“Kelsey Grammer, who plays the eponymous Frasier Crane, was always very clear what he wanted if we were going to tell another chapter in the life of Dr. Fraser Crane,” says Chris Harris one of the showrunners of the Frasier reboot. Harris, his co-showrunner Joe Cristalli, and Grammer ensure there was a good reason, beyond nostalgia, for an updated version of the highly popular TV show that ran for eleven successful seasons from 1993 – 2004.

The trio believed that Frasier’s relationship with his son Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), who’s the antithesis of Frasier in many respects, was a little-explored relationship in the original series that was worth focusing on in the reboot. Frasier 2.0 begins when Freddy moves in with him. This is an exciting parallel because the original series began when Frasier’s father Martin moves in with him.

Joe Cristalli also wanted the reboot to revisit his love of multi-cam sitcoms. “They have joke, joke, joke… some story movements, and then just a lot of fun… and a big, warm hug at the end,” summarizes Cristalli.

Team Harris/ Cristalli didn’t necessarily want audiences to compare their show to the original. “We’re in a unique position because I am a devout superfan of Frasier. I feel like I’m a good barometer of what’s going too far in the realm and what’s not. We never want to do any ham-fisted Easter eggs. The jokes we’re doing, are at least clever, and stand on their own. And then, if you also catch that there’s a second meaning to them, that’s a bonus,” continues Joe.

“I think we walk a very fine line of not leaning too hard because we want to stand on our wobbly two feet for a while. But, also knowing that if I wasn’t a part of this third-generation of Frasier, would I enjoy seeing the nostalgia that’s there? Is there enough for me as a superfan?” ponders Cristalli.

Joe Cristalli & Chris Harris

Frasier also needed a freshness to it, so they set it in a new town with some new characters. “Hopefully the feel of the show, the intelligence, and the style will feel reminiscent. That’s how we’re trying to balance the legacy that we have, but also bring something new to the table,” elaborates Chris.

“There’s never going to be another David Hyde Pierce (who plays Niles Crane), John Mahoney (Martin Crane), Jane Leeves (Daphne Moon) and Peri Gilpin (Roz Doyle). I don’t think it’s fair to compare any of the new people to fill those roles,” remarks Joe. “But Frasier still needs a foil to to counteract and counterbalance what he’s doing.”

Joe Cristalli describes the comedic style of Frasier as “elevated.” “There’s never a playing down to anybody. If a joke is too smart for somebody, catch them up without ever really slowing down.”

“The comedy is all about the creative way they tell stories and found these situations they’re in. Sometimes you didn’t even need a punchline to get a giant laugh. You don’t need some crazy word play or some low brow gag. It could just be a look.”

Who Is Frasier Crane?

Frasier has always been a lovable snob with an appreciation for the finest things in life. He’s pompous and elegant. “Frasier is desperate to be the best version of himself. He is always trying to have the best clothes on, and show his knowledge, his charisma with women, with academics, and with peers. He wants to be seen as the pinnacle of success,” says Joe. In the reboot, Frasier is comfortable in his skin. Impressing people is something he simple exudes rather than attempts. “He feels complete.”

“Frasier is still concerned with how he’s perceived,” says Chris. He feels that he always needs to be on the inside of something – someplace more exclusive. “If he knows that there’s another place that he might be better perceived, then he’s not going to be totally satisfied with where he is. This is his ambition and drive.”

He doesn’t like to feel vulnerable and exposed and his actions reflect that. There’s a self-awareness to his subtle snobbery.

Frasier and Freddy: A Father-Son Story

Frasier’s father Martin has passed in the new series and Frasier has relocated to Boston from Seattle and retired from radio psychiatry to take on an academic role at Harvard.

As Frasier is learning how to parent Freddy, he’s always living in the shadow of his father of being worried if he could ever live up to Martin’s high standards. Freddy shares some of his father’s anxieties with Martin.

“Frasier realizes that maybe he hasn’t been as much of a dad to his son as he thought he was. He realizes that he’s been negligent and he hasn’t been aware of some things,” declares Chris.

