R.I.P. James Burrows, Cheers co-creator and TV directing legend

Co-creator of Cheers and director of dozens of successful network pilots, Burrows' impact on the world of TV comedy is difficult to overstate.

By William Hughes  |  June 20, 2026 | 4:05pm
James Burrows in 2025, Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images
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R.I.P. James Burrows, Cheers co-creator and TV directing legend

James Burrows has died. One of the most prolific TV comedy directors of all time, with more than 500 episodes of network television to his name, Burrows’ resumé reads like a rough list of many of the best TV shows of multiple generations. Coming up at Mary Tyler Moore’s MTM Enterprises in the 1970s, Burrows worked on everything from Taxi to Friends to Will And Grace—and, perhaps most notably, Cheers, which he co-created and directed 236 episodes of. Frequently hired to direct network pilots, where his command of the multi-camera format helped solidify the visual identities and pacing of dozens of shows across multiple decades, Burrows left an undeniable mark on the face of television in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Per Variety, he died on Friday, June 19th. Burrows was 85.

The son of well-known musical theater writer Abe Burrows, Burrows got his start in the theater—hallmarks of which would persist in his command of blocking, as well as the more stage-like elements of many of his most famous shows. He began his television career under the auspices of Moore’s legendary production company, where he directed episodes of Phyllis, The Bob Newhart Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Rhoda—and also made contact with other writers and directors, most notably Glen and Les Charles, who he would soon come to work in close association with on Taxi. Debuting in 1978, the show (which would eventually produce the first two of an eventual 11 lifetime Emmy wins for Burrows) became the first major TV hit to carry his imprint from the start, as he directed nearly every episode of its first four seasons. 

Taxi would demonstrate many of the hallmarks of Burrows’ future career: Sets full of dark shadows that emphasized the grunginess of its cab depot setting; blocking setups that maneuvered its wide cast of characters through a complicated set; and, most especially, a never-lost understanding that actors and dialogue are the engine that powers a sitcom’s success. Among other things, Burrows had a deep gift for producing performances that felt both natural and dramatically heightened from his actors; the effect was to create characters who spoke like regular people—if real people were capable of delivering a punchline at lightning pace that could bring a whole room down with laughter.

That gift got its fullest expression a few years later, when Burrows and the Charles brothers came together to make their own show. And while Cheers got off to a slow ratings start in 1982, the show soon became a ratings juggernaut, driven by both its will-they-won’t-they tension, and its ability to serve as one of the deftest joke machines on network television. Burrows was the engineer at the heart of that work, directing all but a few dozen episodes of the show’s 11-year-run. Sometimes jokingly referred to as “Papa” by the show’s cast, his was the steady hand guiding the show between its silliest comedy moments and its occasional flashes of drama, making visually compelling and uproariously funny television out of a series that often confined itself to two fairly simple sets. 

During this same period, Burrows also began establishing himself as the king of the sitcom pilot: His name appears on the first episodes of successful shows stretching from the 1980s to the 2020s, including Night Court, Wings, Newsradio, Dharma & Greg, Two And A Half Men, Mike And Molly, and, most recently, Mid-Century Modern. Not every TV show Burrows directed a pilot for became a world-shaking hit—but, given his imprint on shows like Friends, Will And Grace (which he directed very nearly every episode of), and The Big Bang Theory, he had claim to a hit rate significantly higher than any contemporary you might care to name. (TV was, by all accounts, his preferred safe zone, by the way; Burrows’ sole cinematic effort, 1982 “gay cop partners with straight cop” buddy comedy Partners, was a critical and commercial flop, with Burrows himself later writing in his memoirs that it taught him “Feature films were not in my wheelhouse.”)

News of Burrows’ death on Friday was met with outpourings of love and support from the numerous performers he worked with over the years, with Taxi‘s Tony Danza declaring “Jimmy” “the greatest of all time,” while Ted Danson wrote, “Jimmy was my show business father, my mentor and my friend. For 11 years his laughter taught me what was funny and what was not.” Lisa Kudrow, who worked with Burrows on multiple shows (including an on-camera appearance in the recent third season of The Comeback) wrote “Thank you, Jimmy… I mean, for everything,” while numerous other stars—Debra Messing, Eric McCormack, Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman, and many more—paying tribute to his long career. NBC, where many of Burrows’ biggest hits lived, issued its own statement on his passing, calling him “the man behind the curtain,” and writing, “His loss to the television comedy world is immeasurable.”

 
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