You could say Joe Cristalli tweeted his role as co-executive producer and co-showrunner on the new “Frasier” sitcom into existence.

About 10 years ago, as a fledgling TV writer and “Frasier” super fan, Cristalli started a Twitter account with “random jokes” about the show and character made famous by Kelsey Grammer in the sitcoms “Cheers” and “Frasier.”

“It was stupid, and nobody cared about it. I think I had maybe 3,000 followers at its height,” he recalled in a recent interview.

At this point, “Frasier” had been off the air for 10 years, but Cristalli used it as “an outlet to practice writing because I was such a super fan and I just loved the style of joke-telling, so I would work on it.”

A few years later, Cristalli read that Grammer was interested in reviving the character. He had his agent send a sample script and examples from his “Frasier”-centric Twitter feed to Grammer’s team. He was eventually hired, alongside “How I Met Your Mother” writer Chris Harris, to be co-showrunners of a new “Frasier” series, debuting Thursday on Paramount+.

This “Frasier” stars Grammer in the title role of the high-brow psychiatrist as he moves back to Boston. His son, Freddy, is now grown and working as a firefighter, and Frasier realizes he needs to prioritize their relationship – much in the way the character set out to connect with his father, played by John Mahoney, in the original. He also begins a new career as a professor at Harvard.

Writing for the character is a fun challenge, Harris said, because “when you think of Frasier Crane speaking, you think of flowery language.” Because of time constraints, every line can’t be in Frasier-speak. “We save those moments for certain times,” Harris said.

They also reference the original series sparingly and smartly – which is an act of restraint that Cristalli said Harris helped him to understand.

“I put in a very specific reference to something in (‘Frasier’) season four, and I remember Chris very gently saying, ‘Do you think maybe we should do jokes that everyone will laugh at?’”

“There are analogies and callbacks to the old show, but we try not to do any of them shamelessly,” Cristalli said. “We’re not going to just throw a recliner or a Jack Russell in; like, we’re trying to do them subtly and elegantly. So if you catch them, great, but we’re not hanging everything on those jokes. I love (the references) … but Chris makes a very good point. We want other people to like this show besides me.”

While the writers couldn’t resist upcoming storylines that would include Bebe Neuwirth’s Lilith, Frasier’s notorious ex-wife and Freddy’s mom, or Peri Gilpin’s Roz Doyle, Frasier’s friend and producer, there are currently no plans to bring back David Hyde Pierce as Frasier’s anxious and fastidious brother, Niles. The same goes for Jane Leeves, who played the Cranes’ housekeeper and Niles’ eventual wife, Daphne.

Nor will the show check in with other “Cheers” characters like Ted Danson’s Sam Malone, George Wendt’s Norm Peterson or Rhea Perlman’s Carla Tortelli, even though these characters may be in a closer in-universe geographical radius.

Harris and Cristalli said that could change if they find an organic way to incorporate them into the story.

“We have to be very smart about when we do it,” Cristalli said, adding, “We can easily use that as a crutch. Like, ‘They’re back in Boston, let’s have Norm over every episode.’ [That’s] just stealing. As long as it’s a really good story that necessitates those kinds of characters and those kinds of situations coming back, it’s really fun. But on the whole? I don’t know that there’s too much left open-ended from the old (series) that we need to close up aside from Frasier and Freddy’s relationship.”

The show is a throwback, however, in that it’s a multi-cam comedy taped in front of a live audience. Most comedies these days are single-cam and filmed without an audience.

Harris hopes the show is a success and provides a much-needed boost for the multi-cam format. “I will say that nothing feels as much like showbiz as a tape night,” Harris said. “There’s a working-without-a-net kind of feeling, and you really are putting all your work and all your creativity out there for people to judge. You don’t know something works until you get that immediate response, but that immediate response is awesome.”

Famed sitcom director James Burrows (“Taxi,” “Friends,” “Will & Grace”), who worked with Grammer on both “Cheers” and “Frasier,” signed on to direct two episodes.

“It’s such a comfort because he didn’t have to do the show. He didn’t have to help out,” Cristalli said. “But he read the scripts, he was in the auditioning process, he was pitching jokes and genuinely laughing and enjoying himself. It just made everybody more relaxed because it’s a lot of pressure to bring back something this iconic.”

Burrows shared his advice to the new actors on “Frasier,” including Jack Cuttmore-Scott as Freddy and Anders Keith as David, Frasier’s nephew and the son of Niles and Daphne.

“What I tell them is, ‘When we rehearse, Kelsey is at 50%. When he’s in front of an audience, he’s at 100%, and you better be on that level, otherwise you’ll get blown away.’ That’s what I used to tell guest stars on ’Cheers.’ … ‘They’re marking time in rehearsal. When they get on a stage and the laughter comes, if you don’t play up on their level, you’re going to disappear.’”

Cristalli said Grammer slowly morphs into the character.

“In the first rehearsal day, he’ll be in, like, a T-shirt and shorts, and it’s like, ‘Hold on. That’s not – who’s that? That’s not Frasier.’ The next day he’s got, you know, longer pants, and the next day it’s a blazer. and then all of a sudden it’s like, ‘Oh, wait a second, I see him now.’ … There’s a very clear distinction between Frasier and Kelsey Grammer, but he slips into those shoes real comfortably, and it’s very seamless.”

For the show’s theme, composers and father-son duo Bruce and Jason Miller were brought in to update the original “Tossed Salads & Scrambled Eggs” song. Bruce Miller composed the original ”Frasier” theme. Grammer also sings this version.

The composers first did a “hipper” version “that had movement to it, and energy,” Bruce Miller said. Grammer listened and suggested the sound reflect how the character is older now and looking for calmness at this stage in his life. They went back and used a small band, which is the version that viewers will hear.

This “Frasier” also has a bar, but it’s not the bar made famous in “Cheers.” Its name, Mahoney’s, is a tribute to John Mahoney, who died in 2018. Just as the character of Martin – a blue-blooded, retired police officer – was different than his sons, this set captures that juxtaposition. It’s conceived as a place where both firefighters and academics gather.

“It’s an older bar, something you would find near Cambridge,” set director Glenda Rovello said.

“There’s a sweet line where Frasier is in Mahoney’s and remarks, ‘I may have spent too much time in a particular bar,’ which I made sure the boys (Cristilli and Harris) kept because it was a wonderful tribute,” Burrows said.

 

The Los Angeles Times contributed to this report.

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