Tom Cherones helped give Seinfeld the steady direction its complicated plotting needed. We rate his handling of several plots at once, and the ambition of his single-location episodes.
Fi1m perspective
A parking garage built on a soundstage gives Tom Cherones a problem before anyone has said a line. In The Parking Garage (1991), an episode of Seinfeld, making that setting work is part of the directing, alongside the business of getting laughs. Cherones was good at both, and his work deserves attention beyond the names on the scripts. We laughed at the selfish quartet in Seinfeld (1989) making so much of almost nothing. The careful plotting makes those petty concerns worth following.
His first episode as a director was on My Sister Sam in 1986; he joined Seinfeld as director and producer in 1990. He directed 80 of its first 86 episodes, through the fifth season, helping establish its early visual style and tone. The series begins tentatively, but its plotting and ensemble acting make it an exceptional comedy. Cherones’s sustained involvement helped a demanding style of comedy become something the programme could deliver regularly.
He pursued a more cinematic look within multicamera television, without losing his grip on several plots at once. Experiments such as The Chinese Restaurant also show a willingness to see how much a single location can sustain. With Larry David as writer and co-creator and Jerry Seinfeld as star and co-creator, there was no shortage of comic invention to accommodate. We would not give the director sole credit for what the quartet achieves, but making space for that ensemble is a substantial skill.
After the fifth season, Jerry Seinfeld asked for a change of direction and Cherones left. He went on to direct most of Ellen’s second season in 1994 and worked on NewsRadio in 1996, directing more than fifty episodes of the latter. Those later assignments continued a career built around the practical demands of television comedy. Start with The Parking Garage before deciding that directing a sitcom is simply a matter of recording the jokes.
Biography
Tom Cherones was an American television director and producer. He directed and produced 81 of the first 86 episodes of Seinfeld across its first five seasons (1990–1994), including episodes such as "The Stake Out", "The Chinese Restaurant", "The Parking Garage" and "The Contest". He won a Directors Guild of America Award for the latter and shared a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1993.
Born in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, Cherones graduated from the University of New Mexico with a degree in journalism and earned a master’s degree in broadcast and film communications from the University of Alabama. After service as a US Navy officer, he began his career in production before his first directing credit on My Sister Sam in 1986. He later directed numerous episodes of NewsRadio (56), Ellen, Caroline in the City and other series, and taught production classes at the University of Alabama from 2002 to 2014. Cherones died on 5 January 2026 in Florence, Oregon.
