Was Cheers stolen?

The A.V. Club

A new Boston Magazine article breathes new life into "The Cheers Conspiracy" that the classic sitcom was a ripoff of the Boston TV sitcom Park St. Under, which had a similar premise and predates Cheers by three years. Like Cheers, Park St. Under was set at an underground Boston bar owned and operated by a former Red Sox player. They even had similar bar regulars right down the "local psychiatrist." “It was pretty much a copy,” head writer Arnie Reisman told Boston Magazine. “I was like, ‘Are you f*cking kidding me?’” Cheers director and co-creator James Burrows declined to comment for the article but has long denied that Cheers was stolen, saying it was inspired by Duffy’s Tavern, a radio program created in the 1940s by his father Abe Burrows.