That “Frasier” sequel series is coming soon on Paramount+. And Kelsey Grammer’s fussy psychiatrist is coming back to Boston, the city where we first met him on “Cheers.” That’s right, Boston is back in the “Cheers” business, sort of kind of.
After “Cheers” ended in 1993, and after the end of his marriage, Frasier Crane moved to Seattle, where he lived with his father and spent time competing with his psychiatrist brother, David Hyde Pierce’s Niles. “Frasier” spent 11 seasons in the coffee capital of the world, its hero sipping lattes and fine wines and broadcasting his wisdom over AM radio station KACL. It left the air in 2004.
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In the new series, Frasier decides to return to Boston “with new challenges to face, new relationships to forge, and an old dream or two to finally fulfill,” according to Paramount+. In Boston, Frasier will be surrounded by an entirely new group of characters. Early on, the plan was to bring back the cast from the original series (without John Mahoney, who died in 2018). But Pierce “basically decided he wasn’t really interested in repeating the performance of Niles,” Grammer said last fall. “It just took us to a new place, which was what we originally wanted to do anyway, which was a Frasier third act. It’s an entirely new life for him.”
The new cast will include Jack Cutmore-Scott as Frasier’s son, Freddy; Nicholas Lyndhurst as one of Frasier’s old college friends; Jess Salguerio as Freddy’s roommate; and Anders Keith as Frasier’s nephew, David, the son of Niles and Daphne.
The first episode of the new “Frasier” will tape in front of a studio audience on Friday in Los Angeles. It will be directed by the legendary James Burrows, whose long, long resume includes 32 episodes of the original “Frasier” and 237 episodes of “Cheers.”
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Matthew Gilbert can be reached at matthew.gilbert@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @MatthewGilbert.