Frasier at 25: The psychiatry sitcom's greatest guest stars

NBC’s long-running sitcom Frasier is celebrating its 25th anniversary.

Spun-off from the Boston barroom comedy Cheers (1982-93), the show followed the fortunes of Dr Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), a former regular at the establishment where everybody knows your name who has since relocated to rainy Seattle, where he serves as a radio psychiatrist on KACL, hosting a call-in therapy programme offering guidance to the troubled.

Frasier ran for 11 seasons between 16 September 1993 and 13 May 2004, racking up an extraordinary 264 episodes. It is still widely watched as a result of syndication deals around the world – as with Channel 4 in the UK – and was this year rumoured to be under consideration for a reboot.

Aside from its droll writing, daringly highbrow frames of reference and intricate plotting, often taking inspiration from stage farce, Frasier’s ensemble cast was perhaps its greatest strength.

Anchored by a unique central turn from Grammer as the pompous, perennially exasperated sophisticate practically asking for a debagging, the show also offered superlative supporting characters.

Regulars David Hyde Pierce, Peri Gilpin, Jane Leeves and the late John Mahoney as the extended Crane family all proved themselves equally adept at bursting Frasier’s bubble. His squabbling with waspish brother Niles (Hyde Pierce) was always particularly exquisite.

Like Friends in its pomp, the show was also able to attract an extraordinary calibre of guest star. Here’s our selection of some of the most inspired.

The callers

One of Frasier’s best in-jokes was its use of cameoing celebrities deployed as callers put through to the shrink on his show.

Even a partial list of those who took part is astounding: Gillian Anderson, Kevin Bacon, Halle Berry, Matthew Broderick, Mel Brooks, Cindy Crawford, Billy Crystal, John Cusack, Jeff Daniels, Laura Dern, David Duchovny, Carrie Fisher, Jodie Foster, Art Garfunkel, Linda Hamilton, Daryl Hannah, Ed Harris, Ron Howard, Stephen King, Ray Liotta, John Lithgow, Malcolm McDowell, John McEnroe, Helen Mirren, Bill Paxton, Christopher Reeve, Gary Sinise, Ben Stiller, John Turturro, Eddie Van Halen and Elijah Wood.

The problems they recounted were often related ironically to their public persona: Superman star Reeve, for instance, expressed a fear of flying.

The Cheers veterans

Ted Danson, Shelley Long and Woody Harrelson all reprised their characters from Frasier’s forerunner to visit Seattle. Danson’s return as Sam Malone in “The Show Where Sam Shows Up” was particularly well-judged, allowing for a closer confrontation of his foibles away from the bantering of the old tap room.

In the 2002 episode “Cheerful Goodbyes”, Frasier returned to Boston and ran into his old foils Cliff Clavin (John Ratzenberger), Norm (George Wendt) and Carla (Rhea Perlman).

The most extraordinary Cheers returnee though was unquestionably Bebe Neuwirth, a sorely underrated comic actress who was a semi-regular on both shows as Frasier’s devastatingly acidic ex-wife Lilith.

Daphne’s brothers

Jane Leeves – playing Mancunian but actually from Essex – was a Frasier stalwart from the beginning as Daphne Moon, carer to ex-cop Marty (Mahoney).

When the show decided to explore her back story and introduce three brothers, the writers made little attempt to rationalise the wildly differing accents of guest stars Antony LaPaglia, Richard E Grant and Robbie Coltrane – an Australian, a patrician Englishman born in Swaziland and a Glaswegian respectively.

But as a vision of Brits abroad, chaotic, boozy and football obsessed, it was hard to fault.

Patrick Stewart

The Royal Shakespeare Company and Star Trek actor appeared as opera director Alistair Burke in “The Doctor is Out”, an episode in which Frasier is mistakenly assumed to be homosexual after following Roz’s boyfriend to a gay bar (in a comically tight pair of borrowed tennis shorts).

Burke falls for Frasier and, unexpectedly finding himself part of an influential power couple, refuses to give up the truth.

Shannon Tweed

One of the show’s most surprising guest stars was softcore adult film actress Shannon Tweed, whom you may or may not be willing to admit remembering from such late night offerings as Indecent Behaviour (1993), Hard Vice (1994) and Victim of Desire (1995).

She was superb in “You Scratch My Book...” as Dr Honey Snow, a pop psychologist whose work Frasier snobbishly disapproves of, only to find her irresistible in person.

Bill Gates

The Microsoft founder – a Seattle native - appeared as himself on the show, guesting on The Dr Frasier Crane Show in “The Two Hundredth”.

Much funnier than the vanity cameo it threatened to be, Frasier is left unable to get a word in edgeways because of the deluge of calls coming into KACL from Mr Gates’s Windows customers posing IT queries.

Laura Linney

In Frasier’s moving two-part finale, “Goodnight, Seattle”, the star bids farewell to the old apartment and is seen on a plane in conversation with a fellow psychiatrist, Dr Anne Ranberg (Jennifer Beals), the remainder of the episode unfolding in flashback.

It finally emerges the destination of the flight is Chicago, where he intends to reunite with his recently departed girlfriend Charlotte (Linney). The actress was precisely the right fit for Grammer and the prospect of Frasier enjoying a happy ending with Charlotte made for an entirely satisfying denouement.

“Wish me luck”, he says.