James Burrows, the television director whose fingerprints were on two of the most-watched sitcoms in American broadcast history — Cheers and Friends — died Thursday, June 19, 2026. He was 85.
Burrows made his career entirely behind the camera. Situation comedies were his craft, his specialty, and for decades his name appeared only in the opening credits — a quick flash most viewers scrolled past without a second glance. The audiences didn’t know him. They knew what he made.
Few directors in the half-hour comedy format matched his run. Cheers, the long-running NBC series set in a Boston bar, and Friends, the ensemble comedy that became a cultural fixture through the 1990s and into the 2000s, both bear his early directorial work. His name didn’t sell tickets or move tabloids – but without him, those shows don’t look the way they do.
Further details on the circumstances of his death weren’t immediately available, according to NPR, which first reported the news.
Reported by NPR. Read the original report.
