It’s not easy to make a spin-off. At this point in the pop culture timeline, we’ve been taught to expect them to be terrible, and for good reason. It’s an expectation learned from lessons like That ‘80s Show (a spin-off of That ‘70s Show), Fuller House (the noughties revival of Full House), and, of course, Joey, derived from the wildly successful Friends.
Frasier, which is being rebooted (as a continuation, rather than a remake) on Paramount+ from this week, is a rare exception to this, a show that – like any good spin-off when it works – moved completely out of its parent’s shadow, and is now discussed without a mention of it.
Only a few months after the NBC sitcom Cheers bowed out with the most-watched single TV episode of the 1990s, one of the bar’s regulars sobered up and made a fresh start. After leaving Boston, self-important radio psychiatrist Frasier Crane settles down in Seattle to start a new life as a bachelor. That is until the arrival of his father, Martin, a down-to-earth retired police officer who needs care, Martin’s Jack Russell Terrier Eddie, and live-in carer Daphne. And in the background, but stealing almost every scene he’s in (a testament to the believable sibling relationship) Frasier’s equally successful and elitist brother, Niles.
The show won countless awards over its 11-season run, but one of Frasier’s biggest achievements as a work of art is how funny, heartwarming and engaging it manages to be, despite how unrelatable and downright unlikeable some of its characters should be on paper.
Frasier is a privileged man with an unusual job and a family life even more dysfunctional than that of most middle-aged men. He enjoys modest fame and is vaguely wealthy, and wouldn’t be caught dead watching Netflix or listening to a Spotify playlist.
What appeals about Dr Frasier Crane is what lies beneath the elitist exterior. Despite his success and his planetary ego, he is also neurotic, insecure, and much more socially awkward than he’d ever like to believe. Kelsey Grammer embodies all this with an eccentricity and vulnerability that makes him endlessly watchable.
Frasier is a fragile, flawed human being yearning for more. More control over his environment, which has been taken over by his father, dog and a zany British care worker. More respect, for a radio show looked down upon by his younger brother, a traditional psychiatrist. More success in fitting in with colleagues and acquaintances. In this way, everybody can see themselves in Frasier Crane, trying to get the best out of life, while seeking connections and being our best selves (not something he excels at) in a world that often seems completely alien.
Although it declined to use many of its genre’s well worn tools, the show had a powerful weapon in its arsenal – a cast of seasoned actors ready to go from day one. Grammer was already a fixture on Broadway before becoming Dr Crane – and had passed the sniff test with audiences on Cheers – and David Hyde Pierce was from a similar background. The late John Mahoney earned his first Tony award long before taking on the role of their father.
Some of the characters are arguably not the most well fleshed out in TV history, but they work together well, and in the hands of these actors they serve their purpose brilliantly, mainly as an evocative chorus that brings out Frasier’s personality quirks, and became well-loved. Watching Frasier struggle with his sense of self while managing relationships with people who more or less speak a different language became the heartbeat of the show, and every failure in his social life is at least amusing and often hilarious. There’s also no denying that surviving and growing in the hands of many different writers over the course of 11 seasons is a testament to the strength of those characters.
It falls down in some areas that other shows did better, of course. Arguably it hasn’t aged as gracefully as some of its contemporaries – see Frasier’s recurring ‘gay panic’ – but in others it proves itself to be rather progressive: Peri Gilpin’s Roz Doyle, Frasier’s no-nonsense radio co host, is often hailed as one of TV’s most strongly feminist characters. The show also deserves a hat tip for steering clear of both ‘the single life’ and ‘married life’ stereotypes that defined sitcoms of the 90s and 2000s. Yes, Frasier is single for a good deal of the show, and Niles and Daphne provide a ‘will they won’t they’ element, but it never reaches the repetitive tedium of Friends’ Ross and Rachel.
This may be partly because Frasier had a life before the show – we didn’t need another romance. By the time he arrives in Seattle he has put such matters largely behind him, and he has settled into a neurotic creature of comfort, ripe for the challenge of ‘other people’ – something we first saw with the regulars at Cheers bar.
This, in the end, is why it makes sense to bring Frasier back. People of all generations are constantly questioning their place in the world, wondering whether they could be achieving more, while wrestling with their insecurity.
It’s not easy to make a spin-off. It’s even harder to make a reboot. But if there’s a character who can make it through the storm, it’s Frasier.
