You have once again outlived Frasier

Great news for anyone reading these words who was born before May 13, 2004: You now bear the rare distinction of having outlived the TV series Frasier not just once, but twice. This is per Deadline, which reports that the Paramount+ revival of the classic NBC sitcom has been canceled after two seasons, which means that, yes, they somehow actually did manage to make a whole-ass Frasier show without ever bringing David Hyde Pierce back to show up as Niles.

Not that nu-Frasier was afraid of a cameo from the old crew, with the best episodes of its first season featuring appearances from series star Peri Gilpin and National Treasure Bebe Neuwirth. The revived show (developed by Chris Harris and Joe Cristalli) also wasn’t afraid to surround Kelsey Grammer’s pop psychologist (who, in case you never watched it, basically became Dr. Phil in the decades between the two shows) with a crew of characters who sometimes felt like stand-ins for the old Seattle gang. It also very deliberately tried to recreate the father-son dynamics of the original series by Odd Couple-ing Dr. Crane with his son Frederick (Jack Cutmore-Scott), now a Boston firefighter actively working to suppress his genetically snobby side.

The honest truth is that we didn’t hate Frasier, even as it often devolved into “just another sitcom.” Grammer maintained his command of the character as a fundamentally pompous asshole, and if the show never reached the heights of farce that the original series was capable of achieving, it at least put a decent joke on the screen every once in a while. (That being said, your humble Newswire writer is the single biggest fan of the original Frasier that he personally knows, and he still didn’t come back and watch the second season of this thing, which probably didn’t bode well for its fortunes.) For what it’s worth, CBS Studios thinks there’s still meat on this very fancy bone: The studio has expressed a desire to shop the series around, with the suggestion that Paramount+—where you basically can’t get an ounce of sunlight unless you’re a Star Trek show or got crapped out of Taylor Sheridan’s personal hitmaker—might not have been a good match for the series. (That being said, CBS itself has no room for it; if the show comes back, it’ll probably be on a rival streamer with more sitcom-friendly sensibilities.)