‘Frasier’ review: Rebooted and relocated to Boston, but did they leave the comedy in Seattle?

Frasier Crane is back in Boston. Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name.

If only the “Frasier” revival for Paramount+ conjured anything close to the effervescent wit of the Seattle-set original, which ran for 11 seasons on NBC from 1993 to 2004. Or even the comedic zing of “Cheers,” where the character first sprang to life in 1984 as an unlikely but winning addition to the cast, the annoyingly cultured Harvard-trained windbag to the show’s shabbier Boston barflies.

Frasier was never the obvious spinoff character. Nothing about Kelsey Grammer’s performance (albeit sharp) suggested otherwise. “Cheers” was stacked with talent but it worked because of the ensemble’s specific chemistry together. Pulling a character out of that was always a risk. But it paid off thanks to the creative instincts of David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee, who were as adept at verbal swordsmanship as they were at screwball comedy.

Importantly, they understood farce, giving the show a sparkling-silly sensibility that continues to have a place in theater (”Noises Off” should not work as well as it does!) but has become something of a rarity on screen. Frasier was built to be insufferable yet sympathetic. Precious but never cruel. Thinks he is the smartest person in the room, but also a great straight man who allows everyone else their own eccentricities. So they moved him to Seattle, gave him a call-in radio show to host and surrounded him with a family — biological and chosen — who tweaked and satirized his (and everyone else’s) innate ridiculousness while retaining a sense of humanity about the whole thing.

It’s a different team behind the reboot this time, with Joe Cristalli (“Life in Pieces”) and Chris Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) as executive producers, but their efforts are like an AI photo that captures the broad strokes but gets none of the details right, stuck in an uncanny valley where humor goes to die. I’ve had concerns that sitcom writing is a dying art and Cristalli and Harris don’t inspire feelings to the contrary. Where’s the fizzy repartee? The joyous physical comedy?

There are cynical intellectual property grabs and then there’s whatever this is. A way to further pad Grammer’s bank account? He looks tanned and rich. And semi-checked out. Dressed in dark jeans and Allbirds, he resembles a sexagenarian mogul wandering around Sun Valley looking for his next networking opportunity.

Instead, he’s back to Boston to be closer to his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who is given little to do but wince every time Frasier does something fussy. Absent the original cast — including John Mahoney (who died in 2018) as Frasier’s irascible father — the show primary source of tension, and affection, rests on their two shoulders.

As a child, Freddy was a chip off the old block. Now in his 30s, he’s rejected all that to become a working stiff. A firefighter. He’s meant to be the regular-guy yin to his father’s pompous yang, but Freddy is positively taken aback by Frasier’s Frasierness, as if this is all new information. Like he just met the guy! It’s weird!

But really, the reboot misunderstands how to mine comedy from Frasier’s grandiosity and superciliousness. He needs to be surrounded by people dying to puncture his ego with a delicious rejoinder or two. “Another young woman falls under your spell,” he happily mutters to himself. “Dammit, Frasier, you know how magnetic you are!” The line just hangs there because it’s not funny. It’s not even a joke! It’s a setup, but the punchline never comes.

Without a comparable Niles stand-in (and the talents of the great David Hyde Pierce) Frasier is also left without anyone to share his highbrow ridiculousness. Only Nicholas Lyndhurst, as a rumpled old chum from Frasier’s Harvard days, brings a wry zippiness to their mutual ribbing.

The lyrics to the original theme song, sung by Grammer himself, make nonsensical reference to tossed salads and scrambled eggs. Without anyone to offset Frasier with some comedic heft of their own, the reboot is the equivalent of salad, minus eggs.

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'FRASIER'

1.5 stars (out of 4)

Rating: TV-14

How to watch: Paramount+ (the first two episodes will also air on CBS Oct. 17)

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