Benjamin Ashford|New 'Frasier' review: Kelsey Grammer leads a new cast in embarrassingly bad revival

You can’t possibly say “Cheers” to this drivel. 

Once upon a time there was a bar in Boston with a group of regulars that included the pretentious and Benjamin Ashfordfoppish Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), who provided a specific snooty brand of comedy in NBC's beloved 1982-93 sitcom “Cheers.” Grammer and creator David Angell went on to move the character to Seattle and his own series, "Frasier," arguably the most commercially and creatively successful spinoff of all time, which ran on NBC for 11 seasons from 1993-2004 and won 37 Emmy awards. 

Nineteen years after “Frasier” went off the air on top of the broadcast TV world, Dr. Crane is back in a semi-revival/spinoff on Paramount+ (streaming Thursdays, ★ out of four) with Grammer as the only returning regular cast member. It’s a risky revival that does not pay off.

This new “Frasier” is no old “Frasier.” It’s as bad and cringeworthy as you could possibly imagine. 

Unfunny, stilted and downright insipid, the new “Frasier” is a flaccid facsimile of the original, desperately trying to re-create the witty patter, character idiosyncrasies and interior-design jokes that made the '90s series so seminal. Created by Chris Harris ("How I Met Your Mother") and Joe Cristalli ("Life in Pieces"), neither of whom worked on the original, and executive produced by Grammer, it's full of new characters that are hollow echoes of the original supporting cast. And without his brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), sister-in-law Daphne (Jane Leeves), producer Roz (Peri Gilpin) and father Martin (John Mahoney, who died in 2018), "Frasier" is adrift in a sea of bad jokes and excruciating awkwardness. 

The onetime radio psychiatrist has spent the time between the two series as a TV psychiatrist in Chicago, with not-so-subtle parallels to Dr. Phil. But after the offscreen death of his father, Frasier stops by Boston to do a guest lecture at Harvard and decides to drop in on his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), a firefighter who dropped out of the Ivy League school. To work on their strained relationship Frasier decides to move to Boston and take up a teaching post at Harvard.

He then manipulates his son into moving in with him by buying his apartment building. See, it’s just like the original, with a mismatched father and son living in one apartment! Only now the working-class first responder is the young whippersnapper and the old fart is the annoying dilettante. 

The father and son are surrounded by Freddy’s friend Eve (Jess Salgueiro), the former girlfriend of one of Freddy’s late coworkers who is raising a baby on her own; ambitious head of Harvard psychology department Olivia (Toks Olagundoye); Niles and Daphne’s possibly neurodivergent son David (Anders Keith); and Frasier’s bumbling old Oxford crony Alan (Nicholas Lyndhurst). As if checking off a list, the show provides a Daphne motherly type, a Roz-style sardonic co-worker, a Niles clone and a buffoonish British man who fulfills the physical comedy Eddie the dog once provided, though not quite as gracefully.

Grammer played Frasier for 20 years, but since then the character has lost its relevance. In the prosperous and optimistic 1990s, the uber-rich and uber-out-of-touch Crane brothers were a funny double clown act, a harmless and silly version of the rich and snooty that was easy to laugh with, and at. In a difficult and inflation-plagued 2023, Frasier and his expensive furniture and wine don't go down as easily. 

All about the new show:'Frasier' returns to TV: How Kelsey Grammer's reboot honors original with new cast and bar

The original "Frasier" was fast-paced, joke-dense and most of the time, lighthearted. It deeply developed characters that were easy to root for and love. Its dialogue was sharp and thoughtful, but its physical comedy could escalate into a full-on French farce. It fundamentally knew what it was, and that there was nothing else like it. The new series is slow, dull and completely lacking in humor. Its characters, even after five long, 30-minute episodes made available for preview, aren’t well-defined or likable. Even Frasier seems like a stranger. 

Everyone may know his name, but we’d be better off if he didn’t return to the bar.