‘Frasier’ Just Isn’t the Same without Niles and Marty
When Paramount+ announced a new season of Frasier, I was skeptical. As someone who admittedly named her dog after the show’s titular curmudgeon, I couldn’t imagine how the new series would recapture the same magic without Kelsey Grammer’s two co-leads—David Hyde Pierce as Dr. Crane’s priggish little brother, Niles, and the late John Mahoney as his salt-of-the-earth father, Marty. Turns out, it doesn’t.
Does the new Frasier need to look, act, and feel like the original did in order to succeed? Perhaps not. But if this new show isn’t quite like the original, what have we gained in its place?
From the moment the new Frasier (the show) begins, it’s clear that the new Frasier is a note-perfect extension of the old Frasier (the character). He’s a fount of micro-expressions, all bugged eyes and twitchy mouth to complement that big, booming vocal performance. (Catch him singing that new theme song and marvel at how he doesn’t seem to have missed a beat.) At the same time, this radio psychiatrist turned daytime TV star has somehow made like many a snide child before him and become exactly like his father.
In the original series, Marty—a former cop—was the blue-collar counterpoint to his pretentious, bloviating sons. He spotted the shorter, diagonal path to destinations his sons could only reach through a meandering series of right angles and could cut them both down with simple one-liners. And although Frasier never joined the Force, his son, Frederick (aka Freddy, played here by Jack Cutmore-Scott) is now a fireman and Harvard dropout. Just like before, father and son now find themselves cohabitating thanks to a series of strange events.
There’s something fitting about reversing the role of working-class hero and stuffy brainiac (or, in Frasier’s case, “Craniac”) in this series. While the original Frasier mirrored intellectually driven Baby Boomers’ intergenerational struggles with their G.I. Generation parents, Freddy’s struggle to get through to his highly educated, achievement-driven father also reflects the dynamic some millennials share with their achievement-driven helicopter parents. Details aside, both shows capture the same quest for an emotional breakthrough.
In some ways, the hole left behind by David Hyde Pierce as Frasier’s brother, Niles, is a tougher one to fill. On paper, his sarcasm, absurdly wide lapels, and deep insecurity made him the perfect foil for his older brother—and on screen, Hyde Pierce’s looks and musicality made an almost uncanny match for Grammer himself. In the new Frasier, meanwhile, we have Niles’s son, David—a predictably anxious, allergic fellow played by Anders Keith.
Just like Niles, David can sometimes be so like Frasier that it’s unnerving—as in, they sometimes wear the same tweed jacket with elbow pads. Frasier didn’t like moments when he felt he was twinning with Niles, and the same is certainly true for his nephew. But David is also younger than Frasier, which shifts the power dynamic; whereas Niles enjoyed nothing more than knocking his big bro down a peg, David, who is eager for his approval, can’t help but preen in his presence. Keith embodies the role flawlessly, but it’s also the kind of part that feels tailor-made for a reboot—a little too broad, a little too predictable, and a little too obsessed with our title character to feel believable.
Perhaps that’s why we also have the three-time BAFTA nominee Nicholas Lyndhurst playing Frasier’s oldest friend, Alan Cornwall—now his colleague as he starts teaching at Harvard. As a tenured professor who has known Frasier since long before he had a TV series, Alan can check him in all the ways Niles did. That is to say, sometimes capably but most often absurdly. Consider the moment when Frasier tries to figure out why Freddy is being so hostile toward him, only to piece it together while his longtime friend looks at him with cool, expressionless eyes that convey the amount of time they’ve known one another (and, therefore, how many times he’s listened to Frasier delude himself about something like this).
Much like David, however, Alan’s jokes often feel too one-note; he’s got tenure, and therefore he never has to work, and this punchline will repeat time and again.
The pattern continues, daring viewers to see how far it can stretch: In place of Roz (Peri Gilpin), Frasier’s formidable and cynical producer, we now have Olivia (Toks Olagundoye)—his equally brash boss at Harvard, who wants nothing more than to reboot his successful daytime series in the classroom. Jess Salguiero, who plays a playful single mother named Eve living among the Crane men, isn’t spiritual like Daphne, but as an actress who loves a good bit (like pretending to be a private investigator who specializes in “heartbreak”) she’s loopy enough to fill the role.
For Frasier himself, the new Frasier is something of a time warp: While Boston is now the city of his future thanks to Harvard, it’s also an albatross from his past—a place he left in shame after his divorce from Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth). As the psychiatrist notes in the new series, he might’ve hung out with the guys at Cheers, but he was never really one of the guys. And although Harvard feels like home to Frasier as a very proud alumnus, the loss of his father and a this job, have once again set him adrift like he was at the start of the original series.
Writers Chris Harris (How I Met Your Mother) and Joe Cristalli (Life in Pieces) did not work on the original Frasier, but still, they’ve avoided that warmed-over feeling that sitcom reboots can often have. (Good thing, too—I’m not positive, but I don’t think tossed salad and scrambled eggs would reheat well.)
The new Frasier is no twin to the original, and its supporting characters will need to develop some real nuance in order to live up to their predecessors, but still, there’s something here. Grammer might be walking a little more like Mahoney these days, but with each sarcastic barb and every eye roll, he makes it seem like Frasier never left the building. With any luck, the rest of the show will have enough time to find its footing, too.
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