The “risky reboot” of “Frasier” has returned to Paramount+ for a second season and while “Craniacs” might long for the original, the “charming revival delivers a hit blend of highbrow humour and lowbrow buffoonery”, said Michael Hogan in The Telegraph.
Season one saw Dr Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) move to Boston from Seattle to be closer to his estranged son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott). The latest instalment follows the retired psychiatrist as he reconnects with his “boozy best buddy” Professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and continues to settle into his new life.
Like the original, the script is “enjoyably erudite”; dialogue is “peppered” with references to Robert Burns and John Dryden. At their best, the new episodes are a “beautifully choreographed farce”, gleefully performed by an almost entirely new cast, and Grammer, who remains “a class act”.
‘A shadow of the past’
But Frasier’s brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) and his wife Daphne (Jane Leeves) were “badly missed”, said Shawn van Horn in Collider. Roz (Peri Gilpin) is back for the season and it’s a “joy to see her”, but it feels as if she’s a mere “sidekick in a subplot”. The reboot “could have saved itself” with an excellent cast and script; instead viewers got a “paper-thin series that was a shadow of the past”.
Comparing the reboot’s cast with the original “Seattle crew” is “unfair”, said Ana Dumaroag in Screen Rant. And it’s not as if the new show is “devoid” of standout characters: Nicholas Lyndhurst is “brilliant” as Frasier’s best friend, and the duo are an “immediate hit”.
There’s also “palpable excitement” about the return of Bill “Bulldog” Briscoe (Dan Butler), and Bebe Glazer (Frasier’s agent, played by Harriet Sansom Harris), and there’s a “slew” of other cameos slated for the second season from Amy Sedaris to Patricia Heaton.
‘Rarely daring’
It certainly isn’t the worst show on TV, said Van Horn in Collider. However, that “isn’t high praise” when the original “Frasier” was “one of the greatest shows ever made”. The main problem is that the reboot “suffers” whenever Grammer is off-screen.
While there is a “hilarious” episode starring Bebe, much of the latest series is “rather simple and subdued comedy” that you might “put on in the background while you scroll on your phone”. The reboot is “playing it extremely safe”, and if season three can’t offer anything more, “it’s time for the show to officially sign off”.
Even at its best, said LaToya Ferguson in AV Club, the revival “doesn’t hit the heights one would expect”: “when it’s good it’s mostly just really fine. When it’s bad, it feels disappointing to even call it ‘Frasier'”.
“Loyal, serviceable and occasionally humorous”, if “middle of the road” is the goal, then the writers are on track, added William Mata in the London Evening Standard. “But it’s rarely daring.”
Despite the “stuttering start”, said Hogan in The Telegraph, the revival is actually “blossoming into a Wodehousian comedy of manners – and even, dare we say it, a worthy successor” to the original.