Why ‘Frasier’ Producers Were Worried About Ripping Off A Classic Sitcom

Frasier is largely considered to be one of the greatest sitcoms of all-time — and also one of the best sleep aids of all-time. But when the show first began, producers were actually worried that the Cheers spin-off might be a little too similar to a classic sitcom that began two decades earlier.

When the decision was made to give Dr. Frasier Crane his very own show, one that in no way involved Boston sports bars or surprisingly witty functional alcoholics, the original idea was to have the character open a new practice in another city. After all, Frasier was already an established psychiatric professional in Cheers. Thankfully, few of his patients saw how he acted in his free time.

But according to The Frasier Companion by Jefferson Graham, this idea was nixed because the writers eventually came to the conclusion that it would be “too similar to the old Bob Newhart Show.” Famously, Newhart’s very first sitcom focused on psychiatrist Dr. Robert Hartley, who regularly engaged with an assortment of eccentric patients before having the world’s longest dream.

Not wanting to cover the same territory that Newhart had, they needed to come up with a new career for Dr. Crane. A solution was found thanks to an unproduced Cheers storyline, which would have found Frasier “filling in for a week as a radio shrink.” Once they settled on a new job for their lead character, the Frasier writers came up with a premise that would focus, not on the Crane family, but on the radio station employees.

These wacky new characters were set to include a station manager, a head of advertising and a “bombastic Rush Limbaugh-type commentator.” While basing a character on America’s foremost racist, sexist, homophobic blowhard sounds like a god-awful plan, the Frasier team envisioned that the radio station setting could foster another “gang comedy” like Cheers.

Thankfully, this approach was ultimately scrapped because, again, people found that it was too much like another famous sitcom, in this case WKRP in Cincinnati, which was similarly an ensemble comedy set in an AM radio station. 

Although Frasier dropped the private practice angle for the pilot, in the show’s final season, Frasier did start seeing patients in a non-radio setting on the side. And it did kind of feel like The Bob Newhart Show, to be honest. 

So it’s probably a good thing that the writers pivoted early on in the process. Unfortunately, the folks behind Richard Lewis and Don Rickles’ Bizarro Frasier show, Daddy Dearest, weren’t so lucky.