After Cheers ended, the character moved to a spin-off series, Frasier, through which the span of his overall television appearances totals twenty years.

[4][5] In the spin-off, Frasier moves back to his birthplace, Seattle, after his divorce from Lilith, who retained custody of Frederick in Boston, and is reunited with a newly created family: his estranged father, Martin, and brother, Niles.

The character Frasier Crane was created in the third season of Cheers (1984–1985) by series creators Glen and Les Charles as Diane Chambers's (Shelley Long) "romantic and intellectual ideal" following her breakup with Sam Malone (Ted Danson).

Not only Sam Malone's rival and opposite, Frasier Crane was also part of the love triangle, "a different form of the Sam-Diane relationship," said Glen Charles.

[7] The show's writers initially conceived the character as "the role Ralph Bellamy used to play in Cary Grant movies — the guy the lady falls in love with, but is not real.

[12] His character was not universally popular, however, for coming between Sam and Diane; a viewer approached Grammer asking "Are you that pin dick that plays Frasier?

However, in "Birth, Death, Love, and Rice" (1985), the premiere of season four (1985–86), Frasier enters the bar and tells Sam that he was jilted by Diane at the altar in Europe.

The character finally becomes a permanent fixture among the other bar patrons by the middle of the series' run and adds to his comedic repertoire an occasional penchant for commenting on the personality flaws of the other Cheers regulars while still managing to remain a likable addition to the gang.

[15][16] As his role is expanded, Frasier becomes romantically involved with a stereotypical "intelligent, ice queen"[17] Lilith Sternin (Bebe Neuwirth).

They live together for a year before being married one month before "Our Hourly Bread" (1988) as revealed in the episode and give birth to their son Frederick in "The Stork Brings a Crane" (1989).

(1993), a distraught Frasier is going to sleep with Rebecca Howe in his bed until Lilith unexpectedly returns and—in the following episode, "The Bar Manager, The Shrink, His Wife and Her Lover" (1993)—storms out of the room and heads to Cheers.

Instead, they wanted to cast Kelsey Grammer as a paraplegic millionaire resembling Malcolm Forbes, "a magazine mogul [and] a motorcycle enthusiast".

The spinoff idea would have focused primarily on "his work at a radio station", but they found it resembled an older sitcom, WKRP in Cincinnati, too much.

In the pilot "The Good Son", Frasier explains that he left Boston because he felt that his life and career had grown stagnant (and he had been publicly humiliated after climbing onto a ledge and threatening to commit suicide before being talked down).

Therefore, he returned to his original hometown of Seattle, where his father Martin (John Mahoney) and younger brother Niles (David Hyde Pierce) live, to have a fresh start.

He confirms in "To All the Girls I've Loved Before" (1988) that his mother Hester, portrayed by Nancy Marchand in "Diane Meets Mom" (1984) and then by Rita Wilson in flashbacks in "Mamma Mia" (1999) and "Don Juan in Hell: Part 2" (2001), is dead off-screen.

In an episode of the seventh season "A Tsar Is Born" (1999), Martin takes an old family clock, which Frasier and Niles consider ugly, to exhibit on the television show Antiques Roadshow.

Therefore, the brothers are left without a fortune, a clock, and their royal dreams are destroyed, as Frasier puts it, they are descended from "thieves and whores".

Actress Bebe Neuwirth left Cheers for fear of becoming typecast and to do Broadway; she did not expect to appear recurrently on Frasier.

Lilith and Frasier are close to restarting a relationship in the hotel room, but they are interrupted by a loud argument between a young married couple next door.

Frasier and Lilith can resolve the couple's dispute, spend the night together watching television, and finally fall asleep on the couch without having had sex.

Off-screen, Frasier has since been disillusioned with[24] and then quit his eponymous television talk show in Chicago, and his relationship with Charlotte has ended as well.

Frasier Crane is a licensed psychiatrist who is, as Kelsey Grammer described, "flawed, silly, pompous, and full of himself, [yet] kind [and] vulnerable.

[18] At the time Cheers originally aired, Rick Sherwood from Los Angeles disdained Frasier Crane and his existence as part of the "Sam and Diane" dynamic.

[37] Gillian Flynn from Entertainment Weekly considered Frasier Crane's "diction" an inspiration of Fringe's Walter Bishop (John Noble), who has an addition of "daffiness" of roles portrayed by actor Christopher Lloyd.

In a note, Silverman deemed the character Frasier as "a windbag with a sense of humor" and "a whining schoolboy with a series of lame excuses.

[45] Television critic Kevin McDonough from New York praised Kelsey Grammer and Bebe Neuwirth's performances as "repressed individuals" and "separate couple on TV" with "acidic and hilarious" chemistry together.

[46] For his performance as Frasier Crane in Cheers, Kelsey Grammer was Emmy Award-nominated for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series in 1988 and 1990.

[47][48] For the same role in Wings episode "Planes, Trains, and Visiting Cranes", he was nominated for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series at the 1992 Emmy Awards.

[47] For the same role in Cheers spin-off Frasier, Grammer was consecutively nominated as an Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series during the show's whole run except in 2003.