FRIENDS HASN'T CHANGED - WE HAVE

From the Mirror.co.uk - FRIENDS IN NEED OF LAUGHTER

"FRIENDS IN NEED OF LAUGHTER May 14 2004

By Anthony Harwood

TOP US sitcom Friends was blasted as 'not very entertaining, clever or original' by test audiences 10 years ago.

The hugely successful TV series, which has just ended in the US, might never have got off the ground if NBC studio bosses had listened to viewers who branded the show 'weak'.
Courtney Cox's Monica fared best but audiences said her appeal was below desirable levels for a lead.
Lisa Kudrow's Phoebe and Matthew Perry's Chandler had 'marginal appeal', while Rachel, Ross and Joey - played by Jennifer Aniston, David Schwimmer and Matt Le Blanc - scored even lower.
One group of adults aged 35 and over felt the group 'did not really care about each other the way real friends would'.
They found the characters smug, superficial and self-absorbed.
The 1994 test audiences gave Friends a rating of 41 out of 100 which was termed 'weak' - the same given to another huge hit US series, Seinfeld."

Friends is a formulaic sitcom. Its characters, settings, plots, themes and styles have all remained essentially the same. The staus quo is returned to at the end of each episode. Why has it remained so popular for so long? Were the test audiences WRONG? Hardly. Life has imitated art. We have become as facile superficial and shallow as our TV idols, and greedily soak up our own reflected images each week as we imagine seeing our own lives extend before us. Then let us briefly pause to remember the demise of the $6million troubadors. Friends is dead. Cheers, applause and whistles please. May it never return