Eighteen years after Frasier ended – and nearly 30 since it began – it’s finally happened. David Hyde Pierce has found a major role rich enough to tempt him back to TV. Not Niles Crane again – not yet, anyway. To sate fans early: Pierce is thrillingly noncommittal about Kelsey Grammer’s reboot: “It’s happening, but I don’t know in what form, and I don’t know when, so I don’t know where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing. I’m certainly interested to see what they come up with.”
Which definitely isn’t a no. But before then, at least, he’s found someone worthy of his time. Someone not a million miles from Niles, in fact. In Julia, the deluxe new Sky/HBO series about hulking TV chef Julia Child (played by Sarah Lancashire), who popularized French cooking in 1960s America, Pierce stars as her husband, Paul. Paul is a snob. Fastidious, a bit weedy. He knows his burgundies and will eye-roll if you pair boeuf with beer. He’s sometimes insufferable. We come to care for him deeply.
