We can receive a commission on purchases made from links.
For someone who has become one of the largest stars in the world thanks to one of the biggest sitcoms of all time, Matthew Perry knew a lot about failed sitcoms. It is not a blow against man whose comedy styles are never given by their due, having influenced the sense of humor of an entire generation. It is simply a recognition of the way it is remarkably difficult to win a series that really strikes.
Before playing in “Friends”, Perry played in “Home Free”, a sitcom which is almost impossible to look at today, in which he played a bachelor who lived at home with his mother, only for his divorced sister and his two children to move home and upset his carefree life. It only lasted a season. But Perry was used to sitcoms who did not go beyond their first season. He also appeared in “Second Chance” (which was then removed as “Boys Will Boys”) and “Sydney”, which were also canceled before the end of their first seasons. This does not mean anything of the many pilots that Perry has drawn, including “Lax 2194”, a pilot in which Perry played a replacement in a future version of Los Angeles airport, a role that almost cost the actor his role as Chandler in “Friends”.
Fortunately, Perry (who died tragically in 2023 at the age of 54) finally made room with this beloved sitcom NBC and was immediately catapulted to the status of megastar. Unfortunately, that did not do much for his personal feelings of insufficiency – something he discusses in detail in his memories “friends, in love and the great terrible thing”. Nevertheless, the years after the end of friends, Perry would again see difficulties for a blow, and although most of his projects were short-lived, there was a sitcom which, although it was far from a success at the level of “friends”, at least lasted beyond a season.
Matthew Perry redid a classic from comedy that had already been rinsed dry
After “Friends” ended in 2004, the whole all had very different experiences. Matt Leblanc managed the spin-off “Joey”, which was canceled after two seasons. Matthew Perry, however, remained away from sitcoms, returning to format only in 2013 with “Go on”, and like his pre- “Friends” series, it only lasted one season. He then appeared in an episode of the program of his former Co-Star Courtney Cox “Cougar Town” before him once again attempted his luck with the sitcom in 2015. This particular project was a restart of “The Odd Couple”, which had been revisited several times since the 1965 play of the same name.
When Neil Simon wrote his comedy on stage in the mid -1960s, he probably did not know that this would generate what is one of the most tentacular franchises in television and the history of cinema. The play made its Broadway debut in 1965 and followed two incompatible roommates, Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison. The first was a tedious neat monster and the second was, well, a Slob, leading to one of the most durable fictitious dynamics in history.
After the play turned out to be successful and closed in 1967, the mass audience would have a chance to live this very dynamic dynamic when Walter Matthau took over the role of Oscar alongside Jack Lemmon as Felix in a 1968 “The Odd couple” film that Simon adapted from his play with Gene Saks realizing. Again, the pair of Felix and Oscar incompatible turned out to be popular, and the “strange couple” saga was officially established.
The 1970s would see the arrival of a television series based on the concept with Tony Randall with Felix and Jack Klugman as an Oscar. This sitcom ABC took place for five seasons from 1970 to 75, proving that this simple concept had a widespread call. A cartoon on Saturday morning followed, before the arrival of a restart of the sitcom in the 1980s. In 1993, CBS broadcast the film made for television “The Odd Couple Together Again”, which brought together Randall and Klugman. Hollywood even produced a series of the 1968 film with “The Odd Toule II”, which saw Lemmon and Matthau in the roles of Felix and Oscar, capitalizing on their success “Grumpy old man”.
Unfortunately, the rest of the late 90s seemed to be very well suggested that the public had tired the franchise, but when Perry came to the IP, he hoped that things had changed. They had a sort of, but not really.
The strange couple lasted longer than some of the other Perry shows
“The Odd Couple” by Matthew Perry took the form of a sitcom CBS which took place from 2015 to 2017. This particular effort managed to go beyond a season, taking place for three seasons before CBS took the catch. Given that it was the seventh re-imagination on the story, the public would have had the right to reject it squarely, but the program also made its debut almost 50 years after the 1968 film, which Perry said he had watched “as 50 times” while developing the series (via Twitter).
That the comedy led by Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, rather than the sitcom of the 1970s, was apparently the main inspiration behind this restart of the sitcom, which featured Perry as an Oscar Madison and Thomas Lennon as Felix Unger (the second name of the character had been spelled differently in the original sitcom, and it seems that the writers are Modern reboot). Perry also produced and developed the series, which represented Oscar as a sports editor and animator of Radio Sports Talk whose manual manners are not based well with Felix, a professional photographer who moves into Oscar’s apartment after his wife expelled him.
Critical reception was not great. “The Odd Couple” by Perry was not exactly one of the best remakes of television shows, currently carrying a 26% critical score on Rotten Tomatoes. The criticisms were especially disappointed with the humor of the dated sitcom and the unavoidable derivative nature of another revisit of “strange couple”. This has not increased well for the longevity of the series, although three seasons are not bad for another restart of “The Odd Couple”.
According to Deadline, season 2 of the program “has exceeded (modest) expectations” in terms of odds, which obtained a renewal of season 3. But this third series of episodes did not so well, becoming the best rated CBS series of this season, according to the point of sale. As such, the network has decided to give up another renewal, and “The Odd couple” was again abandoned. Admittedly, it will not take long before it returns in a form.
