Frasier

1990s tv sitcom

Dr. Frasier Crane moves back to his home town, Seattle, and he takes job as a radio psychiatrist. But that’s not the only change in his life - he also has to take care of his father, former policeman, who shouldn’t live alone.

One of the few examples of witty comedy in United States, and by witty I mean they tend to use more subtle and less robust humour. Based on the family of psychiatrists and their, so called, lives Frasier brought a different angle to the comedy - instead of drinking beer and watching football on TV they spend time drinking wine or in the opera.

For some time even the Frasier’s working place was bringing funny elements, but after few seasons the whole plot was getting stale and less entertaining. In season 4 they introduced more episodes that were delving into their characters, which might have been interesting for writers, but was quite a challenge for the viewers. Even when Frasier lost his job and had to find some other way to make living the series simply returned to old routines and this did not brought new elements to the whole show.

It is warm and slow paced kind of comedy series, original, subtle, but after season 2 or 3 it was clearly lacking freshness, mostly due to fact that the plots were centered around just 5 characters and their routines. Also some of the jokes and situations were unfortunately predictable, which made the show sinking into mediocrity due to lack of innovation. At the same time the delicate ecosystem of characters was perfect the way it was built from the beginning and radical interference with its elements would destroy the whole thing, so the writers were more or less the hostages to their own creation.

It’s not easy to summarize Frasier in just few words - it was in a way a unique show with unique characters and rather refined humour, but at the same time it was dragging on too long without having new ideas to offer. While the formula reached its natural peak around season 7 the production lasted for 4 more years.

Rating	7.2
Funny	7 / 10
Entertaining	4 / 5
Characters	4 / 5
Nonrepetitive	3 / 5