33 Years Later, The Most Impressive Spinoff In Sitcom History Remains Unbeaten

While there might have been innumerable sitcom spinoffs in the years since, Cheers still boasts the best show to ever come from an earlier sitcom as its follow-up. Spinoff shows are a tough thing to pull off, and sitcom spinoffs are even more infamously difficult for a number of reasons. For one thing, sitcoms rely on not only on fast-paced, dramatic storytelling, but instead on viewers coming to know and love their main characters over time.

This is why The Big Bang Theory’s HBO Max spinoff Stuart Fails to Save the Universe was such a big risk for the sitcom franchise. The original show spent 12 long seasons getting viewers invested in Sheldon, Leonard, Penny, Howard, Bernadette, Raj, and Amy, only for this new series to start all over again by promoting the supporting characters Stuart, Denise, Kripke, and Bert to main character status. Like the earlier spinoffs Young Sheldon and Georgie & Mandy’s First Marriage, this gamble paid off for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.

However, the new show still can’t compete with the greatest sitcom spinoff in the history of television as a medium. Cheers began in 1982 and, despite a slow start in the ratings, the bar-set workplace sitcom was a huge hit. Nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series 11 times across its 11 seasons, Cheers won 28 Emmys and is still often listed as one of the best American sitcoms ever. However, its spinoff, Frasier, managed to equal these accolades.

Beginning in 1993, Frasier lasted a whopping 264 episodes across 11 seasons, almost equaling the 275-episode run of Cheers. The show focused on Kelsey Grammer’s Cheers supporting character Frasier Crane, an uptight, arrogant psychiatrist who hosts a call-in radio show in his home city of Seattle. This show, along with Frasier’s relationship with his producer Ron, his sardonic brother Niles, and his elderly father Martin, provided the backbone of the show’s comparatively sophisticated brand of character comedy.

While its predecessor was a workplace comedy from the opening line of Cheers onward, Frasier was more of a character study. The supporting characters were vital to the show’s success, but where Cheers was about the patrons of the titular bar, Frasier was, appropriately enough, mostly the story of its eponymous antihero. Boorish, entitled, and self-aggrandizing, Frasier was both his own worst enemy and often hilariously relatable.

This was part of what makes the show stand out as the best sitcom spinoff ever made, as lofty as the claim may seem. Many shows that are often cited as the best sitcom spinoffs ever quite literally don’t fit these criteria. For example, The Simpsons is both a spinoff of The Tracey Ullman Show and the greatest sitcom ever made, but The Tracey Ullman Show was a variety sketch comedy, not a sitcom.

Similarly, although both All in the Family’s spinoffs Maude and The Jeffersons were brilliant sitcoms and remain the most credible competitors for Frasier’s title, the two shows were too similar to their predecessor to feel entirely separate. Like All in the Family, The Jeffersons was a multi-generational family sitcom. Like All in the Family, Maude was a politically savvy social satire. The two shows felt like an extension of Norman Lear’s classic series, rather than their own beasts.

Frasier’s Surprising Spinoff Formula Remains A Daring Choice

As such, the iconic run of Frasier has both great shows beat because the Grammer vehicle took a huge risk with its premise. From Parks and Recreation to Abbott Elementary, the workplace sitcom has been a TV staple for decades, so it would have been easy for Frasier to replicate the appeal of Cheers with another show that replicated its workplace sitcom premise in a new setting.

Instead, Frasier took one major character and dropped them into a new setting with new supporting stars, creating a show that felt authentically fresh despite spawning from an existing series. As the short-lived Friends spinoff Joey proved, this premise is far from a guaranteed recipe for success when it comes to sitcom spinoffs, so the series deserves props for taking this risk as far back as its pilot episode.

It is perhaps telling that, while its earlier spinoffs, The Vindicators and Rick and Morty: The Anime, were critical failures, Rick and Morty’s first successful spinoff, President Curtis, is a show that takes one character from the original series, places them in a new setting, and populates the series with new supporting characters. The Frasier blueprint was risky in the early ‘90s, but the show’s astounding success means this has become a commonplace strategy in the decades since.

Of course, much like Cheers has episodes that haven’t aged all that well, Frasier’s legacy can’t be entirely positive. The spinoff played an important role in TV history as, like The Jeffersons, the show became a rare sitcom spinoff that lasted almost as long as the original show and made as big a cultural impact. However, its misguided revival proved an awkward reality about the state of sitcoms as a format in the 2020s, and it is one that any upcoming revival of Cheers would do well to learn from.

Frasier’s Failed Revival Highlights An Awkward Truth

Debuting in October 2023, Paramount+’s Frasier revival arrived to mixed reviews, introducing Frasier’s son Freddy, but dropping Niles, Niles’ love interest Daphne, and many of the original show’s most iconic supporting characters. With only ten episodes in each of its two seasons, Paramount+’s Frasier revival never came close to recapturing the magic of the original show, and its cancellation after only two outings was met with disinterest by most viewers.

While Cheers star Ted Danson’s later sitcoms The Good Place and A Man on the Inside effectively riffed on the screen persona he developed in the ‘80s hit, Frasier’s revival felt too much like more of the same overly familiar material, and the absence of numerous major stars worsened this sensation. However, to be fair to the revival, it was hardly alone in this fate.

None of the ‘90s sitcom revivals, from Netflix’s next-generation That ‘70s Show spinoff That ‘90s Show to the Will & Grace reboot, came close to matching their originals in terms of critical acclaim or cultural impact. Thus, the fact that the iconic Cheers spinoff Frasier also fell short of this goal can hardly be held against the original show’s critical reputation.