Review

Culture

Film & TV

Friendship

14 March 2023

7 min read

I’ll be there for you

Friends is about being friends. Not family. But also family. Sitcom writer James Cary unpicks what makes the show tick.

James Cary

James Cary is a writer of situation comedy for BBC TV (Miranda, Bluestone 42) and Radio (Think the Unthinkable, Hut 33).

Image of the apartment block from the famous sitcom Friends

The last episode of Friends was aired in the UK on Channel 4 on 28th May 2004. You may have been one of the 8.6 million people who watched the hour-long farewell special.

It marked the end of an era which began when the first episode had aired on NBC on 22nd September 1994. The Berlin Wall had come down, the Cold War had thawed out and Francis Fukuyama had recently published The End of History and the Last Man. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre Life were still standing. Life was good. Eat, sip coffee in Central Perk and be merry. One day, sociologists may study the effect Friends had on the popularity of Starbucks.

For a whole decade, we became intimately involved in the lives of these six much-loved sitcom characters – and Gunther. No-one cared about Gunther. He was in love with Rachel. Big deal. Who wasn’t? ‘The Rachel’ became the name of an internationally known haircut. Jennifer Aniston became world famous, eclipsing movie stars who queued up to be in Friends. We’re talking about A-List movie stars who didn’t do television. This was the 90s. Movie stars were above the everyday, story-of-the-week, dreary medium of television, especially corny, studio sitcoms.

Everyone wanted in on Friends. So Central Perk was graced with the presence of Brad Pitt, Julia Roberts, Bruce Willis, Reese Witherspoon, Tom Selleck, Elle MacPherson, Gary Oldman, Robin Williams, Billy Crystal, Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Helen Hunt, Danny Devito. They were all great. But we didn’t love them. We loved Chandler, Monica, Phoebe, Joey, Ross and Rachel. They were, well, our friends.

'It’s like your favourite biscuit, burger or takeaway. You know what you’re getting. You love it. It’s the same every time.'

Reliably funny

Why? How? What was the appeal? Let’s just acknowledge one key reason: it was really funny. It’s reliably funny. I can still remember the thrill of excitement on a Friday. The whole evening was planned around watching Friends because I knew it would not disappoint. And that’s what the audience is looking for. It’s like your favourite biscuit, burger or takeaway. You know what you’re getting. You love it. It’s the same every time. An episode of a sitcom is meant to be that kind of snack. It’s familiar and comforting. I should know this. I’m a sitcom writer.

I remember Friday 28th May 2004 extremely well. On BBC1, my episode of My Family was being aired. The guest star wasn’t Sean Penn or Ben Stiller. It was a brilliant but not-yet-very-famous Peter Capaldi. Ironically, he was playing someone who was as famous as some like Colin Firth. On My Family, we had to manufacture glamour. Friends just had it. It had so much, it didn’t know what to do with it.

My episode of My Family still pulled in 4.48 million viewers. That seems like a lot now, but the safe, mainstream British family sitcom was no match for the achingly cool residents of Manhattan swapping gags over their lattes.

'But our hearts yearn for that lifestyle. It’s a metropolitan Neverland. We know it’s not real.'

Aspirational

Friends is achingly cool. That’s ‘aspirational’ in marketingese which, in plain English, means ‘unrealistic’. There is no way those characters could afford to live in those flats in Manhattan. Monica’s place is neatly explained away through some aging relative, but Chandler’s flat across the hall cannot possibly be within his reach, especially as his flatmate is an actor. But no-one cares. We know people aren’t that funny. We know that life isn’t so neat. We know that you just never get a seat on the sofa in that coffee shop. But our hearts yearn for that lifestyle. It’s a metropolitan Neverland. We know it’s not real. We get it. It’s a sitcom.

But times – and hairstyles – are different now. Plenty of sitcoms come, do well, and go, but aren’t watched two decades later (see The Brittas Empire, Brushstrokes and Goodnight, Sweetheart). Friends is still huge. It’s worth so much money that if I quoted some numbers at you about syndication deals, they would be meaninglessly large. You might as well say that the rights to 236 episode of Friends have proven to be worth at least one brand-new state-of-the-art aircraft carrier with a ten year service contract.

That’s because, despite exciting new shows like Stranger Things, Andor or The White Lotus, people are still watching Friends, including teens and twenty-somethings who feel this is ‘their’ show. Even though it was my show.

