Both Fawlty Towers and The Office quit on top. Only Fools and Horses has been the Rasputin of comedy: you think it’s dead, but it just keeps rearing up again, usually at Christmas. Frasier Crane may yet prove to be another Del Boy, as Kelsey Grammer has not ruled out a revival at some point.
After waving goodbye to Sex and the City and Friends, the cull of long-running American favourites will be completed when Frasier bows out on Wednesday, after the usual valedictory documentary, Frasier: Analysing the Laughter, telling us why it was so great.
The show certainly has been great, despite the odd dip — Grammer himself has admitted that the penultimate season lost focus, if only because the whole concept was so untypically American. The idea that a fussy cultural snob could be both funny and loveable was an amazing trick to pull off. It was helped by Grammer’s warm voice and Frasier’s kind heart, and the fact that his brother, Niles, is like Frasier, but much worse.
In this respect, the series inverted Hollywood’s old Anglo-American stereotypes. Frasier and Niles had been beaten up as children for trying to look like Steed from The Avengers, but they had class. Their father’s Mancunian therapist, Daphne, on the other hand, was vulgar and down-to-earth. This contrast reaches a head in the final double episode when Daphne’s obnoxious brothers arrive in the form of Robbie Coltrane and Richard E. Grant.
It’s a bit of a pig’s breakfast, to be honest, “tossed eggs and scrambled salad” as it were, and lacks the structure of the classic episodes. But, hey, at least no one heads for Paris.
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Frasier, Wednesday, C4, 10.50pm