“Look around, you guys. This was your first home. And it was a happy place, filled with love and laughter…
Chandler Bing to his newly adopted twins, as his friends and family leave his apartment for the last time.
The Bing twins would be 15 now, and September 22nd marks a quarter of a century since the “F.R.I.E.N.D.S” gang made their debut on NBC.
Twenty five years since “The One where Monica gets a Roommate”, the show hasn’t just endured, it’s exploded, reportedly earning $1 billion in syndication revenue for Warner Bros a year. Along with The Office and Grey’s Anatomy, it’s one of the most-watched shows on Netflix, with viewers around the world spending 54.3 million hours (the equivalent of 62,000 years) watching it in 2018. With numbers like that, it’s not hard to see why the streaming service reportedly paid $80 million to keep it throughout 2019. Last month, WarnerMedia announced the show will be moving to HBO Max, its upcoming streaming service, next year.
Ultimately, it’s the connection between the characters that got viewers hooked then, and keeps them coming back, particularly in an age dominated by the loneliness of living in the city and smartphones. And the show’s enduring popularity isn’t just down to a devoted fan base of nostalgic 30s or 40s, it’s also due to a new crop of binge-watching millennials as well as Gen Z-ers around the world who discover the show and see themselves in its characters and situations (even though Friends premiered before some of them were even born).
“The show is comfort food. It’s warm, it’s inviting. You want those people in your house”
Co-creator Marta Kauffman on the popularity of the show
But let’s go back in time. The year is 1993. Marta Kauffman and David Crane had not long moved to L.A., leaving behind their own group of close-knit friends in New York City. Kauffman is driving past an L.A. coffee shop full of mismatched furniture, battered sofas, and groups of young people hanging out. And Light Bulb!
Kaufman and Crane, along with Kevin Bright pitched their idea of a show “about friendship because when you’re single and in the city, your friends are your family” to NBC. At that time, NBC was on the hunt for something to capture the attention of a young, urban audience, a show to ape the success of Seinfeld (also a show about a group of friends living and working in New York). The reason was that while other 90s’ sitcoms like Roseanne, Full House, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Mad About You still focused on family and married life, Seinfeld’s set-up was still a rarity, and something people were starting to love.
But the idea was not presented under the title that we know. Between November and December 1993, they started developing the show under the title Insomnia Cafe. The title further changed to Six of One, and then to Friends Like Us (which was the last working title before it was trimmed down to Friends).
And thus, the first draft of the pilot was created on March 3, 1994, where Rachel was “Rachel Robbins,” Phoebe was more into busking, Monica was a little more cynical, Joey was kind of mean, and the show was called Friends Like Us. But beyond the superficial differences, you really do get a glimpse of the show Friends would eventually become, especially the part consisting of Ross and Rachel. Download it, read it, get nostalgic, make some coffee and start binge-watching the most popular sitcom of all time, again! (Anyway that’s how I will enjoy my weekend)
“Friends Like Us” – Pilot (First Draft)
The Film Reel 