Twenty-five years on, Friends is still one of the most successful television shows of all time. After it arrived on Netflix on New Year’s Day 2018, it became the most-streamed show on the internet. And, despite the fact that the final episode was broadcast in May 2004, long before the vast majority of them were born, it is the favourite TV programme of the UK’s five- to 16-year-olds.
The show’s stars are now exceedingly famous and obscenely rich. By the final series, they were each being paid $1m an episode, making Aniston, Cox and Kudrow the highest-paid female TV actors of all time.