I’m still not 100% sure if there are just too many outlets for television programming content or if Hollywood has truly run out of original ideas, but another beloved sitcom may be returning to the airwaves.
According to a Deadline report, Kelsey Grammer is in the “very, very early” stages of bringing back his award-winning sitcom Frasier. The Cheers spinoff ran on NBC for 11 seasons, from 1993 to 2004, picking up 37 Emmys along the way. Kelsey starred as the psychiatrist-turned-radio host, co-starring with David Hyde Pierce who played Niles Crane, Frasier’s younger brother; Jane Leeves as Daphne Moon, Frasier’s housekeeper and Niles’ love interest, and Peri Gilpin as Roz Doyle, Frasier’s radio show producer. The late John Mahoney played Frasier’s Dad, Martin. Also no longer with us, Moose, the adorable Jack Russell terrier who played Martin’s loyal dog, Eddie. RIP.
The show’s reboot may find Frasier relocating from Seattle, where the original series was set. During the series finale, the character followed his girlfriend, played by Laura Linney, to Chicago. Reportedly, Kelsey is hearing pitches for the proposed reboot from writers, but the whole project is still in an “exploratory stage” and neither Kelsey, nor CBS Studios, who would be producing the show, have yet to release an official statement.
News of this reboot is sort of a surprise, since Kelsey has previously expressed that he had little interest in bringing his character back to television. Back in December of 2016, he told Fox News that “I’m very happy with what I’m doing now. I look back at the past as a very fond place and I’d like to keep it that way.”
In the meantime, the 63-year-old actor is keeping busy. He is starring in the upcoming Fox legal drama Proven Innocent, which is set to premiere mid-season of next year. He’s also currently shooting the indie movie The Space Between, where he plays an aging, forgotten rock star. And, as I was writing this, I got an email from Netflix letting me know that his movie Like Father with Kristen Bell and Seth Rogen debuts on the streaming service on August 3rd.
So, do we really need a Frasier reboot? So much of the original series dealt with the relationship between Frasier, Niles and Martin. I’d definitely miss John Mahoney. But, I will admit that I’d like to catch up with these characters (if they’re all going to be part of the reboot). The curiosity factor alone would get me to tune in and check it out.
Photos: WENN and Getty
Enough with the reboots already! I can’t stand Kelsey grammar…he seems like such a tool
Yes and yes. And that first photo of orange-tan Kelsey…scared me a bit. Gross.
My son and I were just reminiscing about episodes of Lost yesterday and speculated that someone is bound to reboot that one of these days, too. So depressing.
There has been rumours of a lost reboot actually :/
Kitty, Holy hell, just as we feared. Are there no new ideas in HW??
I am SO sick of reboots! BUT… I have to admit, I go to sleep every night watching Frasier reruns on Hallmark lol. I think it was one of the best written/acted shows ever. I would love to see where everyone is now, and yes, the death of a parent is something the characters would have to face, but unless they can do it with the ALL of the rest of the cast, I don’t think it’d work. I don’t think anyone would tune in to just see Frasier in another city.
I wouldn’t mind if they did a one-off tv movie and be done.
I don’t know if I can watch it without John Mahoney…he provided such a great contrast to his two stuffy sons on there, he was my favorite.
No Martin, no Eddie..I dunno..
Definitely not.
Hopefully Niles(David Hyde Pierce!!)will be in this reboot. If not, then forget it.
I have mixed feelings about this. I would love to see Niles and Daphne and Roz again but the show was so perfect the way it was. I can see a reboot of Cheers *possibly* working…?
BESSENT NOT he’s the devil ✌🏼
Initially, I say no because of John Mahoney’s passing, but now I’m kinda game, especially if Niles and Daphne’s son David can fill in the space that Martin filled, I.e. down to earth, with a splash of the Moon boys crazy in there. Mind you, David will still be a child/ near teen but Freddie brought the funny and he was a kid.
Frasier was such a brilliantly done comedy, i’d like to at least give it another shot. Just in case they can recreate the magic again. Even if it’s for only one season.
OMG I forgot about “the Moon boys”!! Daphne’s brothers were FANTASTIC (and the casting of them inspired!!). Now that *could* be a great show. I also like the idea of incorporating Daphne and Nile’s son to be like Martin, driving Niles crazy! And paired with Freddy… YEAH!
