The opening titles of the primary episode are precisely as we keep in mind them: the Seattle skyline, together with the well-known Area Needle, snakes its method throughout the display screen, Etch A Sketch-style.
(After this episode, the skyline modifications to Boston, the place this revival is ready, and the place the character of Frasier Crane first appeared in season three of Cheers method, method again within the distant days of the Eighties.)
Then “Frasier” seems beneath it, within the acquainted typeface. For any typography nerds who may be studying, it’s referred to as Florentine Common.
Then the precise, flesh-and-blood Frasier, performed by Kelsey Grammer, reveals up, greeted by whoops of pleasure from the studio viewers. The actor instantly slips again into his beloved character as easily as a hand slipping right into a well-worn glove.
For a few minute, you get a sugar-rush feeling that maybe Frasier 2.0 won’t, in spite of everything, be the worst concept anybody working in tv has ever had
By the two-minute mark, you realise you had been proper the primary time – with the proviso that John Cleese’s promised (threatened?) Caribbean-set revival of Fawlty Towers may very well be even worse.
However till that comes alongside, Frasier 2.0 is the undisputed champion of cynical revivals sparked by horrible concepts. It’s a bin hearth of unhealthy decisions.
That is the sitcom revival just about no person requested for. The one individuals who wished it to occur had been Grammer (who, let’s be trustworthy, was blessed to land what’s a once-in-a lifetime position for any actor) and the fits at Paramount+, who caught wind of the present craze for reviving or rebooting previous IPs and determined they appreciated the foul stench.
Frasier 1.0 delivered an ideal finale. The pompous however loveable shrink eschewed the chance of a TV present in San Francisco in favour of flying to Chicago to be along with his real love, Charlotte (Laura Linney).
Frasier 2.0 craps throughout it from an amazing top. The flimsy premise finds the character, now divorced, on his strategy to Paris, however deciding to cease over for an evening in Boston to reconnect along with his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott).
The final time we noticed Freddy, he was a nerdy child dutifully following the trail laid out for him by his dad and mom, which finally led to a spot in Harvard.
A lot to his father’s dismay, nonetheless, he selected to interrupt out of his gilded cage. He dropped out of Harvard and have become a firefighter.
Frasier’s misunderstanding of Freddy’s residing preparations – he’s sharing an condo, however not a relationship, with single mom Eve (Jess Salgueiro), a waitress and aspiring actress – is the backbone of the farce-heavy first episode.
Frasier has in tow his nephew David (Anders Keith), the son of his brother Niles and Daphne. On the airport, he’s greeted by a brand new character, an previous faculty pal referred to as Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst), a time-serving Harvard lecturer who doesn’t get alongside along with his boss, division head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), who courts Frasier to take a job at Harvard, which in fact he does. In any other case we wouldn’t have an excuse for this skinny collection.
John Mahoney, who performed Frasier and Nile’s retired cop father Martin, blue collar to his bones, died in 2018. David Hyde Pierce (Niles) and Jane Leeves (Daphne) declined to return, maybe feeling that any revival may by no means match the unique. They had been proper.
And not using a sliver of something that will justify this pointless resurrection, the writers give us clumsy analogues of those beloved characters.
The strained relationship between Frasier and Freddy mirrors that of Martin and his pretentious sons. David is there to counsel the apple doesn’t fall removed from the tree, though on this case the apple seems prefer it’s rolled in from a special collection.
Alan and Olivia are there merely to fill the gaps left by Roz (Peri Gilpin) and Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), who’ll be guesting in later episodes. Eve is a bit like Daphne.
There’s a call-back to Frasier’s roots in Cheers, when he mentions spending an excessive amount of time in a sure Boston bar.
As within the previous days, Grammer sings Tossed Salad and Scrambled Eggs over the tip credit. This time, the tossed salad is limp and lifeless, the scrambled eggs stale and dried-up.