Towards the end of 2018, Netflix paid $100m (£78m) to extend its right to air Friends for one more year. Netflix doesn’t release viewing figures, but this confirmed what we already knew: a whole new generation is hooked on Ross, Rachel, Joey, Phoebe, Chandler and Monica.
But especially Monica. It is here that the generation gap comes in. Because if you tuned into Channel 4 every Friday night when Friends ran the first time around, from 1994, your favourite Friends character was Joey (the adorable one), Rachel (the sexy one), Chandler (the funny one) or Phoebe (the eccentric one). The Geller siblings, Monica and Ross, were the straight guys. They functioned to make the funny ones look funny. But in the second coming of Friends, since all 236 episodes arrived on Netflix in January of last year, Monica has unexpectedly found a breakout role as a style icon.
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