Karl Puschmann: The diagnosis on the Frasier reboot

Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy Crane (left) and Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane in a scene from Frasier. Photo / AP

The first thing you hear in the Frasier reboot is not a cerebral zing or arch-witticism delivered with just the right amount of peevish snobbery. Instead, what you hear is about as lowbrow as you can get before flopping belly-first into the rancid pool of fart and poop jokes. What you hear is the uproarious and over-excited hootenanny of a laughter track.

It’s initially quite jarring. I can’t remember the last time I watched something where the audience erupts in howls and applause after every second line. I thought those dark days of canned laughter were well behind us. Apparently not.

But also, apparently so. Just like the original series, this new Frasier was taped in front of a live audience. But I find it hard to believe that the real audience reaction hasn’t been augmented somewhat with that of the canned variety because the audience loses their damn minds every time someone says anything.

For example, the line “This is bad sherry”, delivered after Frasier takes a sip of sherry practically gets a standing ovation. There was no escaping how loudly the onscreen laughter contrasted with the silence in my lounge.

But, if anything, the laughter track is faithful to the original series, which ran for a wildly successful 11 years, from 1993 to 2004. The show itself was a spin-off from the mega-sitcom Cheers and transplanted its titular hero, the snobbish psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane from Boston to Seattle to host a talkback radio show.

Frasier picked up the phenomenon mantle from Cheers and ran with it. It regularly cleaned up at awards shows and gained a reputation as the thinking person’s sitcom thanks to gags about things like literature, philosophy and fine wine and the chemistry between lead Kelsey Grammer and, well, everyone else.

Most notable was the interplay between Grammer and David Hyde Pierce who played Frasier’s younger, even snootier, brother Dr Niles Crane. The combo was completed by John Mahoney who played the pair’s straight-talking father, an ex-cop who lived with Frasier and was often left exasperated by the pair’s high falutin ways.

This was a perfectly calibrated and refined trio, able to turn on a dime from broad, physical humour to high snide to heartfelt emotion while never breaching believability.

In short, Frasier was a class act.

Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane, Jess Salgueiro as Eve and Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy in Frasier. Photo / AP

But that was a long time ago. Frasier in 2023 is a different kettle of caviar. Mahoney passed away five years ago and Hyde Pierce declined the offer to once again suit up as Niles. So all that remains of the original Frasier is, well, Frasier.

Is that enough? Yes and no. Grammer remains a curmudgeonly delight, with his booming, expressionistic voice and his full realisation of the character’s airs and graces. But surrounded by a whole new cast he’s adrift.

Admittedly, it could be because I’ve seen Frasier on TV since the 1980s when Cheers reigned supreme, but he’s the only really believable character on the show. Everyone else plays things overly broad and mono-dimensional.

The idea is that Frasier has left Seattle to return to Boston to reunite with his estranged adult son and take a job teaching psych at Harvard. His son has a flatmate, Frasier has his nephew in tow and at the university is his slacker mate and his ambitious boss.

These are not people, but sitcom characters. The nephew, conceptually the Niles replacement but actually a Big Bang Theory reject, is the worst offender here, bordering on cartoonish much of the time.

This of course impacts the gags which, similarly, are overly broad and predictable for anyone who’s ever watched a sitcom before. But the odd diamond occasionally glitters in the rough, mostly thanks to Grammer’s well-worn way with a Frasier punchline.

“This place is charming,” Frasier says after entering his son’s apartment for the first time. “It reminds me of the sort of place one would wrestle a cartoon rat for a crust of bread.”

Perhaps this was the only way the reboot could go. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Frasier happily rolls along the familiar path. There are title cards breaking up the scenes, jazzy bass augmenting the jokes, storylines that aim for an emotional gut punch as they wind up and, yes, an incessant laughter track. It’s as traditional a sitcom as you can get.

It also has everything you expect from Frasier while somehow also not delivering what you’d hope from Frasier. Based on what I’ve seen so far I’d say it was suffering from a case of imposter syndrome. But take that with a grain of salt because, unlike Frasier, I’m no psychiatrist.