We are family

While love works in films, friendship is a bigger hit on telly. On the eve of Friendship Day we salute TV shows featuring BFFs

Success formula Friendship was the theme that made Sex and The City and Buffy the Vampire Slayer popular

Tomorrow is Friendship Day and while a few of us are meticulously making friendship bands with yarns of wool in our laps, some are perhaps making lunch or movie reservations with their besties. There are still others who are planning on doing a TV show marathon with their buddies and MetroPlus finds out what it is about series that involve friends that make them such a hit.

Going by the ratings and prevalence of friendship-focused shows which are conspicuously high these days, it is clear that we’ve edged out the nuclear and joint (on Indian television) families that first populated the small screen.

A TV show unlike a movie is something you watch everyday. So while a movie with love as its theme is nice, a TV show wouldn’t work as well. “Friends are what keep us ticking in real as well as in reel life,” says Mihika Dass, a collegian.

Whether it’s because they’re funny, the plot is realistic or the characters are good actors, everyone seems to have their favourite TV show that revolves around a group of friends.

Priyanka Serrao, account executive at Edelman, likes The Big Bang Theory because of “the realistic portrayal of the relationships between the protagonists of the show. Also, the show is guaranteed to make you laugh- it’s a great stress buster.”

Photographer James Kiren Joel’s list of favourite TV shows about friends includes

The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, The Exes, That 70s Show and

Caroline in the City . He explains: “The intensity and complications in their friendship, the way each problem is sorted and the fact that there are no secrets among them keep me hooked to such shows.”

While there are shows that come with the frills of a high concept or sexy garb or bureaucratic format, one episode into the show and you know that friendship is the main ingredient here. While Buffy the Vampire Slayer was only apparently about slaying the undead, Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) and her BFFs from the uber popular series, Sex and the City was only superficially about sex. Case in point is Boston Legal which was only structured around court cases. What made all of these shows compelling were the friendships. On screen and off it, at the heart of every relationship is friendship. Overt, covert, momentary, for a lifetime, between parents and kids, us and our pets, friendship is the crux of love.

And like Carrie Bradshaw put it, “The most important thing in life is your family. There are days you love them, and others you don’t, but in the end they’re the people you always come home to. Sometimes it’s the family you’re born into, and sometimes it’s the one you make for yourself.”