Mmmm…the Moon boys… One thing always irritated me. The family was from Manchester, but Simon Moon (Anthony La Paglia) had a Cockney accent. Tsk. It would be so different without Martin and Eddie. I’d still like a reboot, though!
I was going to say ‘NOOOOO!!!!’ Absolutely not, not without Martin. Unless… UNLESS Frederick turned out to be Martin’s second coming, complete with a jack russell pup. I would adore watching Lillith trying to handle being mother to Marty 2.0. They could whittle an entire episode out of him getting a shitty recliner on craigslist.
That being said, hasn’t every reboot thus far been a train wreck? The Will and Grace reboot was tragic.
Unfortunately he’s become such an insufferable douche I wouldn’t watch it anymore. It’s a shame because I loved that those characters.
Agreed. He’s been a tool for years now, an he treated Camille (who is a piece of workherself, for sure) atrociously. It has definitely affected how I feel about Frasier. It’s also weird for me because his production company was behind Girlfriends, one of my favorite sitcoms ever.
He’s a big ole Republican, so no thanks.
And I am sure everyone involved with it will go on about how creative they are. *sips water slowly*
He seems like an elitist asshat from articles I’ve read here and other places. Hated the show anyway and don’t wanna support this man who was openly verbally abusive to his then wife Camille
No more reboots! I’d rather watch reruns of original episodes of tv shows rather than reboots. Maybe it’s time to come up with fresh ideas for new sitcoms instead of reality TV or reboots
Will Frasier be a Trump supporter?
Oh God! I wish i could unsee this question……Frasier is/was my favourite show ever, but i had never looked beyond the characters to the actors lives…..
If it turned out he was a Trump supporter, that would completely destroy the series for me forever. Shit…..now i’ll never stop wondering….
“Kelsey Grammer voted for Donald Trump in the elections last November , and said he was so far impressed with how Trump’s stint in the White House was going.
‘I think he’s doing what he said he was going to do’, Grammer told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs host Kirsty Young on Sunday .”
He is. He’s always been a Republican AFAIK.
No wonder so many people on here don’t like him. He must be a genuine a-hole.
I don’t like Kelsey but I’ll watch the reboot. It’s just gonna suck and tarnish my memory of the show, if the reboot sucks.
if he’s looking for a money grab like that I would be VERY worried if I were his wife. He’s such a vile person in my eyes that I will not watch a reboot. period.
Well in addition to David Hyde Pierce…. if Jane Leeves, Peri Gilpin and Wenie Malick (ADORE those women!) don’t come back and there aren’t certain cameos I don’t know. I’m here for it but cautious.
Wendie youre not a wenie…. far from it… sorry! LOL
(Maybe have Huey Lewis together with Wendie in this reboot??)
No John Mahoney, no Moose, no watch.
No reboot. Frasier is online, can watch the original in reruns. Very difficult to recapture the lightning in a bottle of the original. The writers would need to be top shelf just to launch it past one episode I think. It would get Kelsey a large paycheck tho.
Putting more money in the pocket of a angry conservative white man? Not interested. He’s like a slightly glossier Roseanne.
^^ BINGO!
Yep. But, I’d love to see a sequel to Jackie’s Back with David Hyde Pierce reprising his pianist role.
Nope. Kelsey sucks
I don’t like Kelsey Grammer, but Frasier is one of my all time favorite comedies. If Niles is back, I’m back.
I agree with you completely. Niles was everything on Frasier and I’d watch just to see his character again.
All hail your last line #teamNiles
I’m enjoying some of these reboots, but something rubs me wrong about this one. I don’t know if it’s Grammer’s smug Trumpness or just the fact that they wouldn’t all be there. Honestly, I’d rather watch the Niles and Daphne show than the Frasier show. I wouldn’t want to look only at Grammer’s face. But with a good concept, script and director I could give it a chance. Imagine Niles and Frasier raising their sons together
I would 100% watch it. And actually I think it’s better if it’s just Frasier, maybe Niles, and none of the other characters apart from a one-off cameo. The reason the show Frasier worked is because it was new and didn’t try to be Cheers 2.0. The episodes where old Cheers characters visited were weak and felt shoehorned in. A brand new series with Frasier living his life as an elderly man somewhere other than Seattle could work as a show in its own right if the writing and casting is good.
