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How are they going to bollocks up the new Frasier?

KELSEY Grammer’s Frasier reboot is almost guaranteed to end up ruining his own legacy. Here’s how it will be totally ballsed up.

Recasting

Most remakes have an air of tragedy about them as you realise the original cast have all either aged terribly or died. What’s even worse is when a remake fails to secure all surviving cast members and recasts new actors in old roles. Eddie Redmayne playing Niles Crane, anyone?

The dog

The small, seemingly freakishly intelligent terrier owned by Frasier’s father added an extra layer to the show. Unfortunately, in what will come as no surprise to anyone with a grasp of the lifespan of dogs, the original dog who played Eddie Crane is dead. If they try to crowbar in some new show business hound it will just look desperate.

Kelsey Grammer

While the character of Frasier Crane is an urbane radio-host-cum-psychiatrist with broadly liberal sensibilities, Kelsey Grammer has somehow devolved into being a zealous Trump supporter. The character of Frasier Crane had better not have morphed into some right-wing shock-jock giving out MAGA hats to his listeners.

Play for nostalgia

Pretty much every remake falls into the trap of being annoyingly self-referential. Making callbacks to previous storylines is all well and good, but it’s a fine line before the show just becomes a boring exercise in asking the audience whether it remembers a thing they’ve seen before.

By remaking it

One of the most guaranteed ways of bollocksing up a remake is by actually going ahead with it, despite its announcement being met with universal concern and there being no previous examples of shows being successfully resurrected nearly 20 years after finishing.

A guide to the crappy anniversaries you’ll be celebrating in March

IT’S March tomorrow, which means it will soon be a whole year since you did all these things you used to take for granted. Here’s a timeline: 

MARCH 7th: A year since you went for a nice pub lunch with your family, followed by a country walk which was a fun chance to see signs of spring, not the only way to leave the house and a trudge around the prison yard Britain has become.

MARCH 10th: A year since you went to a packed, sweaty gig in a city centre, pogoing around like a nutter and singing lustily along to the songs you knew, before spilling onto the street saying ‘Music’s always better live, isn’t it?’ to an attractive stranger.

MARCH 14th: A year since you went to the cinema with a couple of friends to see halfway-decent horror movie The Invisible Man. It wasn’t fantastic but the cinema’s a cheap, easy night out, isn’t it? There’s nothing special about going to the cinema. Or there wasn’t.

MARCH 17th: A year since you met a mate for a quiet pint at your local, where there were significantly fewer people around than usual and you cut the evening short after three pints because it was all rather eerie. ‘Still, there’s always next week,’ you said.

MARCH 19th: A year since you popped round to a friend’s house to return a DVD you’d borrowed and had a mug of tea in his kitchen while chatting about how all this was a bit worrying but apparently we’d be turning the tide in 12 weeks.

MARCH 23rd: A year since you sat uncomprehendingly staring at the TV as the prime minister effectively sentenced us all to be confined to our homes indefinitely. And what’s more, you were glad.

MARCH 28th: A year since Zoom drinks and a quiz with your shell-shocked mates where you all said ‘It’s different but it’s fun’ and ‘Shall we do this every week?’. You’ve not even seen them on screens since Christmas.

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