Abstract/Summary

This book offers a long overdue, extensive study of one of the most significant programmes in the history of television, namely Friends. This sitcom has become a cultural phenomenon, but received rather little scholarly attention thus far, and the available critical literature tends to lack in-depth analysis. Featuring original interviews with key creative personnel (co-creator Marta Kauffman, executive producer Kevin S. Bright, director James Burrows and production designer John Shaffner), the book pays detailed attention to Friends’ use of humour, performance, style and set design. It also considers the programme’s politics of representation and the critical backlash it has been receiving in recent years. Moreover, the book looks beyond Friends to consider the show’s impact on global television production and reception by viewers across a range of national contexts. The book’s central argument is that Friends has become such a seminal success because it adopts a strategy of intimacy that speaks to the ways in which its cast, narrative, style and humour continue to engage viewers, on Netflix and beyond. By exploring this strategy of intimacy through close analysis, interview testimony and engagement with relevant contexts of production, industry and consumption, the book offers a number of interventions into scholarly debates on Friends, sitcom and television.