We’d like you to imagine, if we might be so bold, an old shoe. No, strike that—an old and beloved shoe. Years ago, you put the work into making it feel just right. You stomped around in it everywhere, until it became a leathery extension of your own foot. Then, for some reason, you put it in a cupboard and forgot about it for years … until now.
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You can see where we’re going with this belabored metaphor, right? Frasier—the beloved sitcom that spanned 11 seasons, taking us from the ’90s into the early aughts—is the old shoe. And so, when we heard it was being rebooted (hey, that’s another shoe reference!), we expected it to feel just like old times. That the shoe would slide on, Cinderella-style, and everything would be perfect.
Here’s the thing, though: Even an old shoe can, if you haven’t worn it in forever, feel strange and new. And Frasier—the new Frasier, which premieres October 12 on Paramount+—is much the same, largely because it has the confidence to not just do something entirely new with our protagonist (his radio show days are over), but to also hurl him headfirst into a new setting—well, sorta—with an entirely new group of people around him.
The plot is simple enough: Frasier goes back to Boston to form a rapprochement with his estranged son. (You can tell we’ve been watching this series intently; we’re even starting to talk like Dr. Crane.) In the process, the retired TV star winds up getting a new job as a lecturer at a very prestigious university, moving into a lavish new apartment, and finding a suitable replacement for his beloved Cafe Nervoso in the local bar. (How very Cheers of him).
Fans of the original will know that the plot shifts and changes each week. Every episode is a standalone story, throwing our characters into a series of predicaments—an emotionally charged quiz night, an elite invite-only club, a night cooking cassoulet at the fire station—and waiting to see how they’ll muddle their way out of them. It’s cozily low-stakes stuff.
Fans of the original will also, however, find it hard not to draw parallels between New Frasier and Old Frasier. Really hard. We spent the first few episodes, in fact, trying to determine who’s the new Daphne (the most likely contender was Nicholas Lyndhurst’s Alan Cornwall, solely because … well, because he’s British), the new Niles (obviously Anders Keith’s David, a.k.a. Frasier’s nephew and Niles’ familiarly fussy son), the new Marty (Jack Cutmore-Scott’s Freddy, Frasier’s son, has grown up to be a beer-swilling, no-nonsense fireman, so our money is on this guy). There’s even a contender for the new Roz in the form of not just one, but two new characters: Jess Salgueiro’s Eve (Freddy’s roommate) and Toks Olagundoye’s Olivia (Frasier’s new boss).
When you waste your time doing this, though, things wind up feeling disappointing and a bit clunky. The new Daphne isn’t quite as Daphne as we’d like her to be; Alan is far too focused on his cat and his apparent quest to make alcoholism funny; David idolizes Frasier far too much to be a true Niles Crane, quite frankly; and on and on.
You get the picture. Different characters are exactly that: different characters. And, just as it takes time to get to know and like people in real life, so it does with this motley crew. Hell, even Freddy feels like a stranger How did that—whisper it—incredibly irksome little boy grow up to be Mr. July in the Boston Fire Department’s charity calendar? What caused the mathlete and spelling-bee aficionado to drop out of college? And how did Frasier Crane and Lilith Stern’s son grow up to be so damn well adjusted?
Still, once you stop thinking about it all too hard—and once you stop asking difficult questions (such as, say, if Alan is truly Frasier’s longtime best friend from their Oxford days, why did he never visit or call during the OG series?)—everything starts to feel a lot more enjoyable. Kelsey Grammer’s older, wiser, and obscenely richer version of the character we fell in love with all those years ago is … well, dare we say he’s actually more lovable than the OG? Oh sure, he’s now the kind of person who rents out entire apartment blocks and says crappy, loaded things like ‘Freddy’s not just a fireman,” but he is every bit as pompous and silly and earnest as we remember. And, come the fifth episode, he and his new gang are starting to hit (almost) all the right notes. Things can only get better, too, with Peri Gilpin and Bebe Neuwirth set to reprise their beloved characters later down the line. And so, just like that, the old shoe stops rubbing and blistering our foot, and starts to feel comfortable and familiar again.
Much as you’d expect from a decade-old shoe you’ve dug out the back of a cupboard, however, the new Frasier sometimes feels a little dated. The comedy and pacing is very ’90s sitcom, the laugh track even more so. But here’s the thing about nostalgia: It’s addictive AF. And so, once you get into the swing of it, we suspect you’ll be very glad that Frasier’s back in the building … even if it’s a different building in a different city. Cheers.
Frasier premieres October 12 on Paramount+