(courtesy IMP Awards)
Frasier (S2, E9-10)
If you’ve been paying attention , and for the sake of my robustly fragile writer’s ego, I hope you have, you will have noticed how thrilled I am that Frasier 2023, as it’s often termed, has well and truly come into its own in its second season.
That’s often the way with many shows, but Frasier 2023 carried the extra burden of expectation of following the highly successful 1993-2004 original which a gold standard for its clever plotting, fully-realised and affecting characterisation and its witty, farce-heavy style of elegant sitcom comedy.
While the new kid on the Frasier block showed real promise in its debut season, it was sometimes hard to get past the fact that, occasional cameo aside, the original gang wasn’t around and that we having to get used to one of sitcom’s most enduring and well-loved characters in a whole other setting.
In and itself that is welcome; change is good for the soul and watching Frasier adapt back to life in Boston where he’s now teaching at Harvard after a wealth-bolstering stint on TV as a celebrity therapist – much to Nile’s disdain no doubt; we have yet to see him or wife Daphne (David Hyde Pierce and Jane Leeves respectively) to hear it straight from the pedigree horse’s mouth – and getting to know once-estranged Freddy (Jake Cutmore-Scott) all over again has been a slowly-gathering and ever more amusing joy.
Throw in a diversely quirky but emotionally grounded crew including Niles and Daphne’s son, and Frasier’s nephew David (Anders Keith), Frasier’s BFF and colleague Professor Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst) and their boss, Professor Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye) and Freddy’s friend Eve (Jess Salgueiro) and you have a new world for the sitcom’s titular character which is shaping up very nicely, indeed.
So much so, in fact, that these final two episodes are sitcom gold, the first, episode 9 (“Murder Most Finch”) showing the two sides of Frasier – that of the narcissistic man only interested in looking after himself, usually driven by his desire for status or romance – he’s dating working class brassy bartender, Holly Quagliano (Patricia Heaton) who’s a snob-antidote delight, and the bighearted friend who will do anything, even undertaking poorly-judged actions, to look after his friends.
In this episode, Olivia tricks everyone into coming along for a murder mystery party and desperate to get out of it, as is everyone but Olivia and her goofy, eccentrically overdone assistant David (who’s been given more to do, usually on the more manically odd but highly end of the characterisation spectrum), Frasier does everything he can to end it early.
But then it becomes clear how much the party means to Olivia, and while it might be nerdy as hell, Frasier sees that his friend needs her party to work, leading to an ending which is not only very, very funny, and classic Frasier, but hugely emotionally satisfying.
The final episode of the second season sees Frasier 2023 in full festive mode, an ode to the power of the season to transform lives, aided, of course, by Frasier’s trenchant inability not to meddle.
And meddle he does as Alan’s estranged daughter, Nora (Rayne Bidder) comes to town, plunging Frasier’s friend Alan into a massive depressive episode as he mourns the fact that he will never see his beloved eldest daughter or his only grandchild, painful at any time but even more so at Christmas.
“Father Christmas” is remarkable because it is mainly about Alan, and rather than going heavy on the jokes, Frasier 2023 pulls right back and lets the drama do the talking with Lyndhurst beautifully and quite affectingly playing the part of a father who desperately wants a reunion with his daughter but may not get it.
———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- He does get one, and it comes courtesy of a drunken Freddy pouring out his heart to a surprised Nora, and the moment father and daughter, and yes, granddaughter, meet is a joy and everything you could ask for.
The season ends on a high note, comedically and dramatically, showing that Frasier 2023 is not only matching the vibrantly high standards of its original iteration but becoming very much its own superlatively good sitcom creation which deserves a few more seasons yet now it has really found its groove, festively inclined and otherwise.
Frasier 2023 streams on Paramount+ as does the original show.
Only Murders in the Building (S4, 9-10)
(courtesy IMP Awards)
Oh my lord I love this show.
It’s like that great big hug of togetherness and community that you didn’t know you needed, mixed in with some fun sleuthing and quirky characters who far more than punchline carriers, existing in a fully-formed state such that you feel for them every bit as much as you are laughing with them (and yes, occasionally at them).
Now finishing off its fourth season with not a drop in quality, Only Murders in the Building, has a lot of fun tying things off in its final two episodes with episodes nine, “Escape from Planet Klongo” and episode ten, “My Best Friend’s Wedding”.
The killer, and no, no plans to do a spoiler alert on that one because who the guilty part is will surprise and delight you, mainly because the slapstick hilarity of the reveal is a giddy joy of silliness, and yes, some degree of dramatic pain, is brought to justice, Sazz Pataki (Jane Lynch) gets the credit and remembrance she deserves on all manner of things, and Oliver (Martin Short) ties the knot with Loretta (Meryl Streep) watched on by fellow podcasters and BFFs, Charles (Steve Martin) and Mabel (Selena Gomez).
It ends much as you would expect it to, and there is, naturally enough, a cliffhanger murder right at the end to kick off the already-confirmed fifth season of the show, and so, all is right with the Only Murders in the Building world (save for the dead person who is, and fair enough too, likely not feeling not all that good about their pivotal role in the upcoming season).
What is really enjoyable is how Only Murders in the Building gets to the season four finish line.
It has a lot of fun as you’d expect with more Hollywood shenanigans including our fearless three posing as extras on a Ron Howard film because he KNOWS THINGS – his cameo is brilliantly done, with the famed director having a ball sending himself up, ever so gently – and poor Glen Stubbins (Paul Rudd) ———- SPOILER ALERT !!!!! ———- finding his end at the hands of the killer [REDACTED].
(courtesy IMP Awards)
But, and this won’t surprise you if you’ve watched the show from its start in August 2021, it also wraps up things with a huge amount of heart and concern for its characters.
The ability to deftly dance between bonkers comedy and real poignancy has always stood Only Murders in the Building in good stead and so it in these final two episodes where, while the mystery is solved and that’s important not least for the next eagerly-awaited season of the trio’s podcast, we get to see some real emotional vulnerability, especially on Charles’s part as he is finally able to properly mourn Sazz’s death and all the good and wonderful things that would have come her way if she’d lived.
We also get a truly lovely moment between Charles and Oliver, the latter of whom is expecting a huge bachelor party outing with the former, and who bombastically lists his requirements in endearingly bombastic fashion, when the big pre-wedding event instead becomes an intimate get-together and heartfelt talk between two very solid, lifelong friends.
This conversation, which also pivots, thanks to the arrival of Ron Howard, as a big clue reveal, is emblematic of a show that knows how to go epically loud with whimsical, oddball comedy but then how to dial it right down so your laughs becomes understanding sighs of real emotional weight.
We get that real touching moment at the wedding but really, the action lies with our three friends, and honestly after four seasons with this trio that’s how they feel, and how after the mystery is solved and justice is served, they can just be with each other like good friends should be.
Sure, their moment of quiet calm is punctured by the reveal of the next victim, their blood spreading out in the calm waters of the Arconia’s courtyard’s fountain, but Only Murders in the Building returns as it always does to the bond between these three once-lost souls who have found a home and a purpose in each other, something that you suspect won’t ever change, no matter how many bodies fill the final episode of each season.
Only Murders in the Building streams on Disney+