Kelsey Grammer is at his funniest when a man who expects to be admired realises he is being tolerated. We rate the precision of his comedy, especially when he lets another actor make him look foolish.
Fi1m perspective
In Frasier (1993), Grammer is often still enjoying an explanation when David Hyde Pierce’s Niles has already found it wanting. Grammer gives Frasier Crane’s self-importance plenty of force, but keeps his embarrassment visible beneath it. We laughed before Niles spoke because Pierce’s pause exposed the foolishness Frasier had yet to notice. Grammer keeps Frasier pleased with himself long enough for the joke to belong to both actors.
He began playing Frasier Crane in Cheers in 1984, then took the character into the Seattle family comedy of Frasier in 1993. The change gave him relatives who could question every qualification he added to a sentence. His work elsewhere includes voicing Sideshow Bob in The Simpsons from 1990 and playing Beast in X-Men: The Last Stand (2006). He returned to Frasier again in the 2023–2024 revival. For us, though, the original spin-off remains the place to start: it gives his elaborate delivery people who will not be impressed by it.
The supporting performances matter to how well Grammer’s work lands. John Mahoney’s Martin answers plainly without seeming slow, while Jane Leeves’s Daphne and Peri Gilpin’s Roz keep the comedy from becoming too deferential to Frasier. Grammer remains useful when he is listening; the scene need not stop while somebody else has the joke. Roy Christopher’s fussy furnishings suit the character, while Bruce Miller’s lightly swinging music makes the programme feel more welcoming.
Grammer also directed more than 30 episodes of the original Frasier, influenced by James Burrows’ multi-camera sitcom style. That does not make the programme’s precision his achievement alone, and its writing sometimes keeps a misunderstanding going after the last good joke. His great strength is that he can sustain the character’s hope that one more explanation will put everything right, even when we would prefer him to stop talking. It is a habit the writing can overuse. Start with the original series, for the pleasure of watching him explain himself to people who know him too well.
Biography
Kelsey Grammer is an American actor. He is known for portraying Dr Frasier Crane on the NBC sitcom Cheers (1984–1993) and its spin-off Frasier (1993–2004, revived 2023–2024), a role he originated and played for more than twenty years across the two series. He also directed more than thirty episodes of Frasier.
Grammer trained as an actor at the Juilliard School and the Old Globe Theatre. He made his professional stage debut as Lennox in the 1981 Broadway revival of Macbeth and later appeared as Cassio in a 1982 revival of Othello opposite Christopher Plummer and James Earl Jones. His other stage credits include productions of Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd and My Fair Lady.
In film and television he has voiced characters including Sideshow Bob on The Simpsons and roles in Toy Story 2 (1999) and Anastasia (1997). He has received six Emmy Awards, three Golden Globe Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award and a Tony Award.
