Are You a True Friends Fan?

Friends TV Show Summary

• Friends is an American television sitcom that aired on NBC from 1994 to 2004, lasting ten seasons.

• The show revolves around six friends in their 20s and 30s who live in Manhattan, New York City.

• The series was produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions, in association with Warner Bros. Television.

• The show was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and the original executive producers were Kevin S. Bright, Kauffman, and Crane.

• Friends received acclaim throughout its run, becoming one of the most popular television shows of all time.

• The show was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning the Outstanding Comedy Series award in 2002 for its eighth season.

• The cast members became best friends off-screen, so much so that recurring guest star Tom Selleck reported that he sometimes felt left out.

• In their original contracts for the first season, cast members were paid $22,500 per episode.

• The stars were paid $75,000 per episode in season three, $85,000 in season four, $100,000 in season five, $125,000 in season six, $750,000 in seasons seven and eight, and $1 million in seasons nine and ten, making Aniston, Cox, and Kudrow the highest-paid TV actresses of all time.

• The cast also received syndication royalties beginning in 2000 after renegotiations.

• Friends ranked no. 21 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time, and no. 5 on Empire magazine's The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time.

• The sitcom's cast members returned for a reunion special aired on HBO Max on May 27, 2021.Summary Title: Friends TV Show

• Friends is a sitcom about six friends in their 20s and 30s living in Manhattan.

• The show follows the romantic relationships, career struggles, and personal growth of the characters.

• The show stars Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer.

• The show ran for ten seasons from 1994 to 2004 and received critical and commercial success.

• The show's conception began when David Crane and Marta Kauffman pitched the idea of "six people in their 20s making their way in Manhattan" to NBC.

• The show was originally titled "Insomnia Cafe" and was later changed to "Friends Like Us" and then "Six of One" before settling on "Friends".

• The casting process involved shortlisting 1,000 actors who had applied for each role down to 75 and then further reducing them to three or four for each part.

• The show's main plotlines include Ross and Rachel's on-again-off-again relationship, Monica and Chandler's romance, and Joey's acting career.

• The show's finale sees Monica and Chandler adopting twins, Ross and Rachel finally getting back together, and the group leaving their empty apartment for a final cup of coffee at Central Perk.

• The show has been praised for its writing, acting, and cultural impact, and has won numerous awards, including Primetime Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award.The Making of Friends: Changes, Writing, Filming, Reception and Awards

Changes:

• Matt LeBlanc was not the first choice for Joey's role, but the network insisted on his casting.
• The characters were adjusted to suit the actors' personalities and strengths.
• The big love story was originally planned to be between Joey and Monica, but the idea of Ross and Rachel emerged during the pilot script.
• NBC requested that the script be changed to feature one dominant storyline, but the writers refused, wanting to keep three storylines of equal weight.
• The episode title format—"The One ..."—was created because the episode titles would not be featured in the opening credits.

Writing:

• The writers hired a team of seven young writers and used six equal characters to allow for myriad storylines.
• Most storyline ideas came from the writers, although the actors added ideas.
• The Joey and Rachel romantic interest idea was decided halfway through the eighth season.
• The season nine writers were unsure about the amount of storyline to give to Rachel's baby.
• The creators did not want Ross and Rachel to get back together so soon, so Joey's romantic interest in Rachel was suggested as a romantic impediment.

Filming:

• The first season was shot on Stage 5 at Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California.
• Filming for the series began during the summer of 1994 in front of a live audience.
• Each 22-minute episode took six hours to film, mainly due to the several retakes and rewrites of the script.
• Friends was never shot in New York because filming outside the studio made episodes less funny.
• The fourth-season finale was shot on location in London because of the series' popularity in the UK.

Reception and Awards:

• Early reviews of the series were mixed, but as the series progressed, reviews became more positive.
• Friends is often ranked among the all-time best TV shows.
• The series was nominated for 62 Primetime Emmy Awards, winning six.
• Aniston and Kudrow are the only main cast members to win an Emmy, while Cox is the only actor not to be nominated.
• The series won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Comedy Series in 2002.
• Friends consistently ranked high in the ratings in the United States.The Cultural Impact and Distribution of "Friends"

Cultural Impact

• Friends has had a significant cultural impact, with Jennifer Aniston's hairstyle being nicknamed "The Rachel" and Joey's catchphrase "How you doin'?" becoming a popular part of Western English slang.
• The series also influenced the English language, with characters using the emphasized word "so" to modify adjectives more often than any other intensifier, and Chandler's habit of ending a sentence unfinished for sarcasm also influencing viewers' speech.
• Friends has been credited for helping non-English speaking students learn the language, with a 2012 poll by Kaplan International English Colleges finding that more than a quarter of its students cited the sitcom as the best show for helping them improve their English.
• The Central Perk coffee house, one of the principal settings of the series, is part of the Warner Bros. Studio Tour Hollywood, and has inspired various imitations worldwide.

Distribution

• Friends premiered on September 22, 1994, in the coveted Thursday 8:30 p.m. time slot and was watched by almost 22 million American viewers.
• After year-long expectations that the ninth season would be the series' last, NBC signed a deal in late December 2002 to bring the series back for a final tenth season.
• In fall 2001, Warner Bros. Domestic Cable made a deal with sister network TBS to air the series in rerun syndication. Nick at Nite also acquired cable rights to Friends, which began airing in the fall of 2011.
• Friends officially ended on E4 in the UK after the channel re-ran the series since 2004. Comedy Central took over the rights to air the program from October 2011.
• Friends has been broadcast in Australia on the Seven Network, Nine Network, Network Ten, Arena, 111 Hits, 9Gem, and TVHits, and currently airs on 10 Peach and on pay TV channel Fox Comedy.
• In Canada, the series was broadcast on Global and is now syndicated to Bell Media owned CTV Comedy Channel.
• In India, the show is broadcast by Comedy Central at various times and is the most-watched English language show in the country.
• In the Philippines, the show was originally aired on ABC-5 and ETC.