Frasier is not the 90s series that has aged the best. Nor the worst. One reaches that conclusion after seeing his return to the screens. Almost two decades after the original Frasier ended, the psychiatrist played by Kelsey Grammer returns. But between 2004 and 2023 a lot has happened. Things that the new Frasier seems to ignore.
Throughout its 11 seasons, its predecessor won 37 Emmys. The most important American television awards chose it as best comedy series from 1994 to 1998. During that period, Kelsey Grammer and John Lithgow (star of Things from Martians) dominated the categories of best comedy actor. The same thing happened to David Hyde Pierce with (or against) Seinfeld’s Michael Richards. In the world of American sitcoms, the 90s were, indeed, a decade of great stability. Frasier and Seinfeld, who departed from the jack, knight and king of previous series, were clearly playing in another league. In the case of Frasier, this distance from the previous was much more evident, since it was a spin-off of the legendary Cheers, one of the comedies that Frasier and Seinfeld left behind.
Paradoxically (or not) it is now the new Frasier, available in Spain on SkyShowtime, which is outdated. Even more than the original -and, of course, more than Seinfeld, which is eternal-. Everything about the 2023 project is innocently vintage. What in the 90s separated Frasier from all the others (its cynicism, its structure…) is now more than surpassed. Not to mention the visual aspect, the canned laughter or the worn-out charm of a protagonist who at the time was everything. Not anymore.
When, shortly after the closure of Frasier, the television industry experienced the revolution in which we are still experiencing (see: Netflix, Megaupload, bubble, too many series, help), Kelsey Grammer headed one of the many projects in the wake of Breaking Bad, Mad Men or Dexter. With Boss, a solemn and cruel political drama, Grammer regained his TV star status. Although it leaked at the time, today Boss is a healthily forgotten fiction. The Emmys passed on it, but the Golden Globes, so prone to losing roles to celebrities, couldn’t resist: Boss was nominated for best drama and Grammer was nominated for best actor. Despite the recent and radical changes in the organization of these awards (which have been acquired by a private company), it cannot be ruled out that the new Frasier will achieve something similar in the next edition.
Where it won’t be able to sneak in is on my list of the hundred best series of the year, that’s clear to me. If we could somehow go back in time and put the new Frasier on the 2010 television schedule, I would have an option. Back then Grammer’s original comedy was still a close memory and appeals to nostalgia weren’t viewed with as much suspicion as they are now. I could have sneaked in. We might even have liked it. What’s more: it might have interested us. Not in 2023.