‘Frasier’ wasn’t the first influential Seattle TV show
Oct 13, 2023, 12:59 PM | Updated: 5:32 pm
Carl Kolchak, played by Darren McGavin, searches for clues among the houseboats on Portage Bay in a scene from "The Night Strangler" from 1973; Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan are nowhere in sight. (Image courtesy of ABC)
(Image courtesy of ABC)
A reboot of “Frasier” that premiered this week moves the main character from Seattle to Boston. Some locals are hurt by the perceived slight, while most critics so far are disappointed by the quality.
Along with the hurt feelings and offended sensibilities, many are wondering what TV programs were on-the-air that told the rest of the world about our favorite city before Kelsey Grammer ever sang that “scrambled eggs” song.
There have been some thoughtful and well-researched stories recently about how the reboot of the “Frasier” sitcom from the early 1990s – which was set in Seattle – is evidence of how much the Emerald City has moved away from its blue collar roots since those pre-Internet, proto-Grunge, Boeing-was-still-a-local-company, Seattle’s-Best-Coffee years.
Time will tell how sound those theories might, but in the meantime, “Frasier” moving to Boston is a great excuse to look at other TV programs on the air (and definitely not streaming) before “Frasier” that used Seattle in some way to tell their stories, that influenced Seattle’s image in the outside world, and that maybe contributed to the city and region’s “soft power” around the world.
Dubious scholars and radio-based crackpot media historians agree that there are three categories of “Pre-Frasier” TV programs.
Category 1: ‘Seattle as Off-Screen Character’
The first category is known as “Seattle as Off-Screen Character,” and refers to those shows that mention Seattle but that otherwise has no relationship to the city. For example, in the 1970s, on “The Bob Newhart Show,” the character of Bob’s wife Emily Hartley, portrayed by Suzanne Pleshette, was from Seattle (her TV dad was an ex-cop, just like Frasier’s dad, by the way). It was mentioned occasionally that Emily’s parents still lived in Seattle and they sometimes mentioned the rainy climate and lush evergreen trees.
Some TV series mentioned Seattle only once in their entire run, but that mention fit right into the outside world’s impression of the city.
One good example of this is from about 15 years before The Bob Newhart Show. The character of Ward Cleaver, the father on classic 1950s/1960s sitcom “Leave It To Beaver” played by Hugh Beaumont, once visited Seattle. Ward and TV wife June Cleaver, played by Barbara Billingsley, talked about it.
“You know, you and Fred have a good time talking about fishing,” June says, as the couple lament an upcoming visit with their friends the Rutherfords.
“Oh, sure, I’ll have to listen all over again to how he caught that 17-pound muskie in Minnesota,” says Ward in reply.
“And that will give you a chance to talk about the 26-pound salmon you caught in Seattle,” June snappily retorts, fully backed by a pre-recorded laugh track.
In the era of “Leave It To Beaver,” Seattle was mostly about salmon and loggers to the outside world, though Boeing was also on the rise as the jet age was taking hold.
One much later variation on this off-screen category took place in 1999 at the end of the fifth season of “ER,” when George Clooney’s character Doug Ross left the show and decamped fictional Chicago for fictional Seattle.
Scholars and philosophers could likely debate for eternity what this particular move represents: A return to nature? A move from hospital to high-tech? Downshifting from medicine and becoming a hipster barista? With no Doug Ross reboot about the good doctor’s new life in the Pacific Northwest, there’s not much to go on.
Category 2: ‘Seattle as the setting for a TV series’
The next category is “Seattle as The Setting for a TV Series.”
This has happened many times after the first run of “Frasier,” notably with “Grey’s Anatomy” and “iCarly.” A quick look at Wikipedia reveals many other shorter-lived series set in Seattle around this same time, the most intriguing of which is “Citizen Baines,” starring James Cromwell as a retired U.S. Senator who comes home to Seattle and his neglected family. It only aired for a few months in 2001, and scant evidence exists online; search YouTube to watch the opening title sequence, with requisite Space Needle shot.
