Frasier re-launch

Frasier was always the least funny/interesting of the central characters. No Eddie to steal the show either. It'll be interesting to see if it works with a largely new cast.

I worship Frasier, one of my all time favourites. It ended beautifully, and I really dislike this trend of just rehashing old shows. The magic has gone!

Apparently Freddy (Frasier and Lilith's son) takes after his grandpa Marty much to his father's displeasure, and Niles and Daphne's son David is living with Uncle Frasier while studying in Boston, so they seem to have kept the intergenerational tensions in place with the passage of time. Much depends on how the cast gel together, but it sounds promising.

Does Frazier you plonker translate?

So, for anyone who's watched it, is it any good?

Is it of the same standard of the original series?

Good to see the show has returned, it seems weird initially hearing Nicholas Lyndhurst's voice in with the US actors and you do get the thought of Frasier and Rodney together sometimes. Kelsey clearly liked working with Nicholas on stage and wanted him in the reboot which is a nice bonus for Nick.

As regards only 10 episodes, wasn't Kelsey on crazy money towards the end of Frasier and he'd have had to have a huge offer to reprise the role. Plus he has had some health issues and is nearing 70 now so maybe the idea of the 24-26 episode season didn't appeal to him. The writers would need to produce hell of a lot more scripts for the longer runs so you have the schedule whereby a shorter run may not have such a quick turn around for each episode, the script quality is higher, the stress and workload on everyone is less so everyone is happy.

Archie Bunker was in 9 series of All in the Family and then another 4 in Archie Bunker's Place clocking up just over 300 episodes. Frasier did 264 episodes in its original 11 series run so would be 274 now with the 10 part series. So Frasier hasn't been in as many episides yet as the main character as Archie Bunker but with his appearances in Cheers he must be the comedy character with most appearances by some mile in modern times. Lucile Ball had numerous series playing a variation on the same character ( an exaggerated version of herself) but what her total appearances were I don't know and counting all those would be like counting over shows Kelsey has been in or say Mary Tyler Moore in the Dick Van Dyke Show and then her own show.

Archie Bunker was reported to have been based on Alf Garnett in Till Death Do Us Part. Warren Mitchell played that role quite regularly for about 33 years on stage and screen so that bigoted character had an amazing shelf life. It could never be shown today due to the racially offensive and homophobic language the character used but the writing was to show that Alf was a bigot and an idiot. A lot of BAME people apparently liked the show and used to congratulate Warren Mitchell on it. But a lot of people used to say to him I love it how you take it out of "*****" and Warren would reply "No we are talking it out of ****** idiots like you".

The scene from Till Death Do Us Part that always cracked me up was when the son in law suggests Alf has Jewish heritage and Alf goes mad and nearly ends up in tears when his British credentials are challenged. Warren Mitchell of course had Jewish heritage so the joke that the character was Jewish landed perfectly. The writer had had it in mind for a couple of series before suggesting it to  Warren they do that joke and Warren thought it would be great so they created one of the shows' funniest scenes.