The American sitcom Friends was created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, and produced by Bright/Kauffman/Crane Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television Studios for NBC. The series began with the pilot episode, which was broadcast on September 22, 1994; the series finished its ten-season run with the series finale on May 6, 2004, with 236 episodes. On average, the episodes are 22–23 minutes long, for a 30-minute time slot including commercial breaks.

The series narrative follows six friends living and working in New York City: Rachel Green, Monica Geller, Phoebe Buffay, Joey Tribbiani, Chandler Bing, and Ross Geller played by Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, Matthew Perry, and David Schwimmer respectively. All episodes were filmed at Warner Bros. Studios, Burbank in front of a live studio audience, except the fourth season finale, "The One with Ross's Wedding", that was filmed on location in London in front of a British studio audience.^[1]

In addition to the episodes, three specials were produced. In Friends: The Stuff You've Never Seen, broadcast following "The One with Joey's New Brain" on February 15, 2001, Conan O'Brien hosted a light-hearted discussion with the main cast on the Central Perk set – the fictional coffee house which featured prominently in the series. The special introduced outtakes from past episodes. The two-part retrospective special The One with All the Other Ones was broadcast before the one-hour series finale "The Last One" on May 6, 2004, and features clips from past episodes and interviews with the cast. All episodes have been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Netflix, and Max.

The large spike in season 2 is for the double episode "The One After the Superbowl" which aired after Super Bowl XXX.^[423]

Friends : U.S. viewers per episode (millions)

Graphs are unavailable due to technical issues. There is more info on Phabricator and on MediaWiki.org.

Audience measurement performed by Nielsen Media Research^{[lower-alpha 4]}