“Frasier” went off the air in 2004 after 11 seasons of near perfection. The show might not be mentioned as an example of ’90s sitcom greatness as often as “Seinfeld” or “Friends,” but it should be, if only for its consistency. In the case of the “Friends,” most of the show’s worst episodes came in the final two seasons, as the otherwise excellent sitcom slowly morphed into a parody of itself. Not so with “Frasier,” which maintained its quality from the pilot all the way through to its series finale, becoming a beloved staple for many who grew up in the ’90s.
One of those people was Joe Cristali. The man who brought us the exhumed “Frasier” in 2023 was a big enough fan of the original sitcom that seven years after it went off-air, he started a fan Twitter account where he wrote and posted jokes for the shuttered series. The account, called “Frasier For Hire,” was, according to Cristali, started for “the sole purpose of getting hired as a writer on ‘Frasier,'” which he fully acknowledged during a 2024 FYC Q&A “had been off the air for seven or eight years” at the time.
Along with former “How I Met your Mother” writer and producer Chris Harris, Cristali is now the co-creator and co-showrunner of the neither disappointing nor remarkable “Frasier” revival series, which hit Paramount+ in 2023. “Creator” might be a stretch, however, seeing as “Frasier” had 11 years and 264 episodes to its name before Cristali resurrected it. Still, the writer certainly had ideas for how to handle Dr. Crane’s return after 20 years, but when he pitched himself as the man to shepherd that return, he also used his Twitter account to get his foot in the door.
The Frasier revival started with a Twitter account and a spec script
Explaining his “Frasier for Hire” account to TheWrap, Joe Critsali admitted he was “basically was just doing ‘Frasier’ jokes” and “dialogue snippets of what would be on the show now,” revealing that he kept this up “to no acclaim for like three years” and racked up around 2,000 followers in the process. While his account received no acclaim during its existence, that didn’t stop Cristali from forwarding it to “Frasier” star Kelsey Grammer and his producers when talk of a revival series emerged.
During his appearance at the FYC Q&A, the writer spoke about how he sent the account to producers in order to get his first meeting:
“Kelsey came out in the press and said ‘I’m going to bring ‘Frasier’ back,’ so I forced my agent to send this now-deleted Twitter account (because it should be) to Kelsey’s producers and that, along with a spec script of ‘Frasier,’ I had, which I shouldn’t have had at the time, got me a meeting.”
After this, Cristali recalled how his inexperience led the show’s producers to ask him to find someone else to help, with the writer explaining, “Before I got to my car [a producer] had already emailed me, ‘We’re not going to give you ‘Frasier,’ you’re a staff writer, we’re not going to give you ‘Fraser,’ that’s crazy. But find somebody who’s done this a while.'” Cristali then reached out to Chris Harris to help him develop the series and become his co-showrunner, evidently gaining Paramount and Grammer’s approval as a result.
Frasier fan-fiction from casual viewers
Though it maintains an undeniably comforting aura, the “Frasier” revival has thus far been an uneven affair. Hampered by the lack of the original ensemble, the show has seen highs, such as when it saved Peri Gilpin’s Roz, the best returning guest star, for its season 1 finale. But it has also seen some pretty abject lows, like when the writers decided that Frasier had hosted a Dr. Phil-style talk show during the break between series. Much of the issues faced by streaming-age “Frasier” have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the absence of key members of the original cast, and a new cast that, quite frankly, was never going to be able to match up. But there’s also a sense that the comedy isn’t quite as sharp and the observations aren’t quite as insightful as they were on the OG sitcom.
Jokes in the “Frasier” revival seem to have been infected by a “Big Bang Theory”-style impulse to appeal to the masses, which entirely misses the point of Frasier’s hifalutin hilarity being intentionally abstruse. The doctor and his brother, Niles, would frequently make reference to some arcane piece of high art literature or refer to specific wine vintages as metaphors for whatever situation they found themselves in, and while the humor that came from it was supposed to be universal, the references were supposed to be obscure and sophisticated. As The New Yorker put it, “The sophistication exuded by its look, feel, and banter was so unusual for a network sitcom that it was often described as ‘the smartest show on television,'” even if that same banter demanded “no more than brand-name familiarity with [its] referents.”
Though there are flashes of this sort of thing in modern “Frasier,” the show’s tone feels much more broad and one can’t help but think another revelation from the Q&A has something to do with it. During the event, Joe Cristali said that Chris Harris had only seen “a couple” of episodes of the original show when he agreed to help out with the revival. Perhaps it’s this that, when coupled with Cristali’s Twitter exploits, gives the new series a paradoxical feeling that it’s a “Frasier” fan fiction written, at least in part, by fans who’ve never actually seen the show.
The “Frasier” revival is currently streaming on Paramount+.
