Frasier It 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 end of the Frasier original, 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 Martian things) dominated the best comedy actor categories. The same thing happened to David Hyde Pierce with (or against) Michael Richards of Seinfeld. In the world of sitcoms Americans, the 90s were, indeed, a decade of great stability. Frasier y Seinfeld, who departed from the jack, knight and king of previous series, clearly played in another league. In the case of Frasier That distance from the previous was much more evident, since it was a spin-off of the legendary Cheersone of the comedies that Frasier y Seinfeld They left old ones.
Paradoxically (or not) it is now the new one Frasier, available in Spain on SkyShowtime, which is out of date. Even more than the original – and, of course, more than Seinfeldwhich is eternal. Everything in the 2023 project is innocently vintage. What in the 90s separated Frasier of 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 closing of Frasierthe television industry experienced the revolution we are still in (see: Netflix, Megaupload, bubble, too many series, help), Kelsey Grammer headed one of many projects in the wake of Breaking Bad, Mad Men o Dexter. Con Bossand solemn and cruel political drama, Grammer regained his TV star status. Although at the time he sneakedhoy Boss It is a healthy forgotten fiction. The Emmys passed on her, but the Golden Globes, so prone to losing their roles in front of celebrities, couldn’t resist: Boss It 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 is not ruled out that the new one Frasier get something similar in the next edition.
Where It won’t make it into my list of the hundred best series of the year, that’s clear to me. If we could somehow go back in time and insert the new Frasier on the television grid in 2010, I would have some option. So Grammer’s original comedy It was still a close memory. and appeals to nostalgia were not viewed with as much suspicion as they are now. She could have snuck in. We might even have liked her. What’s more: it might have interested us. Not in 2023.