The Guardian review makes me hopeful that the series will get better.
At first, this reboot struggles. But after a few episodes, the chemistry and the magic are back, all helmed by its lead’s faultless performance – and it is a joy to watch
www.theguardian.com
"All this setup work means that there is little of the original show’s fine-grained beauty. It deals in broad strokes, and the jokes are not the filigree work its fans have ever worshipped (“Have you considered,” says Alan, for example, when Frasier bemoans Freddy’s unwillingness to engage with him, “that he hates you?”). Grammer plays his man as perfectly and with as light a touch as ever, moving seamlessly into emotional scenes from comic ones and out again, but the rest of the cast (without Grammer’s decades in the Frasier business to draw on) aren’t quite there yet.
Nor are they in the next couple of episodes, and the heart does begin to quail. But … but they are better. The jokes are subtler, the relationships – especially the hate-hate one between Olivia and the albatross Alan around her ambitious neck – are growing. Actors are relaxing. Confidence is growing. And then, suddenly, by the fourth episode, the chemistry, the ineffable magic, the ease, the unbottleable perfect combination of them all is there. Although Martin would be ashamed of me, the joy of the realisation – almost the greater for having watched it evolve in front of me – almost brings a tear to the eye."
