Friends at 30: the one where a cultural phenomenon just refuses to die

Thirty years ago, today: six twentysomethings in a New York coffee bar, called Central Perk. Monica is talking about a liaison with “wine guy”. Ross’s wife has dumped him for a woman. Rachel arrives, bedraggled, in a wedding dress, having left the fiance she doesn’t love at the altar …

These are the opening scenes of the first episode of Friends, created by Marta Kauffman and David Crane, featuring main characters Monica (Courteney Cox); Ross (David Schwimmer); Rachel (Jennifer Aniston); Chandler (Matthew Perry, who died from ketamine-poisoning last year, with legal trials still to come); Joey (Matt LeBlanc); Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow). Checking back in on the pilot, it’s a jolt how young they look (who are these glossy children?). But the real shock is what happened next.

The term global phenomenon almost seems inadequate. Friends lasted for 10 years and 10 series and still generates multimillions of dollars via sundry streamers and syndications. It’s earned an estimated $4.8bn (£3.6bn) for Warner Bros. The final episode in 2004 drew 52.5 million viewers. The main cast’s fabled “all for one” salary negotiation pact meant they were each paid $1m per episode by the end.

It now boggles the mind that, at the inception of Friends, there was backroom concern about the then-novel premise: a comedy forged from a friendship group (messy love lives; turbo-sarcasm), rather than the time-honoured family setting.

Friends changed the very shape of TV comedy. It changed how people spoke to each other: the comedy syntax (particularly from wisecracking Chandler Bing) stuck fast in the real world. It doesn’t do to oversell the boundary-pushing: grunge had already happened (Kurt Cobain of Nirvana died mere months before the pilot aired). Still, in sitcom terms, Friends delivered, if not the real (tough, dirty) 1990s, than a zingy, joshing, idealised facsimile of it.

The show also lodged deep in the global cultural consciousness. The will they?/won’t they?/“we were on a break!” of Ross and Rachel. The Chandler/Joey bro-ship. The Rachel haircut (demanded in salons worldwide). Phoebe’s song, Smelly Cat. The hordes of supernova guest stars: Brad Pitt (then married to Aniston), Sean Penn, Reese Witherspoon, Jeff Goldblum, and more. And, at the sparkly aspirational core, that ever so slightly smug “Friends-ship” paradigm that was about as realistic as Monica’s cheapo New York apartment: uber-gorgeous, perma-witty friends; lolling in coffee shops; frolicking in water fountains. Here was Gen X wish fulfilment, without a price tag, delivered in half-hour segments.

With celebrations getting under way (get in line for the Friends: The One With The 30^th Anniversary Auction of on-set props), what now for the sitcom-superbrand that just won’t quit? That furthermore appears to have thus far successfully future-proofed itself against being “ghosted” or “cancelled” into ratings-oblivion. Indeed, how did Friends pull off becoming the problematic 90s behemoth we all decided to forgive?

One quirk of the Friends phenomenon is its unwavering cross-generational appeal. It’s not just popular with loyal original fans. Millennials and Gen Z wolf it down via streaming sites, though that doesn’t mean some of them don’t find the show problematic. Which tends to be portrayed as a generational failing of young people themselves (as in: judgmental; humourless; they don’t understand comedy).

Nevertheless, Friends was problematic, and in myriad ways. There was an undeniable dearth of diversity, which has now been admitted as a regret by some of the actors and writers involved. While acknowledging that Schwimmer campaigned for more diversity at the time, Aisha Tyler, who played Ross’s black girlfriend for nine episodes, commented that Friends “was reflective of a whole business that thought only white stories sold”.

There was also the now-astounding “fat Monica” high-school flashback sequences that played her size for unadulterated laughs. Elsewhere, there were gay jokes (including people worrying about being gay). Lest we forget, Chandler’s much-lampooned transgender “father” (played by Kathleen Turner). Never mind the running storyline about Ross’s demonised ex and her sour aggressive lesbian wife. All these howlers have since been noted and criticised, but, perhaps tellingly, not that many viewers noticed at the time, or reacted if they did. Not nearly enough complaints were made. In short, if Friends, one of the biggest TV comedies of all time, was problematic, then so were the rest of us. Is this why, bar the odd skirmish, Friends has pretty much got away with it? Does putting it on trial feel like trying to put the 90s and early 00s into the dock? Is there an acknowledgement that the mistakes were unintentional?

The enduring popularity of Friends is also down to the show: the extremely high quality of the writing and performances don’t date easily. Then there is the still-staunch affection for the cast members themselves, as demonstrated by the outpouring of public sorrow at the death of Perry, who had long struggled with addictions, and was the Shakespearean tragedy of the Friends story.

As for the others, arguably, it was Aniston who went into another major defining global role, but this time in real life – as “poor, childless, dumped, lonely Jen”. For far too long, Aniston was only rivalled by Madonna as one of the big misogynistic targets of the era.

Otherwise, it’s difficult to gauge three decades of post-Friends career. Obviously, they’ve all done well (Aniston’s The Morning Show; LeBlanc in Episodes, and so on), and sometimes not so well (Kudrow’s Apple TV+ reboot of Time Bandits just got cancelled).

Just as obviously, their achievements were always doomed to be dwarfed by the omnipresent scorching comedy sun that is Friends. Will the series ever die? Maybe not, until viewers stop needing it. Younger fans will doubtless be enjoying Friends for their own reasons, but, for longtime viewers, it’s one of those touchstone shows, before phones, before streamers, from yon olden days when good telly mattered, sinking deep into the existential marrow.

If, despite being problematic, Friends looks set to become the show that never (completely) goes away, it could be because, for some, it’s nostalgia-drenched therapy.

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