The “risky reboot” of “Frasier” has returned to Paramount+ for a second season, and while “Craniacs” may yearn for the original, the “charming reboot delivers a winning mix of sophisticated humor and primitive clowning,” Michael Hogan told the Telegraph.
In the first season, Dr. Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) moved from Seattle to Boston to be closer to his estranged son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott). The latest episode follows the retired psychiatrist as he reconnects with his “hard-drinking best buddy,” Professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), and continues to settle into his new life.
Like the original, the script is “enjoyably erudite”; the dialogue is “peppered” with references to Robert Burns and John Dryden. At their best, the new episodes are a “beautifully choreographed farce” performed with glee by an almost entirely new cast and Grammer, who continues to be “a first-rate actor.”
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“A shadow of the past”
But Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and his wife Daphne (Jane Leeves) were “sorely missed,” Shawn van Horn said in Collider. Roz (Peri Gilpin) is back for the season and is a “joy to see,” but it feels like she’s just a “side character in a subplot.” The reboot “could have saved itself” with a stellar cast and script; instead, viewers got a “paper-thin series that was a shadow of the past.”
Comparing the reboot’s cast to the original “Seattle crew” is “unfair,” Ana Dumaroag told Screen Rant. And it’s not that the new show “lacks” standout characters: Nicholas Lyndhurst is “brilliant” as Frasier’s best friend and the duo is an “instant hit.”
There is also “palpable excitement” about the return of Bill “Bulldog” Briscoe (Dan Butler) and Bebe Glazer (Frasier’s agent, played by Harriet Sansom Harris), and a “lot” of other cameos are planned for season two, from Amy Sedaris to Patricia Heaton.
“Rarely daring”
It’s certainly not the worst TV series, Van Horn said in Collider. But that’s “not great praise” considering that the original “Frasier” was “one of the best shows of all time.” The main problem is that the remake “suffers” when Grammer isn’t in the picture.
While there is a “hilarious” episode featuring Bebe, much of the latest series is “more straightforward and low-key comedy” that you can “leave on in the background while you scroll through your phone.” The reboot is “playing it safe,” and if season three can’t deliver anything more, “it’s time to officially end the show.”
Even at its best, LaToya Ferguson told the AV Club, the revival “doesn’t reach the heights you’d expect”: “When it’s good, it’s mostly just OK. When it’s bad, it’s disappointing to even call it ‘Frasier.'”
“Loyal, helpful and occasionally humorous,” if “the middle way” is the goal, the authors are on the right track, added William Mata in the London Evening Standard. “But it is rarely daring.”
Despite the “bumpy beginning,” Hogan wrote in the Telegraph, the new production actually develops into “a Wodehousian comedy of manners – and, if we may say so, even a worthy successor” to the original.
