Frasier - The Sequel Series

Most sitcoms where you hear an audience laughing is an actual for-real audience laughing at those jokes. "Laugh tracks" are incredibly rare. Even if it's a pre-recorded out-of-studio bit, they usually used to screen it for an audience and record the laughter. I think (might be wrong tho) that when they started shooting Red Dwarf away from an audience they still screened it to get the laughs.

Pretty much all British sitcoms were filmed in front of an audience (up until about 20 years ago when it became unfashionable).

Nothing ever topped the Scooby-Doo cartoon having a laugh track for me.

Ooof.

I’ll watch it

Freddy's always been where the show struggled, so it's interesting they've gone both feet first into having him as one of the main characters.

Doesn't look as bad as I was imagining, but the way it's shot some of the sets looks weirdly like the big bang theory.

I'll give it a go but I'm not banking on it being more than passable.

Yeah, it's weird. His character seems too similar to Rodney. Though I guess if he's a friend of Frasier then he's actually a smart one. 

Yup.

Now you mention it, the character has shades of the one he played in Piglet Files, the 2 of Us and Goodnight Sweetheart too

One thing I've noticed is there's barely any frasier or cheers team involved. Seems like the same casting director and the director of the first episode is an old pro who's done almost every multi cam show in history. It feels like this is being run a lot more by Grammer.

The new producers/developers biggest credits are How I Met Your Mother and Life in Pieces. I really liked Life in Pieces, and there was a bit of Frasier's farcical nature in that, but the other guy being a writer on over 100 HIMYM eps is making me a bit worried, because that had terrible writing.

That was quite a worrying trailer.

Frasier was never especially funny by himself, it relied heavily on constantly having his pomposity and carefully constructed lifestyle and image punctured by Niles, Martin, Roz and Daphne.

It's not clear from the trailer that the producers get this.

Before, Frasier was high status so it was fun to see him fail and make a tit of himself. Though I don't have any love for Kelsey Grammar, I'm not sure I'm up for watching Frasier at 70, still being belittled and humiliated by a younger generation.

If Martin had been the butt of the joke in the original it would also have seemed similarly uncomfortable. If it's his direct peers it's ok (Lyndhurst's role presumably) but punching down isn't. Feels like it'll really miss Niles for that reason.

They have a tricky task to make it work at all, especially if they're keeping Frasier as the centre piece and basing it heavily on his interactions with his son and daughter in law.

If they can still do escalating farce then maybe that'll save it, and I suppose they couldn't put anything complex in a short trailer.

I think we're of the same opinion. Despite moving Frasier to the dad role, they appear to have kept him as the focus of the humour, when really the focus should move to his son.

Going off the trailer, they're clearly going with the "dad intruding on his son" angle again, but they don't seem to realise it's the son's reaction that makes that angle funny, not the father's lack of consideration.

Basically, Frasier turning into Martin, and Freddy turning into Frasier would have been the better angle, and inherently quite funny. "Like father, like son" is more true than most of us would like to admit, after all.

No one chews the scenery like a skint Kelsey Grammer. He’s 68, three of his seven kids are still in primary school and he’s not done much since frasier ended 20 years ago. I’m expecting the performance to end all performances

If you wanna bet on a guy fucking an alligator...

But tbf Niles made Frasier what it was. His delivery was spectacular.

"Lawyers make excellent patients; they have great coverage and never get better"