Why creating a Gen Z version of TV show Friends would be difficult
By BBC, August 28, 2026No sitcom has defined its era quite like Friends, the ’90s show about six twenty-something friends living in Manhattan, which became the most popular portrait of Gen X (people born between 1965 and 1980).
Across all ten seasons from 1994 to 2004, the show’s average live viewer ratings never dropped below 20 million. The series finale alone drew around 52.5 million American viewers, making it the most-watched television episode of the 2000s.
Beyond the numbers, Friends had a huge cultural impact. It birthed haircut styles (“The Rachel”), fashion trends (slip dresses) and catchphrases (Joey’s “How you doin’?”). And its popularity is enduring: in UCLA’s Teens and Screens 2025 Report, Friends ranks 16th on a list of Gen Z’s favourite films or TV shows, alongside current hits like K-Pop Demon Hunters and The Summer I Turned Pretty.
But is there a Friends equivalent for Gen Z (people born between 1997 and 2012) that can speak to their own lives? A wave of sitcoms has been trying to replicate its vibe, zooming in on the messy personal and professional lives of twenty-somethings today.
1. Today’s challenging TV landscape
Gen Z sitcoms are competing for attention against a vast content pool and the internet’s endless scrollability. When Friends debuted in 1994, the absence of multiple screen distractions no doubt worked to its benefit. According to Activate’s 2026 Media Outlook Report, 43% of Gen Z prefer YouTube or social video platforms over paid streaming (37%) or traditional TV (12%). The second a show isn’t enriching, personalised algorithms can immediately serve something more dopamine-hitting.
2. Writers who are out of touch
Another persistent flaw in the Gen Z sitcom is the distance between their subjects and the show creators, who are invariably millennials or older. “There haven’t been too many Gen Z TV writers who have been able to break through yet,” entertainment journalist Max Gao points out. “Until more of those writers are given a platform to tell their own stories, it may be difficult to capture what it is like to be a young person in today’s social and political climate.”
Friends was also written by people a generation above its characters, but depicting today’s faster-moving youth culture is undeniably more challenging.
3. Gen Z’s despair is difficult comic material
Viewers tend to watch sitcoms as a form of comfort TV – and Friends certainly fulfilled that role. But providing comfort viewing is a struggle when Gen Z’s current situation is anything but comfortable. “This generation has come through a pandemic, economic scarcity and a political environment that is combative and they don’t trust,” as Dr Yalda T Uhls, Founder and CEO of the Centre for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA, tells the BBC.
In the US, Gen Z are experiencing the highest unemployment rate of any demographic: entry-level opportunities are narrowing, and AI is slimming the workforce. Compare this to the state of play of Gen X when Friends aired: they entered the workforce amid tech-boom optimism and polled as “remarkably optimistic as individuals”.
4. The trouble of representing diversity
The Gen Z sitcom also faces challenges in being relatable to a broad audience. According to Pew Research Centre, Gen Z Americans are “more racially and ethnically diverse than any previous generation”. Because of this, Gao says: “it can be difficult to encompass the diversity of those experiences in a single sitcom.” Contrast this with Friends, where the characters existed in a more homogeneous social circle of whiteness and heteronormativity – which was then the mainstream TV default.
5. Everything’s too online
Today’s Friends-style sitcoms cannot afford to ignore the internet’s sprawling presence in Gen Z’s life – but depicting it comes with its own problems. Overlaying text graphics on screen has become visually clunky, so these shows look for alternatives to incorporate the all-consuming nature of internet life – or not. Adults’ workaround is, on the whole, to avoid the phone screen altogether. Meanwhile, Not Suitable For Work barely mentions dating apps, which is an oversight given the show’s focus on its characters’ turbulent dating lives.
I Love LA is the only one of these shows that really centres today’s digital culture, set as it is among phone-obsessed influencers and other entertainment industry types. The show refreshingly recognises the online performativity that permeates the generation. As one influencer claims, “If you stop for a second”, you will “disappear”.