Instead of staying in Seattle (or even Chicago, where the character traveled at the end of his previous series), “Frasier” sends our favorite psychiatrist back to Boston, where we first met him haunting the stools over at “Cheers.” But don’t expect an appearance from that iconic bar, nor indeed any of Grammer’s cast members from the original “Frasier.” Instead, writer/developers Chris Harris (“How I Met Your Mother”) and Joe Cristalli (“Life in Pieces”) port over Frasier’s signature bone-dry wit and delusions of grandeur to a show that feels less like “Frasier” and more like, well, “How I Met Your Mother.”
This time around, everyone knows Frasier’s name because he’s spent the last few decades hosting a “Dr. Phil”-esque TV show in Chicago, one which gives him both national renown and personal embarrassment. But after a brief stopover in Beantown in which he reconnects with his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter, he decides to stay—while reluctantly taking a psych professor job at said university.
It’s an intriguing remix of the original show’s dynamics: While David Hyde Pierce, Jane Leeves, and the rest are nowhere to be found, the new cast offers old conflicts in new, if less exciting, packaging. Freddy essentially acts as the new Martin, with the generations swapped: Where Frasier turned his nose up at his low-class cop dad, now he scoffs at his son’s insistence on drinking scotch from a plastic handle. Freddy’s friend and roommate, Eve (Jess Salgueiro), is a cross between Roz and Daphne, snarky and helpful in equal measure while also trying to juggle enormous responsibilities as a single woman. And though the show lacks Niles, we have his son David (Anders Keith) as a fussy stand-in, carrying his dad’s prim ineptitude while holding his famous uncle up on a pedestal. (Keith grows into the role as the show progresses, but David still reads more like Sheldon Cooper than Niles.)
Of course, the show’s center remains Frasier himself, and to its credit, “Frasier” keeps his curmudgeonly spirit alive. Shameful as it is to see him ditch the well-tailored suits for a more Casual Friday look, Frasier still feels innately Frasier, softened though he may be by the effects of time. Grammer glides through each scene with the magnetism of a seasoned performer; he’s had a lot of practice playing Frasier Crane, and it’s comforting seeing him on our television screens again.
Unfortunately, the show around him struggles to rise to his level. The remixes of old character dynamics are fun, but they’re like shortcuts to avoid giving Frasier some truly new ground to cover. Freddy’s not nearly as interesting a straight man to Frasier’s fussiness as Martin was, David is simply obnoxious, and Eve floats in the periphery, with little to do—as does Toks Olagundoye’s Olivia, the high-strung university department head whose sharp comic instincts only get to rear their head in a few scant scenes.