“Look around, you guys,” says Chandler Bing to his newly adopted twins, as his friends and family leave his apartment for the last time. “This was your first home. And it was a happy place, filled with love and laughter. But more important, because of rent control, it was a friggin’ steal!” The Bing twins would be 15 now, and Sept. 22 marks a quarter of a century since the “Friends” gang made their debut on NBC. Their floppy haircuts, enormous phones and quaint dating rituals belong to a distant past, in which coffee was seldom pumpkin-spiced and people jotted down their contact details on napkins. Yet somehow, decades on, the happy place that Chandler describes – and the 236 episodes of love and laughter that occurred there – remains the world’s favourite location for an evening’s entertainment.
The Economist: Why ‘Friends’ is still the world’s favourite sitcom, 25 years on
This photo taken on April 23, 2018 shows a puzzle with an image of the US television sitcom 'Friends' displayed on a table at the "Central Perk" coffee shop in Shanghai.
