by What’s with all the screen veterans and the recent comedy zeitgesty? February blessed us with the brilliant final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, a vehicle for legendary contrarian Larry David (age 77). August delivered a glorious fourth outing for Only Murders in the Building, starring septuagenarian friends Steve Martin (79) and Martin Short (74). Last October, the much-anticipated Frasier revival debuted last October, a sequel to the era-defining ’90s sitcom starring now 69-year-old Kelsey Grammer.
All three shows are somewhat nostalgic: the last episode of Curb archly riffed on the controversial 1998 Seinfeld finale (co-created by David), and the old-school comedic chops of Martin and Short means Only Murders inevitably stir memories. of farces past. But both shows feel distinctly modern: Only Murders is a genre-bending thriller about true-crime podcasters who know exactly how to tap into weird meme-y humor, while Curb pioneered a meta-naturalism that follows contemporary comedy on attention.
That’s not what you could ever say about Frasier 2.0, which resurrected not only its titular protagonist but also the dated studio sitcom genre. In the 20 years since the original came to an end, the shows with the sound of audience laughter have largely died down – as has the temperature and pace of the art form. It’s disconcerting to see such old-fashioned TV mechanics play out today in the new Frasier, which now returns for a second season. Indeed, it is enough to give you time vertigo: so this like if they had smartphones in the 90s!
Oddly enough, however, the Frasier revival came out fine. Weak praise, but praise nonetheless. This is despite the show’s obvious flaws: a script that buckles under the weight of exposition – especially in the first season, with our famous psychiatrist moving to Boston to be near his estranged son, Freddy, a firefighter, getting a job at the university . in the process. Then there is the strange phenomenon of punchlines that emerge before the cast has even finished the arrangements; the humor is basic and formulaic by any standards.
So how and why does it work? The flawless cast, mainly. Grammer is clearly very good at being Frasier Crane, still an inveterate snob, and still looking for love. It is another surprise that his Harvard colleague Alan Cornwall has so convincingly avoided working with Rodders himself, Nicholas Lyndhurst (a close friend of Grammer’s). Alan is both calm and subdued and Disaffected and disobedient: Lyndhurst pulls off this benevolent but complex persona, while Toks Olagundoye works wonders as the pair’s but very imperious leader, Olivia. As Freddy and his friend Eve, Jack Cutmore-Scott and Jess Salgueiro provide enough cool to offset the cringe (Anders Keith is also great as David, the nephew of Frasier’s most gifted student). The guests are also top-notch: Amy Sedaris as a second-season psychotic therapist and Rachel Bloom apparently from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as a Crane-clone, and original cast members Peri Gilpin (Roz Doyle) and Harriet Sansom Harris (Bebe Glazer) too. to return
The other, less inspiring reason that the new Frasier succeeds is that comedy doesn’t have to be good – or smart, or fresh – to be funny. When comparing this awkwardly ersatz show to the original, you might notice that it’s a little less stilted, less contrived and less witty – but it will probably make you laugh just as much. It turns out that even with a relatively low hit rate, relentless wit and unoriginal slapstick still guarantee laughs (I don’t want to get into David’s predictably disastrous attempts to unpack a precious leg of funny jamón, but I do).
In keeping with studio sitcom tradition, the second season doesn’t really push the action: each episode sports a superficial storyline (Frasier writes a memoir; Frasier plays cupid; Frasier babysits) with slightly weightier undertones. Frasier still exists primarily as a cog in an exaggerated high-brow/low-brow dynamic, formerly with his father and more recently with his son, which means the old ground is back. The millennial- boomer tension might have been more interesting. In one of the new episodes, Roz convinces single mother Eve to have a night out, prompting her to join the non-stop drag spree of the late 20th century urban sitcom. Eve is turned off, correctly recognizing that Roz is projecting her own (disgusted) desires onto her.
There are also plenty of jokes about Frasier’s enormous wealth, but the generational divide that underlies them is never explored. As Grammer’s peers have proven, this revival could be more than a fairly satisfying exercise in ’90s cosplay.
• Frasier is now on Paramount+.
