Two decades have passed since we last saw Dr. Frasier Crane, that psychiatrist straight out of Cheers who turned a Seattle radio studio into a media platform to treat patients with express consultations. With this time in between, neither Frasier (the character) nor Frasier (the series) can be at exactly the same point, either because life involves changes or because of the impossibility of repeating a mold that was provided in the 1990s. five consecutive awards for best comedy to David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee.
The current Frasier, which SkyShowtime premieres on Friday, has one virtue: Kelsey Grammer's ability to instantly recover the impeccable comic presence she had as Frasier, the one that cost her so much to replace in other sitcoms. And, if in the original series the character wanted to repair a broken father-son relationship, the one she had with her father Martin (John Mahoney), she now has to heal the differences with her son Freddy (Jack Cutmore -Scott).
The first chapter already explains the situation. Frasier returns to Boston to give a lecture, and thus has an excuse to visit his son, who did not even attend his grandfather's funeral. They have been estranged since Freddy dropped out of Harvard his freshman year to pursue a career in the fire department. Tired of his father not respecting his decision, he simply cut her out of his life to the point that Frasier doesn't even know he lives with Eve (Jess Salgueiro).
So, when he realizes how damaged their relationship is, Frasier accepts a job offer at Harvard to be close to Freddy. The cast is completed by Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) as colleagues from the university's psychiatry department and David (Anders Keith), Niles and Daphne's son who follows in her father's footsteps.
In its first five episodes, the new Frasier can't be said to be as solid or fun a series as the original. We miss the color provided by the radio queries, which often acted as prop jokes to oxygenate the comedy, or the brilliant and pedantic comic duo formed by Frasier and Niles. It is also striking that, despite being a fundamental piece, Jack Cutmore-Scott has so many difficulties when responding to Grammer. How he pales in comparison to any character from the original series.
But, above all, the viewer must see how the scriptwriters strive to create all of Frasier's relationships from scratch, something that we were able to avoid in the nineties, where we were introduced to a psychiatrist with crystalline relationships with all the characters except Daphne. (Jane Leeves), whom he hired in the pilot as his father's physical therapist. The most interesting? That the trio of creators defined the comic dynamics of the characters from the first episode and they all turned out to be a success that they were able to maintain.
On the other hand, since Frasier unexpectedly settles in Boston in the sequel, it is necessary to justify all of the character's dynamics and on top of that without giving him that pillar of stability that was his work routine on the radio. Thus, at least in the first episodes, one encounters a flat Alan who simply stops by to crack misanthropic jokes, an Eve who is perceived as a superfluous complement until her romantic tension with Freddy is spelled out, or a nephew involved with shoehorned in so that Niles' comedic DNA is there somehow.
In the process of discovering herself, she has the advantage of memory: there is something deeply comforting in the fact of reuniting with the imposing charisma of Kelsey Grammer, so comfortable right away in the role, in that very theatrical format that is the sitcom and with an audience willing to have a good time (and canned their laughter).
And, as we recover our television chip from the nineties, it is worth remembering that before we had patience with comedies. We let the writers, producers, and actors see which scenarios worked for them, which gags got the most laughs, and which acting dynamics had the most potential. Frasier may have been pretty well-oiled from the beginning but, for example, Friends was rather mediocre in the first episodes.
For now, this new Frasier deserves an opportunity to explore itself, although the ingredients anticipate that it will never live up to its own memory.
