10 Reasons Why Frasier Is The Best US Sitcom In History

7. The Cameos

Moving on from the supporting cast, there were the range of smaller cameos which, and this is a compliment that can clearly be levelled at Friends and How I Met Your Mother, etc., were usually top drawer. The cameos weren't simply some film star roughing it in television-land (how times have changed) they were, again, well acted and essential to the development of the main characters. We have Nathan Lane, a Broadway actor who fits straight into the Frasier world, in Fool Me Once, Shame On You, Fool Me Twice... Then there is Robert Loggia as the scary restaurant owner Stefano, Virginia Madsen and Amy Brenneman as Frasier's 'double girlfriends' and, brilliantly, Griffin Dunne as Bob, the most annoying man in the world (with a squeaky wheelchair). On top of that, there is obviously, perhaps most brilliantly, the radio show callers which is a veritable Who's Who of theatre, TV and film and you probably wouldn't even recognise most of them. Highlights include Carl Reiner, Ben Stiller, Rosemary Clooney, Elijah Wood, Kevin Bacon, Art Garfunkel, Carly Simon, John Lithgow, Billy Crystal, Jodie Foster, John McEnroe, Ron Howard, Neil Simon, Rufus Wainwright, Helen Mirren and Rob Reiner. It's a crazy, crazy list but unlike an awful Britney Spears cameo or Bruce Willis smirking his way through an episode of Friends, these voice-cameos don't detriment the episodes in the slightest. In a way, the actors being almost anonymous only helps each one further.