Paramount+’s Beloved 33-Year-Old Sitcom Is Still the Gold Standard for the Genre

You just can’t beat how great sitcoms were in the 1990s. Shows like Seinfeld and Friends took over pop culture and are still beloved by new generations today. As iconic as they were, neither was able to accomplish what the most honored sitcom of all-time did. When Frasier debuted on NBC in 1993, Kelsey Grammer had the challenge of stepping out of the shadow of Cheers. Not only did Frasier not fail, but it’s arguably better than Cheers and is in the running for the greatest comedy series ever made. The Emmys agreed by awarding Frasier a record-setting 37 wins for a sitcom. Frasier came back in a mediocre reboot a few years ago, but nothing beats the original. Discover it for the first time or all over again on Paramount+.

‘Frasier’ Found a Way To Set Itself Apart From ‘Cheers’

So many sitcom spinoffs fail simply because there is no way to recreate what worked before in a different scenario. Take Joey, for example. Matt LeBlanc is hilarious in Friends, but without the rest of the cast, combined with clunky writing and uninteresting new characters, Joey crashed and burned. The same fate could have easily befallen Frasier. After all, Frasier Crane wasn’t one of the top people on Cheers. He was a supporting character, which both hurt and helped him. Not being the focus like a Ted Danson meant a spinoff could experiment and try something outside the box. That’s what Frasier did.

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It left Boston behind and got as far away as possible by going to Seattle. It did this not with a premise which sought to veer away from the past with no plausible reason to do so. In Frasier, Dr. Crane ends up in the northwest because he has divorced his wife, Lilith (Bebe Neuwirth), so, in an attempt to start over, he moves back to his hometown and gets a new job as a radio psychiatrist. Frasier immediately felt real rather than a forced gimmick with no path. Straight away, we’re put by Frasier’s side as he gets acquainted with a new yet familiar environment. His career choice allows for hilarious phone calls with patients, with so many episodes taking the audience inside the booth, where Frasier talks to a whole host of people, with voice characters often played by other film and TV stars. Add in his new producer, the very honest, take no crap from anyone Roz Doyle (Peri Gilpin), and Frasier has someone to counter his flaws.

Frasier Crane is not someone we might initially like if we met in real life. He’s an elitist who looks down on others, a man who thinks his refined taste in expensive things is what determines worth. That is even part of his radio show, where he often gets annoyed with his callers. Frasier works by taking this rich guy who only wants to be left alone and forcing him out of his bubble. That’s where the real heart of the series, the supporting cast, comes in.

‘Frasier’s Stellar Supporting Cast Took the Pressure Off Kelsey Grammer

No sitcom can work by giving everything to its main star. Seinfeld and Everybody Loves Raymond are both named after their leads, Jerry Seinfeld and Ray Romano, but fans would argue that they’re not even the best part of their shows. It’s their friends and family characters who add so much and make the shows feel three-dimensional. It’s a risky adventure with a spin-off. This kind of series is already wanting to take a character out of the setting we know them from. Now we have to meet all new people too?!

Frasier excels not despite this but because of it. When the series first begins, the audience is introduced to Martin Crane (John Mahoney), Frasier’s father, and a man the exact opposite of his son. He’s a working-class man, a retired cop who just wants to sit in his beat-up recliner, have a beer, and watch the ball game with his dog. When Frasier has to take him in, their conflicts become a source of drama and laughs, and it forces Frasier Crane to grow and not be such a pompous jerk. He must give and sacrifice, and that includes letting Martin’s new live-in caretaker, the odd yet lovable Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves), move in. Now Frasier’s life is filled with challenging storylines at work and at home.

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There is no escape from the conflict outside of those places either, because the greatest character of all in Frasier is not the titular one. It’s Frasier’s brother, Niles (David Hyde Pierce), who takes the worst of Frasier’s qualities and turns them up to eleven. He’s a psychiatrist as well, a man who can fix everyone else but can’t fix his own issues. He’s high-strung, and the trouble he gets himself in is the source of the biggest laughs. He could be intolerable in real life. Who wants to be around anyone who thinks they’re better than you? However, instead of being an annoyance, Niles is the most compelling of all because the viewer gets to watch him fall in love with Daphne. He’s in a bad marriage with a woman he jokes about through the best one-liners, but it’s Daphne, a woman he would have previously seen as beneath him because of her job, who gets Niles to open up while still leaving him weird enough to keep the humor intact.

Put all of these elements together, and the ingredients are there for a sitcom that takes the usual sitcom tropes and improves on them. Frasier lasted for 11 seasons and barely lost a step because everything was always evolving. It ended its run as a history maker and one of the last truly perfect sitcoms.