Abstract
This chapter looks beyond Friends to consider the show’s intertextual brethren, whose different degrees of failure help to illuminate Friends’ appeal and success around the globe. An interview with Kevin S. Bright, who was executive producer for the Joey spin-off, informs the analysis of this short-lived programme, as well as an intervention into scholarly conceptualisations of what constitutes ‘failure’. The authors analyse the short-lived US format adaptation of the Friends-influenced British sitcom Coupling, which challenges established terms such as ‘creative borrowing’. The chapter then explores the reception of Friends in such diverse cultural contexts as India, Egypt and Germany and provides insights into how audiences from different socio-cultural backgrounds read the programme, and what issues may arise from audio-visual translation for non-anglophone viewers. The chapter considers Friends’ impact on global television production by exploring two ‘unofficial’ adaptations, from Iran and China, that raise interesting questions about television authorship.
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Knox, S., Schwind, K.H. (2019). The One with the Orbit of Failure: The Joey Spin-Off, Other Adaptations and the Global Reception of Friends. In: Friends. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-25429-2_6
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