TV Week takes an inside look at a taping of Frasier as the second season of the sitcom reboot returns

I’m ushered inside Stage 18 at the Paramount lot on Melrose Ave. in Los Angeles, one of the largest soundstages on the famed studio lot. Alfred Hitchcock shot Rear Window inside this very stage, and had cars driving on a faux street — which led Paramount to issue a permanent ban on automobiles inside soundstages after crew members began passing out due to the carbon monoxide fumes.

These days, Stage 18 has become the home of Frasier, containing the sets for the Paramount+ reboot that’s brought Kelsey Grammer’s iconic shrink back to television after a two-decade absence.

I’m here to take in a taping of a second-season episode of the revived sitcom, which returns the title character to his Cheers roots in Boston to reunite with his fireman son Freddy (Jack Cutmore Scott), while also becoming a professor at Harvard alongside old pal Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst).

As the audience is taken to their seats, an upward glance reveals numerous microphones dangling overhead to capture our laughter as we watch the taping. As it happens, I’m sitting directly beneath one of them; I make a mental note to listen for myself when the episode debuts.

Shortly before the taping begins, Grammer comes up to the bleachers to greet us. He’s quick to apologize for the frigid temperature in the studio, explaining that audiences tend to respond better to comedy when they’re cold and alert, not warm and snoozy (David Letterman famously kept his studio at a brisk 55 degrees Fahrenheit for just that reason).

“We realize we get our best laughter out of you just before hypothermia kicks in,” Grammer jokes before exiting.

It takes a village to make a TV show, and it takes a long time to film a half-hour sitcom. In addition to the show’s cast and crew, there’s our host for the next six or so hours (I wish I was exaggerating), a warmup comic who springs to life whenever there’s a break in filming.

While we wait for the taping to begin, he chats with audience members to ask where they’re from. Turns out, they’ve come from all over the globe just for this taping, including a couple from Texas, another from Niagara Falls, and folks who journeyed from South Africa.

When I mention this to Grammer later, he becomes visibly choked up, comprehending full well how much the character he first began playing on Cheers back in 1984 continues to resonate with fans.

“It’s great that there is this sort of abiding affection for this character . . . there is real love for this guy, that I wasn’t really that aware of,” Grammer tells me. “I used to think, ‘Ah, you know,’ but then when we decided to do the show again, and saying, ‘No, no, no, it will never be the old show,’ it’s kind of fun to realize that it doesn’t have to be the old show. It can be a new show that’s maybe just as good, and maybe just as beloved, which is really fun.”

Finally, the taping begins. The first scene takes place in the Boston tavern frequented by Frasier and his pals, Mahoney’s (named in tribute to John Mahoney, the late actor who played patriarch Martin Crane in the original series). Grammer makes his entrance . . . and immediately flubs his line. Reset. The scene begins again, and this time his entrance goes as planned — until a poorly positioned flower in a vase, sitting upon a table, proves distracting. After a few more attempts, and a few more botched lines from Grammer, we finally get to see the scene play out in its entirely.

But we’re not moving on just yet. Grammer — who is also directing the episode — goes to the bar for a quick huddle with the show’s producers and writers, while the extras stay in place and the other cast members goof around, keeping their energy up.

After the actors are consulted, the scene begins again. This time, there are some noticeable dialogue changes, with lines that fell flat the first time around now rewritten, suddenly getting laughs that didn’t exist before.

That pattern repeats over and over again, with each scene performed multiple times, always undergoing a considerable degree of tweaking; in fact, it’s remarkable how much of what viewers end up seeing on television is actually created on the fly.

Finally, the audience hears the words that will continue to give us hope that we’ll exit the soundstage before sunrise as the taping drags on late into the evening: “We’re moving on.”

The day after the taping, I’m back in the same soundstage — this time to watch the cast perform the next episode at a table read, where they rehearse the new script together for the very first time.

Before kicking things off, Grammer offers more history about Stage 18, informing that Bonanza once filmed here. He also points out that Frasier needed such a big stage because of the demand for tickets; a typical sitcom soundstage accommodates an audience of about 100, while the Frasier stage seats 400.

“You can’t get a seat. It’s always packed,” Grammer marvels. “People are so excited about being here and sort of experiencing the whole vibe of shooting a show live, and it’s kind of like going back in time in a weird way. If feels like it used to feel when Cheers was shot before a live studio audience.”

Grammer also shares a scoop about the new season, revealing one episode will find him returning to his old stomping ground in Seattle. He’ll be back in the radio studio where he solemnly intoned, “I’m listening,” and will once again take calls from the radio audience — one of whom, he reveals, will be voiced by the legendary Carol Burnett.

Even though the new Frasier is set in Boston, one place where he won’t be returning is a certain watering hole where everybody knows your name.

That, Grammer explains, is very deliberate. “Jimmy Burrows [who directed nearly 200 episodes of Cheers and more than 30 episodes of the original Frasier] just said, when we did discuss it, he said, ‘Oh, no, no, that bar is closed,’” Grammer says, explaining Burrows’ rationale that “that show exists in another world and, you know, it’s gone. That bar is gone.”

When asked about the on-set script script tinkering I witnessed during the taping, Grammer confirms that a Frasier script is never considered complete until the audience is sent home.

“I mean, the script changes every day,” he says. “If it’s pretty good in the beginning, it may settle into sort of a spot that we’re all happy with, and then the last night when we’re shooting, somebody’ll go, ‘Oh, s***, we gotta rewrite that.’ That has happened a few times.”

For a seasoned sitcom veteran such as Grammer, this has become par for the course. “I remember years and years ago, we did a Cheers episode with Peter Graves — you remember him from the original Mission: Impossible?” Grammer recalls. “And he was a guy who was sort of a strait-laced fella who ended up fancying Rhea Perlman in the show, Carla. And they kept rewriting it, and the third day he just had a meltdown. He said, ‘How do you people do this? I can’t possibly just learn a whole new script! I can’t do it!’ But they calmed him down and he was actually delightful in it. It just really threw him off, he didn’t understand how we worked that way, but we do, it’s a real fly by the seat of your pants — which is why I haven’t memorized a line in about 20 years.”

Frasier Crane may have made his Cheers debut four decades ago, but Grammer considers the opportunity to step back into the character’s shoes in a fresh way, surrounded by new characters played by different actors, as nothing short of a gift.

“It’s been an amazing thing to have this kind of impact in a career as an entertainer. And to get a chance to do it a second time . . . that’s been a fun thing for me,” he adds. “But there’s nothing like this, like the gift of this experience. I mean, we’ve gotten the chance to fall in love, all of us. It’s wonderful to be here.”

The new season of Frasier begins streaming Thursday, September 19, on Paramount+