Variety describes the new Frasier sitcom premiering Thursday, Oct. 12, on Paramount+ as "dusting off and polishing up a past relic that makes it as refreshing as you remembered it."
Deadline gushes that Kelsey Grammer's Dr. Frasier Crane — the Cheers barfly who starred for 11 years in his NBC's Frasier sitcom (1993-2004) — is "exactly what you would expect if Frasier had never ended in the first place in 2004 after 11 seasons." It could be considered as "the charmingly chugging along 30th season of the beloved and acclaimed Cheers spinoff."
The Los Angeles Times simply says that the new series "is really quite good." The Guardian calls it "a joy to watch."
And all fans of Cheers and Frasier 1.0 can watch the first two episodes on CBS next Tuesday, Oct. 17, but after that they must subscribe to Paramount+.
For his third act, Grammer brings the beloved pompous character back to Boston, where it all began for him on Cheers. He's left his long-running Dr. Crane daytime TV talk to reconnect with his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott from Oppenheimer, Tenent), who has done the unthinkable: He dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter.
While in town, Frasier is urged to join the Harvard faculty by snobby college buddy professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and psychology department head Olivia (Toks Olagundoye), a perfect place for Frasier's egghead comedy.
Rounding out the ensemble are nephew David Crane (Anders Keith), the Harvard student son of the unseen Niles and Daphne Crane, and Freddy's roommate Eve (Jess Salgueiro), who works at a Boston bar where everybody knows the names of firehouse friends Smokey, Moose and Tiny.
Freddy's blue-collar career fills the role played by Frasier's late father Martin (the late John Mahoney), a retired Boston police officer and counterpoint to Frasier's eccentricities. The first episodes have several nods to Grammer's original sitcom, with Frasier admitting that "I might have spent too much time in a certain bar" during his first stay in Boston. And then there's the name of Eve's workplace: Mahoney's.
Variety's Aramide Tinubu says Cornwall, "whose enthusiasm is reserved for aged bottles of whiskey and his beloved cat … is the British version of Frasier without any polite pretenses or sharp wardrobe, and the banter between the men is marvelous."
The boozy Cornwall and the ambitious Olivia "bring the workplace hijinks and moral dilemmas that defined part of the previous Frasier — with some significant time at the bar in pretty much every one of the five neatly packed episodes I saw," says Deadline's Dominic Patten.
Emmy-winning director Burrows and writers Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli "deliver the same broad strokes roles that defined Frasier before but in slightly new hues here," Patten says.
"In order to ease the transition for the old audience … the current series reproduces graphic and musical elements from the original; the 'chapter titles' introducing individual scenes are back, along with the fades in and fades out," says Robert Lloyd, Los Angeles Times TV critic.
Unlike "the wretched reboot of Sex and the City, Frasier’s team has managed to update the comedy’s situation, incorporate Frasier's greater age and its different challenges and diversify its casting without apparent strain. It feels like an organic progression rather than something flung together by a frightened committee," says Lucy Mangan of The Guardian.
The third time is a charm for Grammer because the new Frasier "remains loyal to the original program," Variety says. "Despite the cast changes, Frasier, now in his 60s, has the same qualities of the man viewers first met in his 30s and last saw in his 50s ... overly concerned with money and appearances."
Cheers!