I was there for them

In the late 1990s, I was in my 20s, unmarried and living in London. I felt like this was a show aimed squarely at people like me. And indeed it was. This is what Friends is really about: that stage in your life when the most important people are your friends. Your friends are your ersatz family. Many times over, the opening theme song has The Rembrants singing the refrain “I’ll be there for you”.

Ross, Monica, Rachel, Joey, Chandler and Phoebe are living in Manhattan away from the families that raised them. And they’ve not started their own families yet. Or at least, they’ve failed to start families. It’s all there in the very first scene of the very first episode. Monica is talking about going on a date. Chandler recalls a dream in which a phone rings and it’s his mum – who never calls. Ross says his wife has finally moved out and is a lesbian. And then Rachel runs in wearing a wedding dress. She’s decided not to get married to Barry after all. Right now, she needs friends.

Rachel:       …you're the only person I knew who lived here in the city.

Monica:       Who wasn't invited to the wedding.

Rachel:        Ooh, I was kinda hoping that wouldn't be an issue...

They are there for each other for the next ten years. And that’s what many of us are looking for at a certain stage of life.

A show as well-written and funny as Friends will always have appeal to a culture containing a significant proportion of ‘anywheres’. That’s the name given to the mobile graduate class by David Goodhart in his brilliantly observant book, Road to Somewhere, published in 2017. The ‘anywheres’ are those who leave the support of extended families at home (like the ones you’d see in The Royle Family) to study at university in a city in another part of the country, and then move to another city for employment. People in that situation need friends. Streaming episode after episode of Friends might give you that feeling, along with lots of beautiful people and some really good jokes.

Friends are Family

Some argue, however, that families are so fundamental to our society, that many sitcoms are essentially families when it comes down to it. This idea was broached by Mitch Hurwitz on Julie Klausner's podcast How Was Your Week. The creator of the sublime Arrested Development, Hurwitz said, "At one point I remember learning that there was this classic archetype of matriarch, patriarch, craftsman, and clown."[1] It’s not much of leap to map this onto a nuclear family of a mum, dad, older sibling and younger sibling.

In a British context you might explain the classic Porridge this way. Fletcher is the big brother to Godber, the naïve, goofy younger brother. The patriarch is the strict disciplinarian, Mr Mackay, whereas the gentler prison warden, Mr Barraclough, is the mother.

Friends contains all kinds of familial relationships, beyond Ross and Monica being brother and sister. Monica is like a big sister to Rachel, who needs to grow out of her sense of entitlement. Chandler is like a big brother to wayward Lothario Joey. Phoebe is like a strange, wise-but-crazy mother to them all. Ross is often the responsible, sensible dad telling everyone to calm down.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see these familial relationships around us. In Christianity, God is familial within himself, being Father and Son. He made the first man to be married to the first woman. Genesis, the foundational book of the Bible, is the original family saga, with siblings who fight and cheat – and kill. The stories create all kinds of patterns that aren’t just recognisable in sitcoms like Friends but in our own complicated lives and fractured families.

'We aren’t comrades, amigos or fellow worshippers. We are brothers and sisters. We are responsible for each other.'

In the New Testament, we read how Jesus walked among us, called his followers brothers and sisters. Christians still do that today. In the church, we aren’t comrades, amigos or fellow worshippers. We are brothers and sisters. We are responsible for each other. So when churches go wrong, it’s so painful and damaging because the relationships run much deeper much faster.

Even so, if you’re in a city, and looking for family support, you could do a lot worse than step into a church. Anyone who goes to church will tell you that it’s the oddest bunch of people replete with dated hairstyles from the 1990s with plenty of, frankly, unbelievable characters. It’s the Church’s best kept secret: community. A whole network of people who are there for you. After all we belong at home with family. That’s where Friends ended up in “The Last One", also known as "The One Where They Say Goodbye". Monica and Chandler are setting up home for the twins. Finally, Ross and Rachel are together and will surely be husband and wife. And Joey gets a spin-off. After all, it is show-business.

Review

Books

Community

Culture

15 November 2023

4 min read

Giving voice to those on the edge

A nervy, precarious read echoes the lives of outsiders across Europe. Simon Burton-Jones reviews Ben Judah’s This is Europe.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A grandmother is embraced by two grandchildren.

Nino, from Georgia, embraces her grandchildren after their mother's death.

Ben Judah.

In The Dream of Europe, Dutch historian Geert Mak takes on the continent’s twenty-first century story.

