Kelsey Grammer is heading back to NBC to star in and produce an emergency-medicine drama inspired by a real retiree who became a volunteer EMT in his 60s.
Deadline reports that Grammer will headline and executive produce Pops, a drama now in development at the network with Universal Television as the studio.
Longtime Chicago Med writer-producer Danny Weiss wrote the project. The story follows a man aged out of a successful career who jumps into emergency medicine beside first responders half his age.
That premise tracks the life of Ed Levien, a Maryland resident and executive producer on the series. After a career in advertising, Levien became a volunteer EMT in his 60s, worked the job for 12 years, and retired last fall at 76. Younger colleagues nicknamed him “Pops.”
Weiss spent 10 seasons on NBC and Universal Television’s Chicago Med, rising from staff writer to co-executive producer. He also wrote a freelance episode of Fox and Universal TV’s House, M.D. and spent four seasons as that show’s in-house medical researcher. He is a former U.S. Marine.
Executive producers are Weiss, Levien, Grammer, and Jordan McMahon, working through Grammer’s Grammnet NH Productions and 3 Arts Entertainment. Grammnet’s earlier credits include Medium and The Game.
Grammer is repped by UTA and Vault Entertainment. Weiss is repped by Echo Lake Entertainment and Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz.
The project arrives 22 years after the end of Frasier. Grammer spent more than two decades as a fixture on NBC as Dr. Frasier Crane across Cheers, Frasier, and Wings, earning four of his five Emmys for that role. He later revisited the character in the Paramount+ Frasier revival.
His hourlong credits include Starz’s Boss and Amazon’s The Last Tycoon. He will next appear in Avengers: Doomsday, due in December, reprising Dr. Henry “Hank” McCoy.
NBC is also developing a multi-camera comedy starring Grammer’s Frasier co-star David Hyde Pierce. Separately, Grammer once guest-starred with Patricia Heaton, whose CBS sitcom Carol’s Second Act cast her as a divorced mom who entered medical school and worked as a 50-something intern, another late-start medical story the industry has already tested.
Development is not a series order. No pilot pickup, shooting city, or network airdate is attached yet. What is attached is a clean premise: an older professional who refuses to idle, puts on the uniform, and works the calls.
Hollywood sells a lot of reinvention talk. Pops at least starts from a man who clocked the shifts.
