By David Flynn

This is the one tv series that everybody knows about. Friends was very popular when it was on the television airwaves, and you didn’t have to watch it to know the characters and even the storylines because the series was a regular talking point among workplace colleagues and in the everyday media.

Friends was one of the most well-liked tv comedy series ever produced in America. Today its many episodes are still screened daily throughout the world.

It was a sitcom very much about New York of the 1990s and early 2000s. It featured six single characters aged from their mid-20s to mid-30s that were working in the city, and were busy in their spare time with their love lives. They also seemed to hang out with each other in a busy coffee shop called Central Perk.
The six actors were almost total unknowns before they starred on the Friends pilot episode, but they quickly became among the best known Hollywood stars of the past twenty-five years.

Jennifer Aniston played Rachel, Courteney Cox played Monica, Lisa Kudrow played Phoebe, Matt LeBlanc played Joey, Matthew Perry played Chandler and David Schwimmer played Ross.

The three male and three female characters had many romances throughout the hit series ten-year run, and by the time the series ended, two couples (after many flirtations) emerged from the group.

Friends premiered on NBC in America in Autumn 1994, and became an instant hit on Thursday nights at 8.30 pm, partly because it had no great competition except for the crime series, Due South, on ABC. Friends was helped by coming on after another hit comedy, Mad About You, and it was on just before the classic sitcom, Seinfeld.

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