A Short Love letter to One of the Best Sitcoms Ever.
When I was a teenager, Friends was top of the tree. Super popular, beloved and a real trend setter. I always liked the show, Liked the zeitgeist creating memes, the great unifier. Seinfeld was smart and edgy, I knew it was good, but I didn’t really truly appreciate it until I was older.
There was one weird little show in the late slot of Channel 4 that I loved to watch. I remember thinking it was so odd to make a stuffy old man the star of a sitcom.
As a 14 year old, Frasier seemed like a grandad, but one I liked spending my time with. The show had something about it I couldn’t quite place. It had jokes that went over my head, but lovable characters and broad, fun situations that where so more memorable than anything on Friends, and more relatable than Jerry Seinfeld. Long after they stopped airing the show, The characters, themes, jokes and music stuck with me.
Now, as someone who makes jokes for a living, I have re-evaluated this show and found it to be a masterful piece of writing and execution. The show is smart, but not overly so. It strikes an amazing balance by making Niles and Frasier’s relationship uppity and snobby, but still likable, Balancing them perfectly with the more down to earth Roz, Daphne and Martin that give the audience a great reference point to understand these high status guys.
The real pleasure of this show is the tight writing. The simple farce plays out over and over, with one character hiding information from one of the others, and the secret unraveling over a 30 minute stretch of layered misunderstandings. Of course, every story could easily be resolved with a good, honest conversation, but where’s the fun in that?
The sets are gorgeous too. The finely chosen words are expertly delivered in some of the nicest sitcom sets ever put to film. each set has multiple heights, platforms and layers, that allow for secret conversations, status’ to be raised and lowered in a physical as well as emotional way, and decor that represents it’s owner’s character perfectly.
The real reason Frasier is so enduring is it’s timelessness. A classiness to the writing and a collection of relationships as old as fiction itself, it could be set in any time period and still work well. It doesn’t ‘feel’ 90s in the way friends of Seinfeld does. it feels more like a selection of after dinner Farces compiled into a weekly showcase, more in the vein of a Jeeves and Wooster than a ‘Men Behaving Badly’.
The final thing about the show is how good hearted it is. In modern comedy, the thought of avoiding ‘Punching down’ seems like a new idea, but Frasier avoids the easy pitfalls of homophobia, fat jokes and other such dated japes. It’s treatment of gay characters in particular, seems very modern. The joke is never ‘That they are gay’, but usually at misunderstandings occur with characters that happen to be gay. The family unit feels so real, the friendships sincere, and the gradual shifts in character relationships are expertly handled. It’s also surprisingly consistent over it’s 10 year run, with the later episodes being even better than the first few seasons, once they really get the formula down.
All this, and one of the best dog actors ever filmed? What’s not to like! Watch Frasier, you won’t regret it.
