2004: The End of 'Frasier'
To put it bluntly and simply, Frasier is the best sitcom to be spun off from another sitcom in the entire history of television. In terms of quality humor, no one-two punch in TV history packs as great a punch as Cheers and Frasier. Line for line, performance for performance, laugh for laugh, nothing comes close. Please note, before launching into an argument, the careful wording of the phrase "best sitcom to be spun off from another sitcom." ...
What made Frasier so brilliant from the start, besides the writing, was the inspired casting of David Hyde Pierce as Niles, Frasier's equally fussy and neurotic brother. ... The rest of the cast, including John Mahoney as the Crane patriarch and Jane Leeves as the senior Crane's physical therapist, is equally gifted, but the sibling rivalry and comic similarity of the Crane brothers provide Frasier with many of its best plot lines.
—Excerpted from Dictionary of Teleliteracy: Television's 500 Biggest Hits, Misses and Events