Lande, who joined from Brontë Film & TV in June.
“My glass is half full,” Allen said. “I’m optimistic about the future, despite all the headwinds, but I think there is a big correction coming in the market. There are too many producers and not enough opportunities. That unfortunate correction means premium producers, which have been around for a while and are trusted, are in a good place to take advantage of the opportunities that are out there.”
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