It takes a brave person to write about a gang of 20-somethings navigating life and love in neighbouring Manhattan apartments. Sadly this is not an instant classic \u2013 it\u2019s a slice of schmaltzy pudding flopping on to a plate<\/p>\n
More than three decades after Friends launched, it is still a brave writer who puts out a show about a gaggle of twentysomethings learning to navigate life and love in a brace of unfeasibly palatial apartments in Manhattan. Brave or, perhaps, foolish.<\/p>\n
The new sitcom from Mindy Kaling (who began her writing and acting career on the US version of The Office and most recently created high school comedy Never Have I Ever<\/a> and university sitcom The Sex Lives of College Girls<\/a>) gives us five rather than six friends split between two apartments across a hallway. Two of them are people of colour rather than maintaining the Kauffman-Cranes\u2019 now infamously melanin-free approach to city life, but the keen eye can still trace the ancestry. The ear may have more trouble. Kaling\u2019s scripts try hard but rarely shine, let alone dazzle as the Friends\u2019 dialogue almost unfailingly did.<\/p>\n
![](\"https:\/\/i.guim.co.uk\/img\/media\/0c30c43c85d7c113921f3b5a9c22a840294b82ac\/680_0_2385_1908\/master\/2385.jpg?width=140&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=5f9be6fd486ea73a6a7f7475a11a3340\" "\\"Not")
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"