James Burrows, the director and co-creator of Cheers, died on June 19, 2026, at age 85. He died peacefully with his family nearby, according to AP News.

If you watched a sitcom in the last 40 years, there's a good chance Burrows had something to do with it. He directed the first episodes of Friends, Frasier, and The Big Bang Theory — shows that became some of the biggest hits in television history. He also co-created and directed Cheers, which ran on NBC for 11 years starting in 1982, and later directed Will & Grace. Variety described him as a figure so central to American comedy television that his death marks the end of an era.

He won 11 Emmy Awards — television's highest honor for creative work. That many wins over such a long career shows he wasn't just lucky or famous. He was consistently excellent.

There's a particular way American sitcoms were made for most of the past 50 years: filmed in front of a live audience, on a set that stayed in the same place, with multiple cameras rolling at once. Think of it like directing a stage play, but for television. A live audience watches and laughs in real time, and those laughs are recorded and broadcast to home viewers. Burrows was the master of this style. He understood how to make jokes land for the people in the room watching live and for viewers at home — two different things that need different handling.

His father, Abe Burrows, was a playwright and director on Broadway comedies like Guys and Dolls. That background meant James learned early how comedy works when people are watching live.

Today, most new shows on streaming services are filmed differently — without a live audience, with just one camera instead of many. That older style of sitcom has become less common. But the way Burrows taught television to do comedy — the timing, the performance style, the way jokes are constructed — still shows up in the work of younger directors who learned from him, often without knowing his name. Cheers reruns are still broadcast somewhere in the world almost every single day since the show first aired in 1983.

When someone this influential passes, the immediate headlines fade, but what stays is the work itself. Eleven Emmys. A role in creating one of television's greatest comedies. Decades of hit shows that people still watch today.