Working writers in TV, especially showrunner-creators, often have to deal with people who watch their shows a couple of times, blink, gulp, and then take to the interwebs to announce, “They stole my series! That’s mine, I tell you! Mine!”
Although sometimes the complaint can be real, most of the time it’s what the biz calls “parallel development” caused by the temper of the times causing more than people to come up with similar notions. We here at TVWriter™ have no special knowledge about the situation described in the Boston Magazine article below but present it as an interesting case study now gaining some traction. Of course, if you know more about the situation than the article describes, we’d love to hear about it, so please let us know if you’re a believer in:
The Cheers Conspiracy
by Dan McCarthy
A few days after the official start of fall in 1982, the headlines were a bleak reflection of life in Ronald Reagan’s America. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were on the rise again, the nation’s economy was still dragging itself out of a recession, the Steve Miller Band’s “Abracadabra” topped the Billboard Hot 100, and the top-rated TV programs included The A-Team and Falcon Crest. Few knew it yet, but a new show was about to debut at the end of September on NBC. In time, an adoring fan base (especially in Boston) would lionize it as a new classic—a hallowed place on Thursday nights where everyone knows your name.