Taxi (TV series)

Taxi is an American television sitcom that originally aired on ABC from September 12, 1978, to May 6, 1982, and on NBC from September 30, 1982, to June 15, 1983. It focuses on the everyday lives of a handful of New York City taxi drivers and their abusive dispatcher. For most of the run of the show, the ensemble cast consisted of taxi drivers Alex Reiger (Judd Hirsch), Bobby Wheeler (Jeff Conaway), Elaine Nardo (Marilu Henner), Tony Banta (Tony Danza), and "Reverend" Jim Ignatowski (Christopher Lloyd), along with dispatcher Louie De Palma (Danny DeVito) and mechanic Latka Gravas (Andy Kaufman). Taxi was produced by the John Charles Walters Company, in association with Paramount Network Television, and was created by James L. Brooks, Stan Daniels, David Davis, and Ed. Weinberger, all of whom were brought on board after working on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (which ended in 1977).
The show was a critical and commercial success and is widely regarded as one of the greatest television shows of all time. It was nominated for 34 Primetime Emmy Awards and won 18, including wins in three consecutive years for Outstanding Comedy Series. It has remained in syndicated reruns ever since the series ended.
The show focuses on the employees who work the night shift at the fictional Sunshine Cab Company, and its principal setting is the company's fleet garage in Manhattan. Among the drivers, only Alex Reiger, who is disillusioned with life, considers cab driving his profession. The others view it as a temporary/part time/side job.
Elaine Nardo is a single mother working as a receptionist at an art gallery. Tony Banta is a boxer with a losing record. Bobby Wheeler is a struggling actor. John Burns (written out of the show after the first season) is working his way through college. All take pity on "Reverend Jim" Ignatowski, an aging hippie minister who is burnt out from drugs, so they help him become a cabbie. The characters also include Latka Gravas, their innocent, wide-eyed mechanic from an unnamed foreign country, and Louie De Palma, the despotic dispatcher.
A number of episodes involve a character having an opportunity to realize their dream to move up in the world, only to see it yanked away. Otherwise, the cabbies deal on a daily basis with their unsatisfying lives and with Louie's abusive behavior and contempt (despite being a former cab driver himself). Louie's assistant, Jeff Bennett, is rarely heard from at first, but his role increased in later seasons.
Despite the humor of the show, Taxi often tackles such dramatic life issues as drug addiction, single parenthood, blindness, obesity, dissociative identity disorder, animal abuse, homosexuality, racism, teenage runaways, divorce, nuclear war, sexual harassment, premenstrual mood disorders, gambling addiction, and grief.
Among the many guest stars, Ruth Gordon won an Emmy Award for her guest portrayal of Dee Wilcox in "Sugar Mama" (1979), and Eileen Brennan was nominated for an Emmy for her guest portrayal of Mrs. McKenzie in "Thy Boss's Wife" (1981).
Some played themselves: actresses Marcia Wallace and Penny Marshall, psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers, cookie entrepreneur Wally "Famous" Amos, newscasters Edwin Newman and Eric Sevareid (the latter in a fantasy sequence), and ring announcer Jimmy Lennon. WBC world welterweight boxing champion Carlos Palomino appeared in the first-season episode "One-Punch Banta" as himself. Palomino accidentally punched Danza in the face during a brief fight scene. Martial artist and professional wrestler Gene LeBell played himself in multiple episodes as the referee for Banta's boxing matches.
George Wendt and Ted Danson, who appeared in separate episodes, went on to star in primary Taxi director Jim Burrows' next series, Cheers, as did recurring Taxi performer Rhea Perlman. Tom Selleck and Mandy Patinkin had memorable guest appearances, each as one of the memorable fares of Cab 804 (in "Memories of Cab 804: Part 2"), while Tom Hanks portrayed Reverend Jim's college roommate in the flashback episode "The Road Not Taken, Part 1". Allan Arbus, who portrayed US Army psychiatrist Dr. Sidney Freedman in M*A*S*H, played his manager in the episode. Football player-turned-actor Bubba Smith appeared in one episode. In the episode "Jim Joins the Network", Martin Short played a failing TV network executive who takes advantage of Jim's exceptional ability to schedule shows for his own career advancement.
Taxi is one of television's most lauded shows. During its run, the sitcom was nominated for 31 Emmy Awards and won 18, including three for Outstanding Comedy Series. It was also nominated for 25 Golden Globes, with four wins (three for Best TV Series – Musical/Comedy). In 1979, it received the Humanitas Prize in the 30 minute category. It was also ranked 48th in TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 1997, two of the show's episodes, "Latka the Playboy" and "Reverend Jim: A Space Odyssey" were respectively ranked #19 and #63 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time. In 2013, the series was ranked #35 on TV Guide's 60 Best Series of All Time and #19 by the Writers Guild of America on their list of the 101 Best Written TV Series. In 2023, Variety ranked Taxi #75 on its list of the 100 greatest TV shows of all time.
