Reviving Friends is like getting back together with your ex: a bad idea | Hadley Freeman

It felt, absurdly, like a chance to pretend that the past two decades hadn't happened. But trying to stop the progress of time never works

I know I need to move on, but I just cannot stop thinking about the Friends reunion. Extreme 1990s enunciation: what was that anyway? I was never a diehard Friends fan - I liked it, sure, but let's be honest, it was no Frasier. But I cannot imagine any fan of any stripe has spent the past 17 years thinking, Man, I'd love to see a Friends reunion! And by reunion' I mean have James Corden ask the actors who had the loudest laugh."

I hadn't even planned on watching it, but when the evening came around I was amazed by my sudden keenness. Ooh, Friends! Back on screen! This felt like a genuine TV event, and one that would be less miserable than the last TV event I watched, which was Prince Harry telling Oprah how completely awful his family is. But Harry's show seemed like a sitcom (Arrested Development) compared with how deflated I felt by the end of the two-hour (!) nostalgia fest.