Usually when my 11-year-old daughter Matilda looks in the freezer, she’s after an ice lolly, but this time it was something else. “Look – it’s actually there,” she said, her eyes widening in delight as she swung open the freezer door to reveal a copy of Stephen King’s The Shining. As any die-hard Friends fan will know – this is exactly what you’d expect to find in the ice box in Joey and Chandler’s apartment , as this is where Joey puts his copy whenever he gets too scared reading it.
While we’re not on the actual set of the Friends TV show , we’re at the next best thing: the Friends Experience at London’s ExCel, which has painstakingly recreated the key sets and pieces from the sitcom including the Central Perk coffee shop, Monica and Rachel’s apartment and even the partially demolished church where Ross and Emily got married and Ross uttered the wrong name in his vows. It’s a surreal experience to walk through the studio set-ups waiting patiently to sit on Joey and Chandler’s iconic brown lazyboy chairs or play a quick game of foosball. There’s even a dropped cheesecake on the floor, albeit a plastic one, outside the two apartment doors causing Matilda to drop to her knees and pretend to eat a la The One With All The Cheesecakes episode.
It seems to not matter to my children, Sam, 13 and Matilda, that this episode aired in 2001, 23 years ago, when I was just starting out in my career. They are still equally as enraptured by the TV show that follows the six friends through the highs and lows of their jobs, love lives and all the parts in between, that mainly involve drinking coffee – and being at the experience allows them to become part of the show itself. Even my grumpy teen forgets himself when he sees the white sofa lodged in the stairwell, waiting for him to grab it and shout ‘Pivot!’ just as Ross did in 1999 when the fifth series of the show aired.
We waltz around the experience in shared delight at seeing all familiar places that we’ve never been. We sit at the table in Monica and Rachel’s apartment, Matilda pours me a coffee in Central Perk and quickly grabs the guitar before jumping on Phoebe’s spot to pretend to belt out the hit that never was, Smelly Cat. While we are thrilled to see all the familiar props and sets, there’s also some signed scripts on walls as well as video stories with the head of costume talking about how she created the many outfits of the Friends characters.
There are also some fun facts such as the cameo made by the show’s co-creator Marta Kauffman, who sits behind Chandler on the open-top bus tour in London. It’s hard to think of another show that has experienced such continuous and unwavering success, with the original series regularly having over 20 million viewers and certain episodes topping over 50 million viewers worldwide. Yet its beginnings were quite humble, starting on September 22, 1994, with a pilot episode of six friends living in New York.
Very few people could have imagined that 30 years on with the 10 seasons of the comedy long finished, that Chandler’s one- line quips, Ross’s bumbling attempts at romance, Monica’s desire to control the fun, Rachel’s shopping addiction, Joey’s womanising ways and Phoebe’s ditziness would be just as relevant to Generation Z’s teens and tweens as they were to the original fans who are now in their 40s. While the fans are possibly younger than those who watched it the first time around (I was 15 when the show started and 22 when it came to an end) its popularity is obvious. My teen Sam finds it funny, but it’s also a great way for him to make sense of the relationships he sees unfolding around him.
“Joey makes me laugh and I like the way they tease each other,” he says. Matilda is also a big Joey fan and loves to quote him whenever she can: “It’s funny to see what goes wrong and how they deal with it,” she says. For their generation, Friends is the ultimate comfort show, offering humour but also a less complicated way of being.
Psychologist Tanith Carey, author of What’s My Teenager Thinking? Practical child Psychology for Modern Parents, explains how there’s something for everyone, regardless of their age. “For twentysomethings, Friends represents a simpler, less complicated world , before the distraction of social media, smartphones changed the way young people related to each other,” she says. “When the characters go to their local coffee bar, Central Perk, they can order coffee without having to decide between 50 varieties with 10 different types of milk.
And no one’s looking at a screen. “For teens, becoming an adult is a process of swapping your family for a tribe of friends and the characters in Friends are the perfect example of having a circle of mates who are just like family.” Along with the friendships, the lifestyle is also tantalising for young adults, who aspire to leave home and start their careers.
“It’s a nostalgic, rosy picture of what adulthood might hold for them when they leave home and get out in the big wide world,” says Tanith. “Here’s a group of effortlessly stylish young people. They have the space to be sweet, awkward and childish, while being immaculately dressed – and while living in a dream flat in New York, the world’s most exciting city.
“Plus conveniently they seem to have no trouble affording the rent – which is a very long way from the reality for young people today.” Importantly Friends doesn’t shy away from more challenging life issues such as divorce, sexuality and even porn, which adds to its appeal, although it does so very lightly. “It feels safe and totally unlike more raw and modern depictions of young people’s lives, in series like Euphoria or Skins,” says Tanith.
“There’s no swearing, nudity or sexting.” I’ve seen this appeal myself with my children as they watch back-to-back episodes on Netflix . I can see why the show appeals to them despite the fact they are far from the stage of finding jobs and living with friends.
The silliness of Joey’s chat up lines and Ross’s social errors are all a safe way of seeing that it’s okay to try and fail, although I’m trying to ignore the fact that they think I’m “exactly like Monica” with my jam-making and tendency to try to control the fun. While the slightly uncomfortable attitudes towards women and homosexuality grate on me, they seem to go over my kids’ heads. Plus I can’t deny it’s a positive role model of how friends can make mistakes, fall out but still ultimately have each other’s backs.
And as my children and the rest of the teenage Friend’s fans start their journey into adulthood, there are worse role models for them to have than Rachel, Ross, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe. The Friends Experience is on at the ExCel London now. Visit london.
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