After a rocky first episode, the reboot succeeds more than it fails in using old formulas to tell new stories.
When Frasier premiered in the fall of 1993 it had massive shoes to fill. That’s probably an understatement. Its parent show, Cheers, was a critical and commercial monster in a way that can only happen when there are only three shows for two hundred million people to choose from. It was nominated for almost two hundred Emmys over the course of its eleven-year run, and its series finale aired to 90 million people (40% of the country’s then population) three months before Frasier’s start. So yeah, expectations were pretty high, and Frasier ended up pretty much meeting them all. While never as popular as Cheers (nothing has been as popular as Cheers since Cheers), it was nevertheless a solid commercial hit that carved out its own identity and won more Emmys than its parent show over the course of its own eleven-year run. A lot of that success was rooted in Frasier’s ability as its own, independent show with its own characters and rhythms instead of being Cheers 2.0.
It was inevitable that this new Frasier wouldn’t be given the latitude to radically position itself as a distinct show the way the original was. The point of these revivals is to provide comfort and continuity in these troubled times; it’s generally not the time or place to reinvent the wheel. If there’s a black-and-white episode that covers the birth of the atomic bomb and its weird mutant cricket-frog monster offspring, it wasn’t included in the batch sent out for review.
None of the title cards reference the water or the well. This new Frasier takes the original elements, shakes them around, and mixes them up so that all the characters fill the same roles of the previous show, but in new and different ways. Like a nostalgia band that goes on tour to play an acoustic version of their best album, this iteration of Frasier successfully manages (albeit shakily at times) to take something old and, if not make it new, make it different enough that it’s worth checking out.
Paramount+) Kelsey Grammer Review" class="wp-image-44714"/>Case in point: In the original Frasier, stuffy, elitist Frasier Crane (It shouldn’t have to be said, but Kelsey Grammer) leaves Boston to go back to his childhood home in Seattle and starts a new career while getting reacquainted with his earthy, blue-collar police officer dad and even stuffier and elitist brother. In this new one, Frasier leaves Chicago (where he went at the end of the original series) to go to Boston, his kind of adult home, and starts a new career while getting reacquainted with his earthy, blue-collar firefighter son and even stuffier and even more awkward nephew.
That might seem like a retread, and it kind of is, but also it’s quite different. A story about a son who lost touch with his father can be sad, but also understandable and even necessary; learning to distinguish yourself as a unique person away from your family is a crucial part of growing up. But there’s a sense of tragic in this kind of story: It’s a parent’s job to keep up with their kids and grow and change with them. A kid separating from his father is rebellion; a father separating from his son is dereliction of duty. Similarly, being the son whose father doesn’t quite understand or accept him is quite different from being the father who doesn’t quite understand or accept his son. None of this is to say that the show is mawkish or morose, but a stream of melancholy runs through it., which adds a flavor that the old show lacked.
By the same token, the sibling dynamic in the original Frasier isn’t repeated but referenced through Frasier’s son Freddy (Jack Cudmore-Scott, a tad too broad and sitcommy at times, a worthy foil for Grammer at others) and nephew David (Anders Keith, rocky start, but hits his stride around episode 3). But instead of squabbling competitiveness, David looks up to the older, cooler Freddy and almost hero-worships him. Meanwhile, Freddy regards his more than a decade younger cousin as a kind of benign weirdo — not someone he’s eager to spend time with, but not someone he’d go out of his way to avoid either.
Paramount+) Kelsey Grammer Review" class="wp-image-44715"/>The role of the fussy elitist who squabbles with Frasier this time falls to his old college buddy Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst, front-runner for series MVP). Alan is the other kind of elitist: the drunk wastrel, jaded to the point of seeming fatalist (Nicholas: “This is why I didn’t have children.” Frasier: “You have four.” Nicholas [waving the comment away while taking a drink]: “You know what I mean”).
There’s also a Roz-like lady coworker, this time a Harvard provost named Olivia (Toks Olagundoye, who also takes a minute to find her groove. Look, all the non-Frasier and Alan characters are touch and go at the beginning, but settle down soon enough.). But where Roz was laidback and laconic at the office, and a bit of a hound in her personal life, Olivia is an overeager career obsessive with absolutely no social life. And there’s also an eccentric potential love interest for Freddy, Eve (Jess Salguero, also a grower).
But instead of being mismatches in the Sam/Diane, Niles/Daphne tradition, they’re longtime friends with different roadblocks ahead of them. All these characters have analogues to the earlier iteration, but, again, they’re mixed up. That was all to be expected; less so is the addition of Freddy’s coworkers and drinking buddies who add a dash of Cheers-like Boston goofball energy. They aren’t in every episode, but they kill every time they show up.
Paramount+) Kelsey Grammer Review" class="wp-image-44716"/>The bottom line though, is that none of the clever character and plot melanges would matter if the show wasn’t funny, but it is. Mostly. Look, Frasier was a once-in-a-lifetime cast that rivals any in television, and this new version isn’t that. And there are times in the first few episodes when the similarities and callbacks only serve to remind the audience how not classic Frasier this is. The pilot, in particular, is the kind of broad, loud, desperate show you’d be afraid this reboot would be.
But as it progresses and the cast settles down a little bit, it finds rhythms all its own. And while it’s unfair and impossible to expect five episodes of one show to be as great as the two hundred fifty-odd episodes that preceded it (five hundred if you count Cheers), each episode is stronger than the last.
Cheers was lighting in a bottle, and Frasier miraculously managed to catch some lightning of its own. This new iteration doesn’t pull off the lightning hat trick, but what starts as a dubious proposition manages to turn pretty quickly into a show worth looking forward to. And if this version of Frasier won’t match its predecessor in the way that Frasier matched Cheers, it can at least stake a claim as a solid little brother to the two titans that informed it. Also, seriously, Alan is great. His bit with a gauntlet in the fifth episode is worth sitting through the first four episodes all on its own.
Frasier reenters the building with some tossed salad and scrambled eggs on Paramount+ starting October 12th.