FATHER TIME (FRASIER - REBOOT, SEASON ONE)

It's been one of the most eagerly anticipated shows of 2023.

It's also been one of the year's most feared shows.

'Frasier' - The Reboot was always going to have huge expectations to live up to.

For 11 seasons, the original show was a massive ratings draw on NBC in the US and on other TV stations around the world.

Adored by critics as much as it was by audiences, the 'Cheers' spin-off built up a huge fanbase with a combination of smart writing and brilliant comedy acting.

It netted an impressive haul of 37 Primetime Emmy awards.

Even after the final episode aired in May 2004, the Seattle-based sitcom has remained a constant presence on our TV screens, with Channel 4 in the UK airing it every morning.

So when it was announced in 2021 that Kelsey Grammer was reviving the sitcom, there was considerable joy in some quarters and trepidation in others.

Many wondered how would Paramount+ reboot a beloved show 19 years later, in an era where the studio based sitcom has been on the wane?

As word filtered out that the new version would not be set in Chicago, where the psychiatrist headed to in the last show in pursuit of romance with Laura Kinney's Charlotte, most fans shrugged.

When it was announced, however, that Frasier would be returning to Boston - the city of the show that introduced him 'Cheers' - people went: okay.

News that David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves would not be reprising their roles as Niles Crane and Daphne Moon raised some eyebrows but it kind of made sense if Frasier was in a different city.

John Mahoney's passing in 2018 meant the reboot would also have to find a way of addressing the absence of his beloved character, Frasier's dad Marty.

After all the fretting, the new version of 'Frasier' finally landed in October for a ten episode run.

Unfortunately, it's a thundering disappointment.

The 2023 version begins with Grammer's psychiatrist returning to Boston with Niles and Daphne's son, Anders Keith's David following the funeral of Marty.

We learn that Frasier has broken up with Charlotte and has been invited to deliver a guest lecture in Harvard where David is studying psychology.

Frasier links up at Harvard with an old chum, Nicholas Lyndhurst's Professor Alan Cornwall.

More importantly, his return to Boston provides an opportunity to reconnect with his son, Jack Cutmore-Scott's Frederick who we learn dropped out of Harvard to become a firefighter.

Freddy is sharing an apartment with Jess Salguiero's bartender and single mom Eve who Frasier initially assumes is his son's girlfriend.

It turns out that Eve's former boyfriend was a firefighter who was a close friend of Freddy's who lost his life.

With Eve left with a baby to raise, Freddy is just being supportive.

He has another bigger baby, though, to contend with.

Frasier goes to great lengths to reconnect with his estranged son.

However his efforts to get together are initially rebuffed.

When Alan's boss, Toks Olagundoye's Professor Olivia Finch tries to recruit Frasier to the Harvard faculty, opportunity knocks for him to relocate to Boston and mend his strained relationship with his son.

Over the course of ten episodes, Frasier and Freddy wind up living together after the psychiatrist buys his apartment block and Eve tells her friend that she finds some of his habits as a roommate really irritating.

Coming off the back of the success of a nationally syndicated 'Dr Phil' type TV show, Frasier's first academic lectures go disastrously because they are full of starstruck students.

Frasier's unease over Freddy's choice of career comes to a head while visiting the firehouse at Eve's behest.

There are cackhanded attempts to become a fast tracked Professor and join an elite club in Harvard known as the Founders Club.

He's reunited with Lilith at Freddy's birthday and their relationship remains as tempestuous as ever.

An episode is built around blind dates organised for both Freddy and Frasier by Eve. In true Crane, fashion they don't go well.

David, who is one of Frasier's students, is horrified to receive a B grade from his uncle on a term paper and becomes obsessed with putting it right.

Freddy becomes irritated by his dad's tendency to treat him like a child and pushes him to be given some responsibility around their home.

In the concluding episode, a Christmas party thrown by Frasier in their apartment goes disastrously.

Most of these plotlines have comic potential.

However the quality of the scriptwriting just isn't up to scratch.

Developed by Joe Cristalli and Chris Harris, it's as if 'Frasier' has been taken over by the writers behind 'Save By The Bell'.

This version of 'Frasier' is packed full of lame jokes, smart ass characters and odd narrative decisions.

The sharpness of the original is missing and try as he might, watching Grammer reprise the role is actually quite distressing.

While he comfortably steps back into his best loved character's shoes, it's as if he has wandered into a different sitcom - an unfunny one like the show being parodied on 'Kevin Can F**k Himself'.

It's also like watching a former world boxing champion coming out of retirement and fighting well past his or her prime.

It doesn't help that Cutmore-Scott's Freddy comes across as unbearingly smug or that Anders Keith's David is simply a hamfisted attempt to recreate the spirit of Niles.

Toks Olagundoye's senior academic is a little too starstruck by Frasier at the start of the run to convince and her attempts to recruit him to the psychology department feels a bit forced.

The bar, Mahoney's where Eve works and where Freddy and his fellow firefighters and Alan, Olivia and Frasier hang out seems devoid of atmosphere.

Its presence only underscores the weirdness of there being little mention of 'Cheers' now that Frasier is back in Boston or any of the characters from that show, bar Bebe Neuwirth's Lilith.

When she does turns up, it's unfortunately for a half arsed episode in which she and her ex-husband try to upstage each other by competing for Freddy's affection at a birthday celebration in a bowling alley.

Peri Gilpin's Roz Doyle makes a welcome appearance towards the end of the final episode - visiting Frasier from Seattle and reminding us exactly what we are missing.

Nicholas Lyndhurst manages to shake off memories of Rodney Trotter in the wonderful hit BBC sitcom 'Only Fools and Horses' with a spirited performance as Alan - although jokes about his character's constant boozing quickly grow tiresome.

It doesn't take long for audiences to figure out what's wrong with the 'Frasier' reboot - what it's missing.

In the original, David Hyde Pierce's Niles gave Frasier a worthy opponent to compete for the affections of their dad and also the embrace of Seattle society.

Both brothers' snobbery and ambition fuelled huge parts of the show which thrived on the high camp dynamic between Grammer and Hyde Pierce.

It also misses the offbeat observations of Leeves' Daphne and the groundedness of Gilpin and Mahoney.

Marty Crane, in particular, had the ability to puncture his sons' pomposity.

Mahoney was also very skilled at drawing out blue collar and paternal vulnerability exactly.when the show required it.

Just as Keith struggles to recreate the dynamics of Hyde-Pierce, Cutmore Smith's attempts to tap into the blue collar vibes of Mahoney just don't cut it.

Unfortunately he just looks like a posh boy trying to slum it.

None of this ripping into the 'Frasier' reboot gives me any joy as a critic.

As a fan of the original and its predecessor 'Cheers,' I really wanted it to work.

However by the time the new series ends, you can't help but feel Grammer and everyone involved would be best served by either going back to the drawing board, sending Frasier to a new city or scrapping the venture altogether.

Whatever course of action Paramount+ chooses, at least we still have 11 seasons of one of the greatest sitcoms to still fall back on and enjoy.

Unless they radically improve the scripts, we may just have to pretend this reboot didn't happen.

(The reboot of 'Frasier' was made available for streaming on Paramount+ in the UK and Ireland from October 13-December 8, 2023)

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FATHER TIME (FRASIER - REBOOT, SEASON ONE)

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