Frasier is back – and in Boston. The first trailer for the Paramount+ reboot of the beloved sitcom, a successful spin-off of Cheers, finds Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane in a new city, working as a professor and trying to connect with his adult son, Freddy, played by Jack Cutmore-Scott.
The 10-episode series will follow Frasier back from Seattle – the setting of the original show, which ran from 1993 to 2004 on NBC – back to Boston, where he has “new challenges to face, new relationships to forge and an old dream or two to finally fulfill”, according to a press release.
In addition to Grammer, the new Frasier will star Nicholas Lyndhurst as Alan, Frasier’s old college friend turned university professor; Toks Olagundoye as Olivia, Alan’s colleague and head of the university’s psychology department; Jess Salgueiro as Freddy’s roommate, Eve; and Anders Keith as Frasier’s nephew, David.
The original sitcom’s cast, including Jane Leeves’s Daphne and Peri Gilpin’s Roz, will not be regulars, but could make guest appearances. David Hyde Pierce has declined to return as Frasier’s neurotic brother, Niles; John Mahoney, who played Frasier and Niles’s father, Martin, died in 2018.
The new series hails from writers Chris Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and Joe Cristalli (Life in Pieces), who executive-produced the reboot along with Grammer, Tom Russo and Jordan McMahon. James Burrows, the co-creator of Cheers and the director of the original Frasier pilot, will return to direct the first two episodes of the revival.
Those episodes will premiere in the US on 12 October, and internationally the following day, with subsequent episodes released on Paramount+ on Thursdays in the US and Friday internationally.
This fall marks 30 years since the original series premiered on NBC. It became one of the most successful sitcoms of all time, with 107 Emmy nominations and 37 wins – the most all-time wins for any comedy series.
Grammer has championed a sequel for years. In a 2019 interview with ITV, he proposed that an older Frasier Crane, a psychiatrist, could be a professor or back in private psychiatry practice. He also suggested the story would be “something that puts him at odds with his brother again” and explore his relationship with his adult son. The original series ended with Frasier giving up a promising job in San Francisco to move to Chicago to be closer to his girlfriend, played by Laura Linney; the new trailer finds Frasier, now hitting up bars in Boston, a single man.
Grammer confirmed the new series in July of last year, adding: “I’ve had a couple of runs through” the final script, “and I cried, so I’m happy”.
