Frasier Series 3 Box 1 [VHS] [1994]

The 12 episodes of Frasier Series 3 Box 1 find the show at the peak of its form: this is part of the golden era between the introduction and establishment of the characters and the inevitable, but anticlimactic, resolution of the tension between Niles and Daphne in a later series.

Frasier is now so much a part of the furniture of global television that it is easy to forgot how boldly it defies many sitcom conventions: it would have been much easier, for example, to invent a brother for Frasier who was a boorish, slovenly mechanic, rather than another prissy, pseudish psychiatrist. As it is, the alternating competition and solidarity between the pair, which reaches an apotheosis in the episode included here in which they try to share an office, is much more believable, and the show's occasional forays into seriousness are plausible rather than mawkish as a result.

The best of the episodes in this box set are, as ever, those which give centre stage to the ambition, vanity and ego of Frasier himself (who, despite these defects never becomes unsympathetic, a further testament to the writing and acting). These traits are thrown into sharper relief than usual in these episodes by the introduction of Kate, the new boss of the radio station which employs Frasier; again, a bit-part player who could--and in most other sitcoms would--have been written as a one-dimensional battle-axe, yet is endowed with genuine warmth and wit. –-Andrew Mueller