Taxi was inspired by the non-fiction article "Night-Shifting for the Hip Fleet" by Mark Jacobson, which appeared in the September 22, 1975, issue of New York magazine. This article helped suggest the idea for the show to James L. Brooks and David Davis, though nothing from the article was used directly. The article was a profile of several drivers who worked the night shift for a New York cab company.
The series was produced on Stage 23 at Paramount Studios in Los Angeles, California, from July 5, 1978, to February 18, 1983.
When the series was cancelled by ABC, it seemed for a time that the premium cable television network HBO would pick up the series. When it did not, the series was picked up by NBC, which at first kept it on at its ABC time slot of Thursday 9:30 p.m following the first season of Cheers. An NBC promo for Taxi's move to the network featured Danny DeVito in character as Louie saying "Same time, better station!"
The taxicabs shown in the show are Checker A11s.
The opening titles show a Checker cab driving east across the Queensboro Bridge. The footage originally was intended as a "bridge" between scenes and is only about fifteen seconds long; parts of it are repeated to fill the opening. Driving the vehicle is cast member Tony Danza. The closing version consisted of Cab 804, the drivers' favorite cab ("Memories of Cab 804"), driving into the night.
Bob James wrote the opening theme, "Angela", which had been intended for a sequence in episode #3 ("Blind Date"). The producers liked this slower, more melancholic tune better than the up-tempo opening theme they had originally chosen ("Touchdown"), and were able to make the switch before the first episode aired. Both songs are on James's 1978 album, Touchdown.
It uses the "Sunny" chord progression.
In 1983, James released The Genie, an LP containing much of the incidental music he had written for Taxi during its run.
Reruns of Taxi began airing in syndication in 1983 on 64 television stations immediately after NBC's cancelation; It has been airing in syndication since. The program also aired on Nick at Nite from 1994 to 2001. Taxi previously aired reruns Sunday nights on MeTV as part of their "Last Laughs" block. Hulu, Pluto TV and Amazon Prime Video have all five seasons; however, as of February 2023, only Paramount+ has every episode, including some available with original music for the first time outside of the original and syndicated runs. In the UK, Taxi aired on BBC1 with repeats airing on Paramount Comedy 2 and CBS Drama. As of 2020, the series has been airing weeknights on Decades (later rebranded as Catchy Comedy) as part of its “Smartcoms Across The Decades” block (later re-named as the "Smart and Catchy Sitcoms" block). Taxi has also aired on Decades (now Catchy Comedy) as part of their weekend binges called "The Decades Binge" (later renamed to "The Catchy Binge" when it was rebranded to Catchy Comedy), with its most recent binge on April 13, 2025.
Danny DeVito hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live (on NBC) soon after Taxi was canceled after the fourth season. During the opening monologue, DeVito read a letter supposedly from his mother asking God to forgive ABC for cancelling the show, adding that "but I'll understand if you don't." A filmed bit had him driving around New York looking morose until inspiration strikes, and he blows up the ABC building. In addition, the Taxi cast members were given an opportunity for closure, which up to that point had been denied for them due to the abrupt cancellation. The actors took their "final" bows during DeVito's opening monologue, only to have NBC (which aired SNL) pick up the show.
More than 15 years later, most of the cast returned to play their younger-selves and briefly re-enact scenes for the Kaufman biopic Man on the Moon. Judd Hirsch, Marilu Henner, Jeff Conaway, Carol Kane, Randall Carver, J. Alan Thomas and Christopher Lloyd all reprised their roles. The only two living members of the principal cast who did not were Danny DeVito, who produced and co-starred in the film as Kaufman's manager George Shapiro, and Tony Danza, who at the time of filming was performing in A View from the Bridge on Broadway.
Several of the cast members (along with cast members from other Judd Hirsch and Bob Newhart vehicles) reunited in different roles for an episode of the Judd Hirsch/Bob Newhart series George & Leo.
In January 2009, Danny DeVito mentioned wanting to make a Taxi reunion movie.
All five seasons of Taxi have been released from Paramount Home Entertainment. The first three seasons of Taxi were released on DVD in Region 1 between 2004 and 2005. It took almost four years until Paramount released The Fourth Season on September 22, 2009, and The (Fifth &) Final Season on December 22, 2009 (the last two seasons were released through CBS Home Entertainment). As of October 2014, all seasons have been released in Germany (Region 2).
On November 11, 2014, CBS Home Entertainment released Taxi- The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1. All 114 episodes are featured on a 17-disc collection.