Some “Pre-Frasier” shows that were set (or filmed) nearby, and which arguably fueled Seattle’s image around the world, include “Twin Peaks” and “Northern Exposure.”
The most Seattle-intensive “Pre-Frasier” TV series of all time is “Here Come the Brides.” This 19th century Pacific Northwest sitcom premiered in 1968 and ran for two seasons. TIME magazine said it best when it described “Here Come The Brides” as a “comedy series about a pack of sex-starved lumberjacks working in Seattle after the Civil War.” The theme song, in a version performed by Perry Kiro, climbed the charts, and it’s “bloooooest skies you’ve ever seen are in Sea-YEAH-dull!” is still arguably the best song ever written about the place.
In a pivotal scene in the first episode, actor Robert Brown, portraying a character in Jason Bolt who was not unlike Seattle founder Arthur Denny, tries to convince a room full of lovely ladies to make the trek north from San Francisco to Seattle.
“You’ve never seen snow until you’ve seen it snow in Seattle,” Brown as Bolt says, bordering on the tone of a charismatic preacher, though not one who displays much in the way climatological knowledge of his hometown. Snow in Seattle? Bolt may at least be partly right; there were a few big blizzards in those days, notably in the winter of 1861-1862.
“And the rain?” Bolt continues, now bordering on the maniacal. “Why, if you get wet in Seattle spring rain, you won’t want to take a bath for a month, ’cause you don’t want to wash off how clean you’ll feel!”
Category 3: ‘Seattle as the setting for a TV movie’
This last category is “Seattle As The Setting for a TV Movie,” and this is where unleashing a crackpot theory feels most appropriate.
A great and mostly forgotten example in this category is “Reflections of Murder” a remake of the classic French thriller “Diabolique,” but this time starring future “Law & Order” stalwart Sam Waterston and Tuesday Weld. It aired on KOMO TV on November 24, 1974 and later enjoyed limited release on VHS cassette.
For many, far more than those 264 episodes of “Frasier,” the most influential of all time TV program set in Seattle is the TV movie called “The Night Strangler.” It aired in January 1973 and starred Darren McGavin (probably best known as the dad from “Christmas Story”) as Carl Kolchak. McGavin was born and raised in the state of Washington.
Kolchak is a tabloid newspaper reporter, first seen a year earlier in a previous TV movie called “The Night Stalker,” who has a nose for the odd or otherwise spooky. He wears a seersucker suit, white shoes and a goofy straw hat, and what appears to be a midrange quality toupee. Kolchak is impulsive and intrusive, and has a way of charmingly irritating anyone he interviews for a story. With a vintage Mustang convertible and a portable tape recorder, Kolchak’s audio notes-to-self fill in the exposition and move the paranormal action right along.
In the Seattle film, nosey Kolchak uncovers a vampire-like figure living as a civic leader and physician, but maintaining a secret underground lair beneath, of all places, Pioneer Square.
“Here it was,” Kolchak intones, as he begins a subterranean hunt for the murderous villain. “The hidden city beneath Seattle’s Underground” – meaning Bill Speidel’s stroke of tourism genius from the 1960s; Speidel himself even makes a cameo in the film.
“I was descending to the world of yesterday, the world of the 19th century of bustle pads and high crown hats and Queen Victoria,” Kolchak continues. “The private world of Dr. Richard Malcolm.”
“The Night Strangler” was so popular, ABC launched a weekly TV series called “The Night Stalker” that aired for one season beginning in 1974. Later figures in sci-fi television, including “The X-Files”/”Millenium” (also set in Seattle) creator Chris Carter, cite “The Night Stalker” as a major influence.
One important point: “The Night Stalker” series that aired in 1974-1975 was not set in Seattle.
However, perhaps the time is right for a “Night Strangler” reboot, to bring Carl Kolchak back to the city that made him infamous, and to get him, finally, a better quality hairpiece.
You can hear Feliks every Wednesday and Friday morning on Seattle’s Morning News with Dave Ross and Colleen O’Brien, read more from him here, and subscribe to The Resident Historian Podcast here. If you have a story idea or a question about Northwest history, please email Feliks here.
