‘Frasier’ Revives a Classic TV Comedy Character

Matt’s Rating:

Like uncorking a vintage vino to savor an awfully familiar flavor, the new Frasier shares many of the virtues of the comedy classic that earned a then-record 37 Emmys over its 11 seasons (1993-2004), including four for its title star, Kelsey Grammer. He remains the primary reason to watch this confidently amusing if inevitably diminished reboot. Few can deliver a line with his haughty disdain, as when Frasier Crane surveys his son’s unassuming Boston apartment and concludes, “It reminds me of the sort of place where one would wrestle a cartoon rat for a crust of bread.”

That’s right. Frasier is back in Beantown, the setting of the immortal Cheers, which spun off Frasier, which inspired this comeback nearly 20 years after the show’s finale. The set-up requires some clumsy exposition, with pop psychiatrist Frasier having left Seattle to achieve national fame as a Chicago-based daytime-TV personality — think Dr. Phil with even cheesier showmanship. He returns to Boston after the death of his father Martin (the late John Mahoney, who gets a shout-out with a local pub named in his honor) with the goal to reconnect with his own son, Freddy (a handsomely bland Jack Cutmore-Scott).

Much of the comedy in this new version hinges on a generational reversal, with Frasier the stuffy father to a comfortable-in-his-skin working-class son, who quit Harvard to work as a firefighter. (At one point, an ice-hockey table stands in for Martin’s comfy but ratty chair.) As the series begins, Freddy shares lodgings with Eve (Jess Salgueiro), a would-be actress who slings drinks at Mahoney’s. It’s not entirely their fault that the younger characters lack the wit and spirit to keep up with an icon we spent two decades getting to know.

In a callback — one of many — to the original series, the pilot episode is titled “The Good Father” (echoing the 1993 pilot, “The Good Son”), both directed by TV comedy legend James Burrows, a master of timing who’s at home with slapstick, farce and barbed dialogue. Each gets a workout in the first of two episodes launching the new series. (The episodes will be played on CBS — which by all logic should be airing the series — in a special prime-time showcase next Tuesday.) With Frasier walking a bit more gingerly in his 60s, the burden of physical comedy falls on Anders Keith as awkward nephew David, a Harvard newbie who longs to fit in despite an inferiority complex. (His parents Niles and Daphne, played in the original by David Hyde-Pierce and Jane Leeves, are nowhere to be seen, more’s the pity.)

Hoping to embrace academia at his alma mater, Frasier is joined by scene-stealer Nicholas Lyndhurst as his long-ago Oxford buddy Alan, now a boozy and jaded Harvard professor with tenure who gets many of the best lines. Counseling Frasier on his pompous classroom demeanor, he quips, “If you would just stop trying, I promise you will stop failing.” Faring less well is psychology department head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), whose craven obsession with status upon landing a celebrity like Frasier soon grows tiresome.

The rhythms and beats, the loud studio audience laughter, the hard jokes and kooky complications of timeless TV comedy are all well represented here, and by the fifth episode, I had found a comfort zone in the new yet old Frasier with its second-tier ensemble. (No one really expected a repeat of the miraculous original cast.) This episode, titled “The Founders’ Society,” finds Frasier competing against Alan and Olivia for admittance to an elite university club, while young David gets social pointers on how to talk to women from his hunkier cousin. (“Who’s your favorite magician?” not being anyone’s idea of a successful pick-up line.)

A case of mistaken identity and a sight gag involving Alan getting a metal gauntlet stuck on his hand provide most of the humor, while Frasier has an epiphany: “I still have this longing to find the place where I belong.” We could have told him that Frasier Crane is most at home on a comedy soundstage, even though recapturing those glory days of bygone years may be too much to ask.

Frasier, Series Premiere (two episodes), Thursday, October 12, Paramount+