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‘Friends’ spin-off ‘Joey’ premiered on NBC on 9th September, 2004. 18.6 million Americans tuned in to watch Matt LeBlanc’s next chapter as Joey Tribbiani, now relocated to Los Angeles, alongside his sister Gina and her teenage son Michael.
But the audience steadily melted away, and NBC shunted the second season around before putting the show on hiatus, before cancelling it.
In today’s episode, Arion, Rebecca and Olly consider the delicate dance of trying to spin off a character from a massively successful ensemble comedy; discover that LeBlanc had not been executives’ first choice from the Friends cast to ‘do a Frasier’; and assess whether ‘Gunther and Janice’ would have made a more compelling sitcom…
Further Reading:
• ‘'Joey' could use a hug’ (Los Angeles Times, 2004): https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-sep-09-wk-brown9-story.html
• ‘Remembering 'Joey,' 15 Years After the Maligned 'Friends' Spinoff Ended’ (TV Insider, 2021): https://www.tvinsider.com/1010497/joey-friends-spinoff-what-went-wrong/
