Looks like the Doctor is out at Paramount+
The streaming service confirmed this week that the reboot of the sitcom Frasier will not move forward there into a third season.
Launched in October 2023, two 10-episode seasons were streamed. The reboot saw Kelsey Grammer, 69, return as Dr. Frasier Crane, this time working as a Harvard professor in Boston — site of the character’s old pub days as a regular on Cheers.
According to Programming Insider Marc Berman, writing in Forbes, Grammer racked up 484 episodes as the fussy media shrink, including a consecutive 20-year stretch on Cheers and the original Frasier.
While TV legend Jim Burrows did direct several episodes, the new series did not have any participation from any of the original Frasier writers. One OG Cheers and Frasier scribe, Emmy winner Ken Levine, was my guest on not one but two episodes of brioux.tv: the podcast and criticized the decision to go with an all-new writer’s room.
I can understand Levine’s point. Have somebody in the new writer’s room who worked on two of the funniest TV sitcoms of all time and knew Dr. Crane backwards and forwards. The new show had moments of snappiness, but could not match the original — always a very high bar.
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The main guy, Grammer as Frasier, was up for it. He slipped effortlessly back into Dr. Crane’s designer duds.
Transferring Crane to Harvard, however, now seems like a limiting move. The series we missed and I would rather have seen was never shot — Frasier’s move from radio to a daytime TV shrink series a la Doctor Phil. Opportunity missed.
The other roadblock — the sitcom format. This is a genre that has had more funerals than a planning session for a Toronto Maple Leafs Stanley Cup parade. Younger viewers in particular are likely more sitcom resistant than most older viewers who were weened on Cheers, Frasier and Friends. My guess (guesses being all we have when it comes to streaming services who are famously shy when it comes to data sharing) is that Paramount+ just wasn’t getting the younger eyeballs on their reboot of this classic series.
Of the new cast members, Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier’s grown son Freddy — now a Boston fireman — had promise. His storyline flipped the script from when Frasier was the one exasperated by his dad on the duct-taped recliner (brilliantly played in the original by John Mahoney). This time Frasier doesn’t want his son’s gross sneakers and sports memorabilia near his Steinway or custom-made couch. It is the same energy in reverse, with the designer shoe now on the other foot.
The other new cast member, Canadian Jess Salgueiro as Eve (also a brioux.tv podcast guest), brought energy and timing to her role. The new mom idea, however, was a klunker with her kid AWOL most of the time as Jess was shoehorned into scenes as a waitress at the local pub. Still, she was winning here and will resurface I’m sure.
New Frasier tried to bring back the old cast as recurring players. Peri Gilpin, who reprised her role as Roz Doyle, was upgraded from guest star in season one to recurring in season two. Frasier even returned to Seattle in one episode, with cameos from original cast members Dan Butler (Bulldog) and Edward Hibbert (Gil Chesterton). Also guest-starring was Bebe Neuwirth, reprising the role of Frasier’s ex-wife Lilith, who also first appeared on Cheers.
Another sitcom veteran, Everybody Loves Raymond‘s Patricia Heaton, also joined the cast as Holly, a new love interest for Frasier.
At this point, however, it started to feel like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. All this retro re-casting just accentuated the biggest problem with this reboot: it did not include Frasier’s even fussier brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce).
His absence hung over the series like expensive cheese gone bad. (My apologies. Niles and Frasier would know exactly what kind of cheese, as would Frasier’s original writers.) They tried to sneak him back in through the character of Niles’ and Daphne’s quirky son David (Anders Keith), a chip off the old germophobic block. They even read some of Nile’s notes on Frasier’s new book. It didn’t help that those lines were some of the funniest moments on the reboot; it just made you miss that character more.
Hyde Pierce’s decision not to revisit the character, for whatever reason, was always going to be a problem. Bad enough that Mahoney had passed on. Hype Pierce simply passed. What was left was Laurel without Hardy, no matter how many new Jimmy Finlayson’s and Mae Busch’s could be rounded up.
There is talk that the studio, Paramount, is still hopeful of shopping the series to another platform. Lock Hyde Pierce into any such deal and I’m always going to watch.
