First confession – I was writing my PhD in the 1990s which means I was reading and not watching. In fact, I didn’t own a television. Yet still Friends and its cast were known to me. I can remember a bff proudly showing off her “Rachel” haircut which I much admired – second confession: I had no idea what a Rachel haircut was. So, I was intrigued to attend the Friends Experience now “showing” in Queen Street.

Facts. Friends was an American sitcom which ran for 10 seasons – what, a whole decade! Bleeding obvious fact – it was immensely popular and has an IMDB rating of 8.8 – wow! Channel 10 currently has a handful of episodes available on demand.

It appears that the 1990s was a golden decade for sitcoms. If you preferred American content may have been watching Cheers (classic), Seinfeld (groundbreaking for the time), Roseanne (hero to zero), 3rd Rock from the Sun (loved it), or something called Veronica’s Closet. British tv fans may have tuned into Ab Fab (GOAT), Drop the Dead Donkey (a personal fave), Red Dwarf (okay I must’ve watched some telly as I loved this one too), Keeping Up Appearances (hmm not my cuppa).  Of course, there were other fantastic tv shows, cough: Buffy the Vampire Slayer; but we’re talking about sitcoms and Friends.  So back to the Experience.

The Experience is truly captivating. It brims with all sorts of fascinating marginalia. Copies of tv scripts – I have a deep and abiding love for the written word and was pleased to see copies, confession: after discovering every scripts are available online, I read some. Plenty of replica clothing done by award-winning lead costume designer Debra McGuire. Particularly fun are the meta moments such as a wall of Magna Doodles complete with original messages; and a section about graphic pop artist Burton Morris’s contribution to the show.  The most obvious attraction is the set deigns – each apartment is lovingly recreated, the white couch remains cocooned in the stairwell, bracketed between the opening sequence orange couch at the entrance and the Central Perk Café at the exit. Each set offers great photo ops and I imagine fans will and would spend hours oohing and aahing over familiar items. Outside the Café is merch – lots of it. Gotta say, the tee shirts are tempting.

Seriously the Experience is a lot of fun.  Not only for fans, but also for anyone old enough to remember the 1990s when the Rachel meant something, and when the Rembrandts’ “I’ll Be There for You” heralded a time to sit on the couch and watch 20-somethings live their best NYC life.

Warning – slots are filling quickly and the Friends Experience will only be here for a short time.

Uptown Queen Street Mall

Tickets Brisbane.friendstheexperience.com

60-90 minutes

All ages