'Frasier' Revival Takes The Doctor Back to Boston; Toks Olagundoye Joins

 

This week, Paramount+ announced that the Frasier revival officially began production, and the show announced its sixth series regular, finally revealing the city Kelsey Grammer's character is off to and who's directing the first episode.

Toks Olagundoye plays Olivia, head of the psych department at an Ivy League university. She presents herself as warm, confident, and professional, but in reality, is mentally a bit of a mess. She works with Professor Alan Cornwall, played by Nicholas Lyndhurst. They disagree on nearly everything but share an admiration of Dr, Crane, and are both willing to use him to work toward their own goals. While it hasn't been stated what the specific Ivy League university is, the reveal of Frasier's destination city does make a few things clearer.

Indeed, Frasier is actually returning to Boston, Massachusetts, the setting of Cheers, the series from which Frasier spun off. It's where Frasier spent his nine years on the show, where he met Lilith and had Freddy before the marriage fell apart. It's where Lilith remained with Freddy for at least the majority of his childhood, it stands to reason that whatever troubles Freddy has encountered has brought him back home, if he ever got to leave significantly in the first place. The Boston setting also lends to the Ivy League school where Cornwall and Olivia are being Harvard, Frasier's alma mater. Should we expect cameos from where everybody knows your name? Probably not, not if we want to believe Dr. Crane is the only one who's been able to get away. However, they haven't been completely out it. Wendt, Perlman, Ratzenbeger, and the late Kirstie Alley appeared together on a 2021 episode of The Goldbergs. However, there's going to be a familiar face behind the camera, as Cheers creator James Burrows will be directing the first episode. Burrows has had TV directing credits as far back as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and as recently as B Positive, with such renown that An All-Star Tribute to James Burrows was the closest thing to a Friends reunion special before the actual one. He had also directed 32 episodes from Frasier's 10 original seasons.

Olagundoye's most prominent role was on the two-season ABC sitcom The Neighbors, but also voiced Mrs. Beakley in the DuckTales reboot. She also had major voice roles in Arcane and Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Movie, with memorable stints on Castle and Shameless.

When iCarly returned, Carly Shay had settled back into Seattle for a while, but for Frasier, it seems like he's freshly back in town despite a much longer period to work with, with those previously-alluded new challenges.