Oh Dear God, This Frasier Revival

Having now seen enough of the oft-teased, much-anticipated/dreaded Frasier revival to pass judgment—five of the episodes made available for members of the press to screen—I feel I may have spoken too soon when I wrote this summer that TV revivals might actually be good again. It’s not that Paramount+’s new Frasier, picking up nearly two decades after the original 11-season run, is terrible, per se. It’s more that its attempt at reconstructing the dynamics that made the original Frasier one of the most acclaimed sitcoms of all time—the zany Crane family dynamics, the protagonist’s tryhard snobbery, the clashes between Frasier’s mahogany society and the blue-collar masses—are so desperate and reaching as to be distracting. Whether you’re a deep nostalgist or someone just happy that a new Frasier even exists, you likely won’t get much from this new go-around. Even if, like the showrunners, you consider this less a full-throated revival or reboot than a spinoff from the O.G. Frasier, much as Frasier itself spun off from Cheers.

With John Mahoney, who played Martin Crane himself, dead and much of the original cast absent (except for Bebe Neuwirth’s Lilith and Peri Gilpin’s Roz, both expected to reappear in recurring roles), 2023 Frasier offers a whole new backdrop for Kelsey Grammer’s iconic character, marking his fourth decade on the small screen after a back-to-back run in Cheers and Frasier from 1984–2004. Frasier is no longer the Seattle-based radio psychiatrist, transplanted from the Reagan-era Boston of Cheers, who has to deal with father and roommate Martin, housekeeper Daphne, neurotic brother Niles, and the hardly intellectual station colleagues he might run into at the coffee shop. Now, he’s an incoming Harvard lecturer back in Boston, and this time, he’s the grumpy old coot moving in next to his son, Frederick Crane (Jack Cutmore-Scott). Familiar characters and archetypes from the original Frasier are manifested once more: Freddy’s roommate, the aspiring actress and single mother Eve (Jess Salgueiro), is something like a new Daphne; Frasier’s nephew, Harvard student David Crane (Anders Keith), is like his father Niles, if Niles took after Sheldon Cooper; university veterans Alan Cornwall (legendary British sitcom actor Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) are Frasier’s new work friends, happy to join him for a beer at the local watering hole that’s conspicuously not named Cheers.

Overall critical reception has so far been mixed, with most conclusions leaning one of two ways: that Grammer’s extraordinary effort single-handedly powers what otherwise is a tired sitcom, or that even Grammer’s talent and magnetism are not enough to save this show. I land on the side of those who think this doesn’t really work, not for a lack of trying. It really lies in the writing—where old Frasier’s jokes and character signposts were witty and incisive, new Frasier’s are hacky and hammy, covering too-familiar tropes and topics. Snide remarks to and from a Harvard Guy about the self-referential tendencies of Ivy Leaguers? Check. A trivia outing where people mispronounce the names of Chinese dynasties and Swiss psychoanalysts? Yup. A newfangled machine that keeps playing an annoying hit song, in this case “Baby Shark”? You got it.

Meanwhile, the Frasier characteristics retread in the reboot are hardly as compelling this time around. The father-son conflict of yore, where retired cop Martin tried to find some kinship with his philosophizing sons, is inverted this time: Frasier, still a well-educated snob, seems to have long disapproved of Freddy’s decision to drop out of Harvard and become a firefighter, and their relationship is strained like Martin and Frasier’s was. But the show can’t seem to land on any consistent guideposts for this relationship—for why Frasier appears to be so much closer to his nephew than his own son, for why cousins Frederick and David have such differing personalities, for how Freddy developed from his childhood in ’90s Frasier up through now, for anything Frasier may have taken from his own fatherly relationship in his approach to (poorly) parenting Freddy. It’s all a little empty outside of the flat jokes, and cast members like Cutmore-Scott almost appear to be over-accentuating every single gesture and phrasing possible in order to fill that void. (I can’t recount how many times I heard a specific line reading on the new show and thought, “Someone like John Mahoney/David Hyde Pierce/Jane Leeves could have at least pulled that one off.”)

Of course, we’re still early in the show, and there’s a chance it could find its groove and I then find myself terribly sorry for all this criticism, as Dr. Crane himself might say. But, speaking of that good doctor, I can say the one thing that will keep me watching is the madman who remains at its center: Kelsey Grammer, who’s made the most of this moment and revived his signature character in delightful, impeccable form.

For all my issues with this revival/spinoff, something undeniable is that Grammer has still got it—that he can still bring out the Frasier Crane who stole America’s heart for two decades straight. Every part of him: the cocksure pretension, the deep love for family, the keen sadness and regret, the frazzled frustrations, the groan-worthy quips, the high-decibel vocal outbursts, the bitter grumbles. Grammer has the energy today at 68 that he did at 38, when he first ushered Frasier Crane into his own solo TV show; he can flip between outrageous emotions and bumble through catastrophic situations just as comically as he used to. It’s remarkable no less for Grammer’s dexterity than for his marvelous, unfatigued commitment to this sitcom favorite. Yes, Grammer may have defined the role from the very beginning, when Frasier first popped up in Cheers to turn the Sam-and-Diane tango into a definite love triangle, but he never feels as though he’s just drawing on muscle memory for Paramount+. Grammer reportedly wanted to do this all again really badly, and it shows: Whether he’s trying to get some undergrad students to pay attention to a lecture on Hermann Ebbinghaus, preparing fancy cuisines, or pretending not to be Freddy’s dad while in the company of his firefighting squad, Grammer perfectly responds as Frasier would in each situation: ridiculously, earnestly, meaningfully.

It’s another evolution for Frasier Crane the character, and one that Grammer (who even directed some of these newer episodes) clearly takes as seriously as he did in the past. The Frasier of Cheers was something of a charming mope, a bookish victim of heartbreak who requires strong romantic support and company; the Frasier of ’90s Frasier was a single, headstrong intellect hilariously detached from time and place, sticking to vintage clothing designs and a radio-broadcast advice show while living in a rapidly yuppifying Seattle; the Frasier of now is an old-timer, someone who achieved even greater fame beyond Seattle thanks to a gig as a Dr. Phil–style daytime talk-show host, but who now wishes to enter the twilight of his life having made a real impact on the world, and bonding again with what’s left of his family. It’s to Grammer’s legacy-making credit that he could manifest all these incarnations while still retaining a core idea of Frasier Crane as the man you think of when that name is mentioned: a man always older than his time, amusing and loathsome in equal measure, a well-meaning buffoon who was haughty and stubborn yet loving, who needed as much affection from those around him as he gave to them. There was probably no one better to portray such a confounding yet magnetic character—Grammer, a bit of an old-timey crank himself with a deep background of family tragedy, perhaps knows somewhat instinctively how to play up such a winsome and melancholy person.

All of this is to say: If you missed Kelsey Grammer as Frasier, it’s worth watching the reboot just to see a master convincingly pull out some old tricks. It’s worth remembering, too, that the later seasons of Frasier’s original run were … not so great, but Grammer stood out all the more and made it worth our time. If you miss Frasier, the revival might not be the way to go. But if you miss Frasier himself, well, he’s still listening.