“Part of the first season is Frasier coming to terms with the fact he’s not Martin, but he can still forge his own relationship with his son. And maybe that’s all right? Maybe he and Freddy can find their own way to get along?”

Freddy Crane (Jack Cutmore-Scott), David (Anders Keith) & Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) Photo by Chris Haston/ Paramount+

“I think there’s something nice in the symmetry because Frasier was in his forties when he finally reconnected with his dad. They didn’t have a great relationship. So now, Freddy’s in his mid thirties, and Frasier is coming at it from kind of the same place, but just the opposite side of it where the death of his father has made him realize how important that relationship was in his life,” adds Joe.

The whole show is an homage to Martin Crane, Frasier’s dad

Breaking The Season

Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli spent five years writing and fine-tuning the pilot episode. “The structure and bones had to be right,” says Joe. “There’s jokes in that pilot that are older than most of my kids. The second episode is almost just as hard because you’re trying to make sure the characters are crystal clear in their definitions, their motivations, why they’re in scenes, and why they’re important to the show,” continues Joe.

“By episode five, it’s kind of like the old Frasier where you find a funny situation and blow the whole story around that one real funny thing. You only need one big thing to happen and then everyone’s reacting to it and you’re having jokes and stories come off it.”

“Frasier’s voice is very clear. Once we locked in on Freddy and Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), Olivia (Toks Olagundoye) Eve (Jess Salgueiro), David (Anders Keith), and baby John, it became easier to figure out what makes them funny around Frasier and what makes them funny without Frasier,” mentions Joe.

Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer) & Eve (Jess Salgueiro) Photo by Chris Haston/ Paramount+)

Chris considers the five year period to write the pilot “a training period of really getting a sense of what is a story in the world of Frasier? What are the things that we say? What are the things that we don’t do?” continues Chris. The reboot recruited some writers from the original show to ensure it was on point.

“We had to check ourselves and ask, ‘Is this story worthy of the name Frasier?’ Are these jokes in the right world? We talked a lot about the DNA of a typical Frasier episode,” elaborates Chris.

“The situations that they get into can be really broad as long as the characters are grounded and real, their reactions and the dialogue is still clever, and we’re still feeling for the characters and their relationships.”

“The situations that they’re in are funny, but they’re really there to bring out what they say about these characters? And that’s something we worked really hard on to make sure that even if we had a big funny set piece, there was still a clear emotional situation going on behind it and something for two characters to work out as they went through it,” continues Chris.

The Pilot Episode

“Pilots are so difficult because you have to establish an entire world, characters, dynamics, relationships and the tone. Meanwhile, everyone’s figuring it out as you go along,” explains Chris. “One of the things, especially about TV comedy, is you can have a vision of a character and you can be dead certain that you know who this character is. But as soon as you cast that role, the actor owns that character. The actor is the one who’s going to embody that character. And there are always going to be adjustments that you make if you’re going to get the most out of that character.”

Frasier was a bit trickier to add latitude to because he’s so distinct and iconic. “Frasier Crane is the center of our show, a character that everyone already knows and loves and is rooting for. We had some disadvantages in that we had a lot of backstory that we needed to get through. We needed to at least reference where everyone else is in their lives, even if they’re not in the show. We needed to talk about his time in Seattle and Chicago.”

“We also needed to introduce all of our main characters and then have a second half of the episode that felt like Frasier, so that everyone could feel good about this new iteration.”

We had three pilots in our season

“We talked about our ten episode season as almost having three pilots. We had the actual pilot in which Frasier comes to town, another episode that focused on Frasier’s relationship with Freddy because we didn’t see a lot of that in the first episode, and we also had one about Martin and how he impacted both of them.”

“We wanted to really focus on Frasier and Freddy in the second episode. In the third episode, we knew that we needed to really dive into Frasier’s workplace, the university center,” continues Harris. Then the show could properly continue.

“You can you can go big in Frasier as long as the setup feels elegant natural, real and big in terms of the big set piece, and also in terms of puns,” says Harris. “There’s a style in Frasier with both the farce and plays on words where it’s it’s almost so high it comes down to being low again, or maybe, it’s so low that it ends up being high again.”

If the jokes became too over the top, the writers would ask if it had truly been earned.