People thought the ‘Cheers sequel’ couldn’t possibly work without Sam and Carla and all the rest, but the reason it worked is because it was completely different.
Random, but I hated the ending. Frasier never had a girlfriend who lasted for more than about three episodes and he went through a hundred girlfriends during the show. All of a sudden just because the show is ending, he decides to give up his new amazing job offer and move to Chicago just because his latest Girlfriend of the Month lives there?
Not for nothing, but Kelsey has quite a few kids to support. Even if the show failed after one season, he still gets a check and keeps his name out there. Daddy’s gotta hustle, which may be why he’s coming around on the reboot.
Kelsey Grammer is the worst. I can’t imagine how John Mahoney worked with him for so many years. John was a genuinely nice person who was down to earth, caring, and lived a quiet life.
A movie with Kelsey Grammer and Kristen Bell. Ugh. If anyone needs to torture me, just press play with automatic repeat.
Wait wait wait.
Kelsey has whined repeatedly that he doesn’t get work because he’s openly conservative. So now, in the midst of another show, and indie movie, and a Netflix movie, he’s possibly rebooting his previous show? That poor, poor, underprivileged man. If only someone would give him a chance!
LOL. This.
I’m on the fence. This is one of my top 5 shows of all time. I binged watched all 11 seasons a couple of years ago and felt sad when it ended. I loved the ending. Frasier followed Laura Linney because he’d grown up finally. Sometimes it’s best to just let us imagine they all lived happy lives. It was a fresh show with fresh new characters and because of this, I kept forgetting he was a Cheers character until they brought in a Cheers guest star. The Cheers past was irrelevant.
While I don’t love the idea of this reboot, I don’t think I could resist watching at least once! Kelsey Grammer is pretty repulsive, but the man brought the Frasier character to life and made him iconic.
As others have pointed out, they’d really need to bring back as many as possible of the original cast. That might be hard to do.
To the writer of this article, Corey — keep up the good work! I’m loving your posts, and Hecate’s as well!
Icks-nay on the reboot-ay. The world is changing (rearranging) and evolving all the time – why are we rebooting everything? We’re only 2000-odd years in, how the hell have they run out of ALL THE STORIES already??
That minor grump aside, I Do Not like this news.. Someone referenced it perfectly above when they called the original series ‘lightning in a bottle’: the comedy of Frasier was so clever, and witty, and build on the heart between all of the characters, and it was most certainly not built on Frasier being this all fabulous character that the audience loved to follow. Instead, predominantly, I think people tuned in for Niles and his idiosyncrasies (and love for Daphne *sob*), or the dichotomy of Frasier and Martin’s lifestyles; I fear that a new series that lacked those aspects and a similar quality of writing would nosedive from Frasier’s already precarious knife edge of excellence, and that it would tarnish a legacy. That being said if it got created I’d probably give it a wary go, purely to see how Niles and Daphne were doing
They really need to stop with the reboots, especially when the originals are shown non-stop on basic cable and over the air channels. I might watch the first episode if the original cast was back, just to catch up, but, if the chemistry isn’t there anymore, I wouldn’t continue. There’s a reason the “Dallas” reunion tv-movies were successful, but the rebooted “Dallas” wasn’t (aside from the fact that Larry Hagman WAS “Dallas”). I enjoyed OG “Will & Grace”, but much of the revival’s success has been the continued chemistry between all four characters.
“Fraiser” worked because of the ensemble: I enjoyed Niles and Fraiser being taken down a notch by their father (RIP John Mahoney), Roz was a good foil and Daphne brought a bit of zany into the lives of all 3 Crane boys. If anyone is expecting Kelsey to pull the whole show, it’s doomed before it gets past final re-writes.
I like Laura Linney, but didn’t like her character on the show, so I thought years ago that if they ever have a reboot, they should have Frasier with the character Jennifer Beals played in the finale. Niles and Daphne’s kids are total Moons. They live in a house because the kids keep bringing home pets. Dogs, cats, frogs, turtles – the messier the better.