Frasier

In December 2013 I sat down to watch the first episode of eleven-season behemoth Frasier with my girlfriend. The pilot episode begins by panning across the city, showing its inhabitants listening to their local radio station KACL. The voice in the booth belongs to Seattle's prodigal son, Dr. Frasier Crane, a radio quack who dispenses three-minute diagnoses to the lovelorn and defeated. This return home has arisen as a result of a broken marriage foretold in prequel sitcom, Cheers. With an exclusive bachelor pad overlooking the city, Frasier appears to have the building block to help him re-build his life and ingratiate himself into Seattle high society. His spiritual convalescence is short-lived though because his father, Martin, is in need of a different recuperation. Smarting from a physical injury sustained as a policeman, he needs a home: Frasier and his brother, Niles, argue over who is going to provide it. Niles reasons he can’t go with him because his wife, Maris, would never sanction it (Maris is an Old Testament God in the sitcom: never-seen, but perennially referred to in anxious tones); Frasier, unmarried and unencumbered therefore draws the short straw and takes in his father. Accompanying Martin is Manchester-born Health Worker, Daphne Moon, a woman grounded in breeding but flighty in emotion. Essentially then, the sitcom is a comedy of manners with Niles and Frasier depicting the pretentious upper middle-class and Daphne, Martin and Roz (Fraiser’s Radio Producer) providing an earthy counter-weight.

Initially our climb up this box-set mountain was slow and arduous. Up until this year, my girlfriend and me weren’t living together, which meant, like a parent with a poor divorce lawyer, our access was stymied to weekend's. Now we’re living together, we’ve made up for lost time and worked really hard to gain ground on our gargantuan quest to reach the 264-episode milestone. We’re nearly there. Last night we finished Season 9 leaving us just 2 more seasons to complete. A future without Frasier is difficult to comprehend. I imagine Edmund Hillary and other mountain-climbers have expressed dissatisfaction at life after the mountain: once you’ve achieved the pinnacle, reached the summit and seen the sunset, life thereafter can seem a boring groan of banality. Frasier is that peak. I’m unconvinced a better horizon lies out there.

An American sitcom is different to a British one in terms of breadth and ambition. Because of British budgetary constraints, a sitcom can’t hope to run for a long time (Last of The Summer Wine being a notable exception), therefore there is more opportunity to produce something brilliant and not have it tarnished by over-saturation. In America where the advertiser is king, a sitcom that proves successful is treated as a cash cow, milked again and again until the thing is so dry its screaming for its own culling; typically then, what happens is a sitcom that should finish keeps going (see Friends). Frasier hasn’t suffered the same fate. To use an analogy, it is like a fine ballroom dancer: its effortless waltz across the screen belies the sweat of the rehearsal room. I guess what I'm saying is people may challenge the assertion that Frasier is the best sitcom of all time, but they would be hard pushed to find a better written one. Even when challenges were put in their way - actress Jane Leeves unexpected pregnancy being one of them – the writers found a way to make the sitcom work.

The secret of the success lies in the misnomer of the title: Frasier. Frasier and his naval-gazing look at love may be the centre of each episode, but there is enough in the other characters that means they could survive without him. In fact as the seasons progress, the secondary characters are given greater precedence, allowing the writers to explore other aspects of love. Daphne and Niles’ ‘will they, won’t they’ union is painted with all the painstaking patience of an Old Master, leaving us desperate to see the finished article; Roz isn’t like other sitcom women: she is empowered, an agent- not an object- of sexuality. And Martin only plays the archetype of the wise old man up to a point: he too pursues his predilections, showing the desire for love and sex is not forgone in retirement. Given the sitcom was written over the 90’s, it is highly progressive, drawing three-dimensional women that are sexy, sassy and fun, as well as fallible and deluded. Unlike some sitcoms the women in Frasier aren’t models of perfection, scenery dressing to admire, rather they are sentient creatures as capable of wit as they are idiocy. Also, there is much talk at the moment of the ‘grey pound’: how societal neglect of older people has led to a surge in cinema representing the demographic and their concerns; in Martin Crane Frasier was showing that the elderly were more than cantankerous, long before the success of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

If an aspect of the sitcom were to be highlighted for special praise, it would be its immaculate sense of timing. The sitcom is clearly inspired by British farce with stand-out episodes ‘The Innkeepers’ and ‘The Ski-Lodge’ paying homage to the improbable plots and slamming doors of Noel Coward's plays. To say Frasier is a sitcom that invokes the past though would be to do it a disservice; indeed episodes such as ‘Don Juan in Hell Part 2’ defy easy categorisation. In this episode, Frasier spurned by love yet again reflects on why he can’t get his love life in order. Whilst in the car he’s joined by the ghosts of female past, including his dead mother, whom physically play out his warring subconscious. Only in a sitcom as cerebral as Frasier could an episode take place inside the mind of the protagonist.    

Don Juan in Hell.

Ultimately, Frasier is a genius comedy because it doesn’t talk down to its viewers. It references ‘high’ tastes of opera, classical music and wine without ever feeling elitist. The sitcom has great depth, showing the Crane brothers’ obsession for the finer things in life is part displacement activity for the love and community they’re missing in their own lives. To make heroes out of a couple of well-heeled asses is a vertiginous feat that isn’t easy. Perhaps, the current government could hire the Frasier scriptwriters to make them appear more human. They’re that good; it might just be possible.
In a month or two, we will watch the last episode of Frasier. The end-credit Jazz tune, a euphemistic paean to Frasier's radio callers, will play out one last time: ('And I don't know what to do with those tossed salads and scrambled eggs. They're calling again') and end one last time on that signature sign-off: 'Frasier has left the building.' I, along with my girlfriend, will be sad to see the good doctor go.