Would a ‘black Friends’ fix it? TV’s white New York still needs a reckoning

Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman is seeking to make amends for the show’s lack of diversity — but there's still a long way to go

David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani. Picture: Warner Television

A sitcom viewer flipping channels in the 1990s would have witnessed a range of interpretations of New York City. On Cosby, the follow-up to The Cosby Show, they would have seen a mature black couple in Queens fighting an inevitable transition into retirement and old age. On the Queen Latifah vehicle Living Single, they would have seen six young black professionals in the Prospect Heights neighbourhood of Brooklyn become family while negotiating coming of age in the big city. 

On The Wayans Bros, they would have seen an overly proud black father and his two self-effacing sons somehow running a diner and a newsstand in Rockefeller Plaza despite their cross-generational immaturity.