'Frasier' Reboot Being Considered By Kelsey Grammer, Because Everything Old Is New Again

Hey baby, I hear the blues are calling, tossed salads and reboot shows. The latest long-gone TV series to be considered for an update is Frasier, the hit sitcom that starred Kelsey Grammer as high-brow psychiatrist Frasier Crane. Grammer is said to be fielding interest in a reboot with CBS TV Studios. If this happens, it won't be a revival, but a full-blown reboot.

Deadline has the news about the potential Frasier reboot. Per their story, "Grammer is currently meeting with writers who are pitching different concepts for the potential followup series. If the producers settle on a writer and a premise, the project could move beyond exploratory stage." Should Frasier return to the airwaves, it won't be a standard revival like the recent comebacks of Will & Grace and Roseanne, which both had essentially the same casts, creative teams and premises. Instead, this new Frasier would be a reboot set in a new city, with only Frasier himself carrying over.

That sounds...ill advised. Are we talking no Niles? No Daphne? No Roz?! Who would want to watch that? Frasier was a great show, but what made it great wasn't Frasier Crane alone. It was the entire ensemble, along with the creative team. To just start from scratch is a goofy idea. In fact, I'm just going to say it: bringing back Frasier in general is dumb.

Don't get me wrong. As I said above, Frasier was great! But why can't it remain a thing of a past? Why can't we all just revisit the original series, instead of hoping for something new to strike gold again? Let the past be past. Not every classic show needs a modern-day revival.

Of course, it's worth nothing this is in the very early stages. All this news boils down to is that Grammer is floating the idea of a possible reboot, and seeing if anyone bites. Networks have reboot and revival fever right now, though, so there's a pretty good chance someone, somewhere, is going to go for this. When and if it happens, I hope someone has the common sense to realize rebooting the show entirely would be a bonehead move. If the show must return, it should return with as much of the original cast as possible. John Mahoney, who played Frasier's father Martin, recently died, so sadly he could not return. But the bulk of the cast could, and probably would.

Frasier was a spin-off of Cheers, and ran from 1993-2004 for 11 seasons. Grammer played the title character, a psychiatrist who returns to his hometown of Seattle following his recent divorce. Once there, he hosts a call-in radio psychiatry show, hangs out with his equally stuffy and intellectual brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce), and takes in his invalid father (Mahoney). This doesn't exactly sounds like the recipe for must-see TV, and yet, Frasier managed to turn into one of the best shows on the air. It even set a record for the most Emmy Awards won by a scripted series (37).