It was a series as American as its main character; the psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane whose arrival at the talk radio station KCAL 780 in Seattle launched the multi-award-winning comedy programme in 1993.
Kelsey Grammer’s performance as the pompous, lovelorn shrink in the lead role was matched by that of David Hyde Pierce as his brother Niles, John Mahoney as their long-suffering father Martin and Peri Gilpin as Frasier’s brash producer Roz Doyle.
Yet the show’s creator David Angell – who later perished in one of the aeroplanes that crashed during the 9/11 atrocities in New York in 2001 – demonstrated he was prepared to be a little more cosmopolitan when he cast English actress Jane Leeves as Martin’s home care worker Daphne Moon.
And, although it only happened many years later, that decision was the catalyst for Dundee’s Brian Cox to play a starring role as Daphne’s father Harry Moon.
Harry would emerge as a key component in the delayed wedding between Daphne and Niles.
Everything clicked for the couple
The role allowed Cox to flex his comedy chops, with his performance earning him an Emmy nomination.
He was up against Adam Arkin, Brad Pitt and Michael Douglas.
And the job also offered his sister Bette Gaffney the chance to mingle with the stars on a trip to the set in the United States 20 years ago.
Bette was in Los Angeles visiting Brian, who starred in the season’s final episode, when he invited her to watch the show being filmed and be introduced to the cast.
Unsurprisingly, she was overjoyed to meet the stars of her favourite show.
And a photo of her sitting in Mahoney’s chair surrounded by Grammer, Hyde Pierce and Millicent Martin – who played Harry’s wife Gertrude – took pride of place on her mantelpiece.
Speaking in 2002, Bette said: “I’m a big fan of Frasier so it was a wonderful gesture from Brian.
“I got to watch the show being filmed and met all the stars – it was a fantastic day.
“That photo is my pride and joy, but my sister saw it and said I looked like someone that had been let out for the day!
“Do you see the faith my family have in me?”
Frasier, for all its myriad award-winning qualities – and there is still talk of a new series being released with Grammer at the helm, however daft that may be – was never too bothered about making sense of its British connections.
Leeves, who was born in Ilford and appeared as one of the models in Benny Hill, was instructed to adopt a Manchester accent, which came and went at different stages.
Her father was depicted as a hard-drinking northern Englishman, who had separated from Gertrude, and Niles was despatched to Manchester to try to persuade him to give away his daughter at the wedding and, possibly, patch up things with his wife.
It was a wonderful opportunity for Cox to bring a barnstorming bravura to the role.
And although the script was about as realistic as Dick van Dyke playing a ‘Gorblimey’ Cockney in Mary Poppins, it turned into a highlight of the later series.
I chucked him out of the pub six times
In one delicious scene, Cox explained to Daphne why she was lucky to have met Niles and how she was fortunate to have found the right person.
When his daughter replied that he had only just met Niles, he replied: “Well, all I know is that I threw him out of my pub six times and six times he marched back in and yammered my ear off until I went back with him to America – all to make you happy.
“I never did anything like that for your mother. No no, I tell you, Daphne, you’ve got the right one there. A good one, you know? And another thing….he’s worth a bob or two.”
Frasier, though, had the ability to switch from farce to tragedy in the same episode and many critics praised Cox for turning Harry into a living, breathing human.
Despite all Daphne’s efforts to reconcile her parents, there was no chance of it happening and she and her dad shared a poignant conversation.
Daphne: “So there’s no chance of you and Mum getting back together?”
Harry Moon: “Don’t think so, love. Not this time.”
Daphne: “Maybe, if you give it another chance. You could…”
Harry: “Daphne – I’m sorry. It’s over. Has been for a long time. I mean, I’ve got no complaints, I got something wonderful out of it: you.”
Daphne: “If you don’t love each other, then why did you stay together for forty years? Through all the fighting and the screaming and the hitting?”
Harry: “That was for you kids.”
Cox thoroughly enjoyed himself on the set of Frasier.
He was one of several big-name actors – including Patrick Stewart, Derek Jacobi, Michael Keaton and John Hannah – to be made to feel welcome in a show which has never aged since it was launched.
And Bette also met her new nephew for the first time.
Brian’s partner, German actress Nicole Ansari, had given birth to the couple’s first child in Los Angeles in 2002.
As the Courier reported: “Orson Jonathan Cox weighed in at a healthy 9lb 2oz and the actor hopes that Bette’s Dundonian dialect rubs off on the new arrival.
She said: “Brian is such a busy man, here today and gone tomorrow.
“He’s not there all the time, but when he is, he is very good with the baby and is loving fatherhood again.
“Orson looks lovely. He looks like his dad when he was a baby.”
The Frasier reboot has been approved
Frasier was on air for 11 years and more than 250 episodes were produced and broadcast.
But, only this month, Paramount has approved a new run of 10 shows.
Talks of a revival began in 2016, but were initially denied by Grammer, though they resurfaced in two years later, despite the death of Mahoney in 2018.
Some American magazines have reported that Hyde Pierce has been approached, while Leeves and Gilpin have previously discussed the possibility of a revival.
Can it succeed where other reboots have failed? What new is there to say?
Other programmes such as The X-Files have been brought back with big budgets and only served to remind viewers of why the original was so much better.
However, as a report earlier this month confirmed: “The Frasier sequel is officially a go.
“Kelsey Grammer will return to his signature sitcom character as well as executive produce the series at Paramount+, which has just greenlit the comedy.”
Perhaps Brian Cox can fit in another cameo role on a break from Succession?
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