Why teens are hooked on Friends 20 years on

The one where a new generation of fans is devoted to the hit TV show three decades after it first aired... Debbi Marco takes her children to an immersive experience bringing the iconic TV sitcom back to life

- 

Usually when my 11-year-old daughter Matilda looks in the freezer, she's after an ice lolly, but this time it was something very different.

"Look it's actually there," she said, her eyes widening in delight as she swung open the freezer door to reveal a copy of Stephen King's The Shining.

As any die-hard Friends fan will know - this is exactly what you'd expect to find in the ice box in Joey and Chandler's apartment, as this is where Joey puts his copy whenever he gets too scared reading it.

While we're not on the actual set of the Friends TV show, we're at the next best thing: the Friends Experience at London's ExCel, which has painstakingly recreated the key sets and pieces from the sitcom.

These include the Central Perk coffee shop, Monica and Rachel's apartment and even the partially demolished church where Ross and Emily got married, and Ross uttered the wrong name in his vows.

SURREAL

It's a surreal experience to walk through the studio set-ups, waiting patiently to sit on Joey and Chandler's iconic brown lazyboy chairs or play a quick game of foosball. There's even a dropped cheesecake on the floor, albeit a plastic one, outside the two apartment doors causing Matilda to drop to her knees and pretend to eat, as in The One With All The Cheesecakes episode.

It seems to not matter to my children, Sam, 13 and Matilda, that this episode aired in 2001, 23 years ago, when I was just starting out in my career.

Even my grumpy teen forgets himself when he sees the white sofa lodged in the stairwell, waiting for him to grab it and shout "Pivot!" just as Ross did in 1999 when the fifth series of the show aired.