Brothers Glen Gerald Charles (born February 18, 1943) and Les Charles (born March 25, 1948) are American screenwriters and television producers, best known for working on Taxi and co-creating Cheers.[1][2]
The Charles brothers attended University of Redlands. Glen graduated in 1965, and Les graduated in 1971.[3] Glen began his professional life as an advertising copywriter but moved into television. Both Glen and Les began their television careers together as writers for M*A*S*H in 1975; all their work throughout their entire TV and film career was done jointly. They later wrote for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Phyllis and The Bob Newhart Show, and were head writers and producers on the TV series Taxi. They then formed the Charles-Burrows-Charles production company with James Burrows, and created and produced the television series Cheers, which ran from 1982 to 1993.
After Cheers ended, the brothers largely retired from the business, although they did co-write the screenplay for the 1999 film Pushing Tin. This remains their final produced writing credit. Both were credited in every episode of Frasier as the creators of the "Frasier Crane" character from Cheers, but the duo had no other creative involvement in either the original series or the revival.
Cheers is a sitcom that ran on NBC from September 30, 1982, to May 20, 1993, with a total of 275 half-hour episodes for eleven seasons. The show was produced by Charles/Burrows/Charles Productions in association with Paramount Network Television. The show is set in a bar named Cheers in Boston, Massachusetts, where a group of locals meet to drink, relax, and socialize. The Cheers finale aired on May 20, 1993, and was watched in an estimated 42.4 million households across the country.[4]
They were raised in Henderson, Nevada, as members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.[5][6]