When talking about the American sitcom, mentioning Frasier is almost an obligation. He had the ability to serve a massive and sophisticated audience, giving it jokes that represented and parodied it, with the characteristic rhythm of the format and the laughter of the audience present, now so reviled. His five consecutive Emmy Awards for best television comedy were a television record until the arrival of Modern Family, which tied with the radio psychiatrist.
Even though Kelsey Grammer's Frasier was synonymous with quality, fans and critics raised an eyebrow when they saw the trailer for its sequel. How could this fictional universe continue without David Hyde Pierce, Peri Gilpin, John Mahoney or Jane Leeves? And could it be that Frasier had stopped being a sitcom that was as accessible as it was intelligent and had returned as a basic, dull comedy, with a comic instinct closer to dandruff?
As early reviews of the series suggest, this impression was wrong: Frasier has returned to the United States with more than decent results. And, waiting to be able to see the new episodes in Spain via SkyShowtime, the platform has been used to recover this award-winning and remembered sitcom for weeks now.
In the new episodes, the former co-stars are dispensed with (remember that Mahoney died in 2018) when Frasier Crane moves to another city. The original Frasier (1993-2004) began with the psychiatrist settling in Seattle to be closer to his father, a retired police officer with a limp due to a gunshot.
He had left behind that city of Boston where he frequented the Cheers bar to deal with a father with whom he shared absolutely none of his elegant tastes, a brother who was also a psychiatrist and eccentric, and the physical therapist who moved in to take care of his father. . Instead, this new Frasier takes place in Boston and with a new team of creative managers: Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli (Life in Pieces) take the reins previously held by Peter Casey, David Lee and the late David Angell.
The character returns to the city to be closer to his son Frederick (Jack Cutmore-Scott), with whom he had always had a distant relationship and who did not lead the life that Frasier wanted for him: he left Harvard, the university where he had studied psychiatry. , to work as a firefighter. Among the new characters, Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) stands out, who heads the psychology department at Harvard, and David (Anders Keith), the son that Niles and Daphne had.
In the Guardian, for example, they reveal that the pilot has so much work to situate the viewer and relate the sequel or revival to the original series that "there is little of that beauty of the original series", it moves by "thick strokes" and the Jokes are not exactly “filigrees.” But he also acknowledges that Grammer plays Frasier Crane “as perfectly and with as subtle a touch as ever, moving seamlessly between emotional and comedic scenes.”
In the following episodes the script work improves: “the jokes are more subtle, the relationships grow”, “the actors relax”, “the security grows” and, for the fourth episode, “the chemistry, that ineffable magic” does act of presence “Although Martin would be ashamed of me (...) it almost brought a tear to my eye,” confesses critic Lucy Mangan about the creative development of the work and the feeling of returning to origins.
At Variety they have a similar opinion. They consider that “Frasier works because it remains loyal to the original series.” “From the song to the white-on-black titles to the live audience, the elements that made Frasier essential remain intact here. Of course, changing the dynamics: now the psychiatrist faces a difficult relationship to manage with his son instead of his father (and with a son who, paradoxically, would surely understand better with his grandfather). “Instead of reinventing the wheel of the legendary character, this Frasier 2.0 opts to recreate everything that made the 90s sitcom iconic,” acknowledges Aramide Tinubu.
“The gang is figuratively here again,” they write from Deadline, warning that the second half of the season will feature Bebe Neuwirth as Frasier's ex-wife or Peri Gilpin as his old program partner. From the LA Times they advance that “The new Fraser is classic and contemporary. And he is doing quite well.” There are others who may criticize that she is “a little old-fashioned” but that she is “addictive as hell.”
There are also those who are less convinced. At Vulture they defend that it is “meh”. In IndieWire, where he gets a pass that is far from the outstanding of the nineties, they maintain that Frasier "has good reasons to return" but "he doesn't quite understand them." And from TVLine they criticize that “it bears very little resemblance to the Frasier that we knew and loved.” “It is as different from Frasier as Frasier was from Cheers, only this time for the worse,” they rule. Of course, all these criticisms approve of fiction.
As Frasier Crane himself would have done if he knew that such a beloved sitcom was resurrected from the dead (if he accepted the sitcom as an artistic expression, of course, since he is more into opera and cultural snobbery in general), critics were distrustful. That it is not a catastrophe of epic proportions is the pleasant twist that American television did not expect (and possibly needed). The sitcom (beyond Frasier) is alive.
