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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Imogen West-Knights

At its best, Frasier was the sitcom Wodehouse – so I was dreading its risky reboot

Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane with Jack Cutmore-Scott as his son Freddy, sitting on a couch.
‘Kelsey Grammer can still chew scenery with the best of them.’ Frasier Crane with his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott) in the new series of Frasier. Photograph: Pamela Littky/AP

I love Frasier. I have a T-shirt that says “Frasier” on it in the Seinfeld font, a stupid internet mashup joke I nonetheless find charming and wear sincerely, and which multiple people in my life have told me they find actively irritating. I once seriously argued with myself about buying a shirtdress printed with a still from the show, priced at more than £160. I would be interested and probably appalled to know how many hours I have clocked up rewatching episodes when I’m in a funk.

Why? I don’t remember seeing any episodes of Frasier when it was originally airing. What was there to delight an eight-year-old in a show about a divorced radio psychiatrist and his newly disabled father? My mum is a fan, but I don’t remember watching it with her, either. Yet Frasier feels like a language I have always spoken.

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