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Another posh looking hotel sorted out by tour manager James, though this one looked grander from the outside than it did from the inside, where everything was a little tired. The size of the place and some of the architecture spoke of a time when this would have been a very high-end establishment, but now it's had to open its doors to scum like us. The spa was closed and the place largely staffed by teenagers. A very sweet and nervous young man had to do the breakfast shift alone, and managed well enough.
I tried to do a bit of work on the journey home, but ended up watching the first episode of Cheers (watching classic sitcom eps as research is still work though). It's a beautiful piece of work that expertly establishes the characters and is full of intelligence and wit. I think you'd be hard-pressed to beat this as a first script, but also shows the importance of casting. Ted Danson and Shelley Long are absolutely on the money from the start and it's interesting how much the first episode of Friends is influenced by the plot.
The opening titles, which trade on nostalgia are, of course, now nostalgic in themselves. Cheers (the bar) wasn't even 100 years old (est 1895) when the show was broadcast, but another 40 years have passed. It's a great theme tune and the conceit of finding photos of people who vaguely resemble the actors (somehow the green dress absolutely says Rhea Perlman, even though the photo has no head) and the big eared gent at the end enjoying a drink looks exactly like my grandad when he was young and that's always somewhere between a gut punch and a tickle.
We paid tribute to Cheers in our own sitcom set in a pub, "Time Gentlemen Please" as the Old Geezer said in on episode "Sometimes you want to go where nobody knows your name".
I watched three episodes today and it pretty much holds up not just in comedy, but to modern day sensibilities. Sam is a womaniser of course (though I think those might still exist) and there's a scene where a customer seems upset that his son's partner is black and also (it turns out) a man, but the ultimate pay off for that scenario is that we should accept people for who they are, rather than risk losing them, so I think that passes.
Very much enjoyed pretending it was the 1980s and I was a teenager again. Though I do that most of the time. The other day I saw news of a man dying at the age if 59 and thought - it's not too bad a knock, it's nearly 60, before remembering that I will be 59 in just over two years and that's much too soon to die. How old did I think I was?
