Plate up the tossed salads and scrambled eggs: Frasier is returning to the building again after 19 years away, and three new images have landed ahead of the sitcom’s return. There’s a good one of Frasier back at his piano – a piano which he’ll presumably have hauled all the way from Seattle back to Boston, where the reboot takes place and where Frasier first appeared in Cheers – and looking very much like he’s about to slam out some smooth jazz. A second introduces a couple of new characters: Jack Cutmore-Scot playing Frasier’s often-mentioned son Freddy, and The Boys’ Jess Salgueiro as Freddy’s flatmate Eve.
Then there’s the one which has piqued the interest of people in the UK most. Frasier sits around in a bar with Toks Olagundoye’s Olivia, another new character who’s running an Ivy League university’s psychiatry department, and a very tweedy-looking Nicholas Lyndhurst. Lyndhurst plays Alan Cornwall, one of Frasier’s old buddies from college who’s now moved up in the world to become a professor himself. Looks like they let him keep a few bits and pieces from the set of Goodnight Sweetheart, too.
What to expect? The official blurb promises “new challenges to face, new relationships to forge, and an old dream or two to finally fulfil” – so maybe he’ll finally get to match that half-court Hail Mary that Niles drained that one time – while the tiny sting at the end of a new teaser is even less specific. “No more callers,” it says. “All new hang-ups.”
The Frasier revival will stream on Paramount+ from 12 October.