There is a thought experiment called “The Ship of Theseus”, based on the ancient king of Athens. The problem refers to the question of whether you can remove and replace every constituent part of an object – a ship, say – piece by piece, until nothing original remains. Is it still the same ship? It is a paradox that has been applied, in the modern day, to the band Sugababes, and, of course, Trigger’s broom in Only Fools and Horses. Now, the patchwork ship sails into view again – this time with Kelsey Grammer’s Frasier Crane at the helm, clinging to that last vestige of what made Frasier, the hit Nineties sitcom, Frasier.
Returning to our screens on Paramount+, Frasier finds himself back in Boston, the city where he began his televisual life. But the setting here isn’t the beer-soaked Cheers (“I may have spent too much time at a certain bar,” he observes, ruefully, of his previous stint in the city). Instead, Dr Frasier Crane – to give him his full title – is off to Harvard, where he’ll be lecturing on psychology and attempting to reconnect with his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who dropped out of the university to become a firefighter. Joining him at this most august of academic institutions are old mucker Professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst, aka Rodney Trotter), faculty chair Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) and his nephew, David (Anders Keith).
