David Angell, who, along with his wife Lynn, was killed on September 11th when American Airlines flight 11 crashed into the World Trade Centre, was one of the best comedy writers in Hollywood. He was also associated with two of America's most popular comedy series.
He became a writer on the sitcom Cheers, about the regulars who drank in a Boston pub, which ran from 1982 to 1993. Then, he was the creator and executive producer, alongside partners Peter Casey and David Lee, of the outstanding series, Frasier, about a dysfunctional Seattle radio psychiatrist.
Frasier, which was first broadcast in 1993 and is still running, evolved when the producers of Cheers approached David Angell and his two partners to write a spin-off series about a character from Cheers, the psychiatrist Frasier Crane. It became a huge success, although David Angell had known it was a gamble. "The track records on spin-offs are all terrible," he said later, "so we were fearful."
David Angell, aged 54, won an unprecedented number of Emmies and was on his way to Los Angeles for the now postponed Emmy awards ceremonies when he died. With his two partners in Grub Street Productions, the company they had founded in 1985, he won his record-breaking fifth consecutive Emmy for an outstanding comedy series in the 1997-98 Frasier. Other hit shows, Hill Street Blues, LA Law and Cheers, had all won four consecutive Emmies.
When, in 1997, he went up to collect the award, he said: "On my way up here I heard somebody say: 'Oh God! Not them again!' "
It was decided to set Frasier in Seattle because it was just about as far away from Boston as possible - so none of the other characters could drop in on a visit. Frasier, played by Kelsey Grammer, the uptight, pompous radio psychiatrist, is pitched against his brother Niles, also a psychiatrist. The series was tended lovingly by David Angell, his partners and team of writers, forging a series that melded a traditional sitcom with a surreal edge. There were some classic gags. In the first series, Frasier tells his radio audience: "Six months ago I was living in Boston. My wife had left me, which was very painful, then she came back to me, which was excruciating."
Frasier picked up an award in its first season: an Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series. And there were many more to come. David Angell also won a Golden Globe, the critics' award, and the prestigious Peabody broadcasting prize, and with his partners amassed 37 Emmy nominations and 24 Emmy awards.
In 1990, before Frasier, Grub Street Productions had produced another hit comedy series, Wings, which lasted until 1997. It was set at the waiting room and lunch counter of a small airport near Boston, and the jokes and joshing among the "gang" in the show was like Cheers in pilots' leather jackets. It, too, brought good ratings to NBC, the network David Angell always worked for.
A much later new show, Encore! Encore!, based on the story of an opera singer who has lost his voice and returns to his family's Californian vineyard, was not, however, a winner.
Grub Street Productions disbanded in 1999 after Lee moved on; David Angell and Casey began working on film projects.
Success for David Angell, however, had not come easily - or quickly. He had moved to LA from Boston in 1977 and very soon sold his first script to the producers of the forgotten Annie Flynn series.
Five years then passed, during which he did dozens of temporary jobs, before selling another script to the top hit show, Archie Bunker's Place, about a prejudiced working-class oaf. Then in 1983 he joined the Cheers team.
He was born in the small town of West Barrington, Rhode Island, and after high school attended Providence College, a Catholic university in the state which was founded by Dominicans. He graduated in English literature.
After graduation he joined the US army and served at the Pentagon until 1972. He then moved to Boston and worked as a methods analyst at an engineering company and then at an insurance firm in Rhode Island. But he always wanted to write, and finally uprooted himself and moved to Hollywood.
David Angell is survived by his brother Bishop Kenneth Angell and sister Claire Miller. Lynn Angell is survived by her mother, Marilyn Edwards, and brother Dr Thomas Edwards.
David Angell: born 1947; died September 2001.
David Angell: born 1947; died September 2001