International Friendship Day: The BEST TV Shows About Friendship to Add to Your Watchlist
International Day of Friendship is coming up on July 30th. A designated, official day that was first proclaimed in 2011 by the United Nations General Assembly.
International friendship day is a time where we take a step back and appreciate the friends we have and look to foster friendly relationships around the world. The aim is to promote peace, love, and happiness within all communities.
Friendship is an important part of our lives, whether you have a large group of friends or one or two really close friends who are always there for you. It is thought that you begin to recognise friendship as early as 9 months old, you’re more likely to quit a bad habit if attempting to do so alongside your friends, and we spend a lot of our spare time socialising. It is important to get friendship right.
How Important Is International Friendship Day?
Making new friends as a student is a part of growing up. You’ll create a new support network wherever you end up in life, and it is likely that you’ll have different friendship groups for different times in your life. The friends you make in your student accommodation at university might be different to those you make during your career.
The modern friendship spans large distances, larger than ever before. Whereas in the past, your friends were only reachable via telephone, or by writing letters or postcards to be sent between you, technology has improved so much that we are always in contact with who we want (and need) to be.
It is also easy to make new friends online, sometimes never meeting them physically in person. This brings its own problems however, with friends sometimes falling out over things that have been posted online. Awareness, care, and consideration for your friends and others should always be applied when thinking about how we interact with each other in the modern age.
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Watching TV With Friends
Now, back to the fun times of friendship! One of the ways we spend quality time with our friends is to watch TV together. This is especially true of the friends we live with or spend most of our time with.
Relaxing and recharging our batteries during downtime at university is important. Watching your favourite TV boxset, on your favourite streaming service, with your favourite person(s) is a great way to relax and to deepen the connection you’ve made with your friends.
This international friendship day, why not watch some of the best TV shows ever made about friendship? We’ve put a handy list together for you so you can add these to your watchlist.
TV Shows About Friendship
The show you’ll all think about first is Friends. A global smash at the time, and a show that has filtered down through generations due to its presence every day on TV and now streaming services. It’s the pinnacle of friendship TV for sure, but what else should you add to your watchlist?
Insecure
Creator of the show, writer, and star Issa Rae is the heart and soul of this show. It showcases how Issa’s character develops over the course of her late 20s and through into her mid-30s. It’s a fun, funny, political show full of laughs, great music, and a clear vision of Los Angeles through the eyes of a group of friends that have been through everything together from college and into adulthood.
We follow Issa through the ups and downs of romantic relationships, crappy jobs, to a career she loves and has created for herself, from a struggle to success.
The core of the show though is the dynamic between her main group of friends – bestie Molly (the highflyer), Tiffany (the solid relationship gal), and Kelli (the wild funny one who actually has it all figured out). There aren’t many shows like this that display an honest portrayal of strong, black women who are open and vulnerable about their insecurities.
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Stranger Things
Maybe the biggest TV show of our time, possibly ever? Stranger Things has become bigger and better with every season, scaring the life out of us, and pulling on our heart strings at every turn. We’re transported to the small town of Hawkins, in the 1980s where a group of kids go looking for their missing friend. Friendship has always been the main driver behind everything that makes it so good though, hasn’t it? The young kids may have grown into young adults over the last few years, but it all began with the group of boys, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Will.
It is as accurate a portrayal of young teens moving into adolescence that we’ve seen on TV, and we’ve seen different types of friendships emerge through the series, with characters such as Eleven, Max, Nancy, Steve, Robin and Jonathan.
Even the adult friendships are compelling. When you throw in the dark sci-fi elements, the monsters, super-powers, straight-up comedy and the rom-com angle, you’ve got everything you need from a great television show.
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New Girl
New Girl was about a young woman leaving her old life behind and moving into a room in apartment that already had two guys living in it. A simple premise, one that’s been done a whole host of times over the years.
Where New Girl did well, was that it showed how no matter how old you are or your personal circumstances, you can make new friends, real strong friendships that last. Although over time, as the characters moved into their 30s and had more serious lives and romantic relationships, it was always at its best when the focus was on the friendships.
Jess and Nick were on and off, both Nick and Winston were always weird, Coach came back and gave us laughs, and Cece and Schmidt settled down together too. The initial premise was that of friendship and that stayed throughout the show, a genuine warmth to it with heart and joy in most episodes.
You’ll be left with that fuzzy feeling after binging on the whole show with your friends.
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Broad City
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson hit the jackpot with Broad City. It’s funny, relevant, bizarre, and shows how sometimes your BFF is the most important person in your entire life. This is especially true if you’re living in a big, unfamiliar city.
These guys were working their way through life in New York City, but it could apply to you and your best mate sat in your student accommodation in a town or city in the UK.
Broad City is weird, really weird. The girls get into scrapes in every weird alternative part of New York life. It is entirely relatable though, as life is strange isn’t it. They are best friends who have seen the weird and uncomfortable moments, have been embarrassed in front of each other, but are always there with support.
This international friendship day, watch Broad City and realise you are friends with the right person for you – they’re sat next to you laughing their butt off to the gals on screen. Yas Queen!
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Euphoria
A show that doesn’t shy away from the dark, gritty, dramatic storylines. Euphoria has shocked that’s for sure, with sex, drugs and scandal a huge part of the show.
Whether you’re watching a character have a manic episode, fall into the depths of despair with a drug habit, or discover and engage with sexuality in its many forms, the basis of the show revolves around the different friendships, both healthy and unhealthy.
We all know what it was like to be in High School, and how you had the perception of the different social hierarchies within that. Euphoria highlights how every person is going through something, and that we all need friendship to see us through dark moments at times.
It is a unique show, one that you probably have to be in the right mood for, but it is well written, with superb acting from Zendaya and the rest of the cast.
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Friends
The ULTIMATE TV show about friends. Running for 10 seasons from 1994 till it ended in 2004, Friends was the big cheese of telly in the 90s. The standard and format from which every other sitcom has tried to copy since.
Friends was about six friends in New York City, centred around their nearby coffee shop Central Perk. Joey, Chandler, Ross, Rachel, Monica, and Phoebe became our friends. We love them and their quirks deeply.
Over the course of ten years, we watched the group of friends fall in and out of love with each other (and outside characters), we watched them grow into their careers (even if we have no idea what Chandler does!), we watched them pivot, pretend to live in Yemen, sing about smelly cat, and watched Joey wearing all of the clothes.
You have to watch Friends on International Friendship Day – it would be wrong not to!
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You’ve reached the end of our blog on The BEST TV Shows About Friendship to Add to Your Watchlist – don’t be too gutted! This international friendship day, get together with your closest friends and get down to some of your favourite TV shows about friendship.
It’s the best way to spend some time together and make the most of your BFF. Cuddling up together with some snacks, laughing hard at some of the funniest sitcoms, and shedding some tears over the gritty dramas.
If you do watch any of our recommendations, let us know what you thought of them or tag us in any of your movie night pictures @_homesforstudents. We love to see you guys having fun and celebrating one of the best things in life, friendship!
You should read our Secret Dating Guide for University Students next.
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