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Friends is an American sitcom which originally aired from 1994 to 2004, there were 10 seasons in all and if you've never heard of the show, I'd really be quite stunned! The show made the 6 stars household names across the USA and the UK and in countless other countries too.

The seasons was written by David Crane and Marta Kaufmann who also produced the show along with Kevin Bright and it was directed on the most by James Burrows and Peter Bonerz. The production company was Warnos Bros. Television; good ole Warner Bros. for bringing this show into my and many other diehard fans' lives?!

I started watching Friends a couple of years after it was first aired in the UK. I didn't know how entertaining a show it was and how important a part of my life it was going to be when I caught an episode in the middle of seasons 3. I was hooked from the first one I watched and very quickly I had to find out more about the show and catch up on missed episodes. This was easily done as the previous seasons were being repeated at different slots during the week. I quickly caught up with what had happened since the start of the show and back then I hadn't got a DVD player so I was recording random shows on video and regularly watching them again. By the end of the show I had dozens and dozens of video cassettes with various Friends episodes on them. My obsession had started very quickly without me even realising it was an obsession. I was the same age as the characters at the time when I was watching the show so it was like they were my friends who had never met me but I knew them and liked all of them for their individual characteristics and quirks.

I've always found the way each episode was named quite amusing such as "The One With The Dozen Lasagnas" or "The One With The Candy Hearts" or "The One With The Blackout" or "The One With The Thumb"! I have seen each episode so many times that just by hearing the title of an episode I can remember what it was about! Each episode made me laugh quite a few times and even now, after having watched them all so many times, they still bring genuine laughter from me!

As I mentioned earlier, I was the same age as the Friends characters so I felt I grew with them. Through the uncertainty of their mid-20s, finding their niches in life, which career path to follow, going through relationship breakups, marriage breakups, finding love, losing love, infidelity, trying to get promoted, trying to give up smoking, yearning for more excitement in your life; but managing to stay good friends with each other throughout these ups and downs. Problems with parents, trying to prove themselves to their parents, trying not to let their parents embarrass them, working in a job you don't really like but doing it anyway as you feel you have no other choice because you have rent and bills to pay. These are every day situations dealt with in this brilliant show, sometimes sensitively, sometimes with lots of humour but one thing that always comes out is that you CAN deal with whatever life throws at you. I hope I'm not sounding overly-sentimental now but I felt so close to the Friends characters from their mid-20s onwards because I went through a lot of what they went through and I'm not saying I was really that obsessed with them that I led my life the way they did but they kept me entertained when I went through some of the worst times of my life to such an extent that I will always think of this show as one very close and dear to my heart.

Learn more about this author, Anony Mili.
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