There’s something contradictory, he says, about writing the history of an era when you’re right in the middle of it, of a world in which you’re fully involved.

His attempt to do this is built round three great socio-economic tremors: the global financial crash of 2008, the ensuing Greek debt crisis of 2009 and following years and the migrant emergency of 2015. It is a long, involved work.

Ben Judah has tried something very different in This is Europe (Picador, 2023). Adopting the style of his award-winning This is London, he tells the continent’s story via twenty-three disparate individuals. From Turks to Spaniards, Georgians to Swedes and Poles to Serbs, if there is one thing shared most in common, it’s the sense of outsiders trying to make their way from the edge of life to a place of security, even belonging.

History is having its makeover in the attention given to ordinary, prosaic, unseen lives that are lived in the shadow of bigger themes. Judah is not alone and not the first to deliver this, but it is a welcome departure from the grand sweeping narratives and ideologies by which the story of Europe has customarily been told.

He begins with a Dutch harbour pilot, Jelle, who boards and guides container ships into port. It is Europe’s consumer gateway. Jelle observes: ‘What rubbish is actually in these containers?’ It’s toys. TVs. Chairs. Tables. Bicycles. Shampoo. Only rubbish.

But the commentary on Europe’s excesses ends there and there is no logical progression in the book from seaport to city centre. Judah instead jumps from one location to another and tells each individual story in a staccato delivery that lends a sense of immediacy and urgency to their lives. It makes for a nervy, precarious read.

There is the resentful Romanian lorry driver whose account lifts the lid on the sordid risks long-distance jobs supply. The Latvian teenage girl who slips into online sex work, satisfying the fantasies of older men across the world but paying for her education along the way. The thoughtful Belarussian family that defies President Lukashenko and pays a heavy price. A young Turkish woman whose romance with an Austrian boy seems doomed to failure until the final moments. The Russian gas worker whose stint in the Arctic circle has a hint of the Gulag about it. A sex-obsessed Syrian refugee who makes it in the world of porn.

This latter case of the Arab porn star is indicative of Ben Judah’s journalistic style. The seemingly soulless promiscuity and infidelity carries no authorial judgment. Ibrahim escapes the war-ravaged Middle East, is subject to racist humiliation, has sex with anyone who is up for it and is about to be made homeless when he finds a way into an online Arab market in porn. It is part American dream and part pulp fiction set against the backdrop of conservative family Budapest. We are left wondering what to make of it, which is probably Judah’s intention.

Geert Mak speaks of Europe as a great project by free citizens who tried to take the course of history into their own hands instead of merely submitting to it; projects with their origins in the Enlightenment ideals of human rights, liberty, equality and fraternity.

Mak’s dreamy aspiration has just enough about it to attract outsiders but its values when probed are as malleable as playdoh. When pressure is applied, is it possible to say that Europe has cohesive and durable moral values, ones derived from its history? The liberal individualism drawn from the left, where identity has become more distinctive than class, is suspicious of religion that creates hard boundaries, and of objective moral values that constrain behaviour. The right, whose neo-liberal market forces have corroded the very family structures it claims to support, is wary of religion that champions diverse communities. The impact of the left and of the right in these ways is felt in the personal stories of Judah’s book. As unseen forces draw people to poles like filings to magnets, is there a way of transforming these emphases?

There is a relational view of life, perhaps buried deeply in the European Christian Democratic tradition, that values the person in community and the quality of our relationships at every level over ever-expanding GDP, that sacred cow of post-war politics. Where unity and diversity can be held in a creative partnership as we respond to the call to love others as we love ourselves. But it needs clear policy edges that rescue it from pious bromide.

In This is Europe we meet people who are deeply human and equally scarred, often by other people and the forces over which no-one seems to have control, who find their hope and meaning in the relationships they form and through which they make community. Further to the east, Belarussian author Svetlana Alexievich has spent a lifetime teasing out ordinary stories of the Soviet Union, from the veterans of Afghanistan to the victims of Chernobyl via the trauma of the nineties. Hers is a more discursive tale than Judah’s but carries the same sense of disorientation, loss and stoic hope.

Europe cannot be summed up, but Judah, in turning to its edges and listening patiently and empathetically to those who only want to make their way against the odds, inhabits the ethic of scripture in giving a voice to the voiceless. If its stripped back, breathless style carries echoes of Mark’s Gospel, the attention he gives to those in existential pain is St John’s. He calls them each by name. The moral question facing Europe is whether we really want to know their stories.