Friends Star Matthew Perry Rebooted A Beloved Movie As A Failed Sitcom

For someone who became one of the biggest stars in the world thanks to one of the biggest sitcoms of all time, Matthew Perry knew a lot about failed sitcoms. That’s not a knock against the man whose comedy stylings are never given their proper due, having influenced an entire generation’s sense of humor. It’s simply an acknowledgement of how remarkably difficult it is to land a series that actually hits.

Prior to starring in “Friends,” Perry starred in “Home Free,” a sitcom that’s almost impossible to watch today, in which he played a bachelor who lived at home with his mom, only for his divorced sister and her two children to move home and upend his carefree life. It only lasted one season. But Perry was used to sitcoms that didn’t go beyond their first season. He also appeared in “Second Chance” (which was later retitled as “Boys Will Be Boys”) and “Sydney,” both of which were also cancelled before their first seasons ended. That’s to say nothing of the many pilots Perry shot, including “LAX 2194,” a pilot in which Perry played a baggage handler at a future version of the Los Angeles airport, a role that nearly cost the actor his role as Chandler in “Friends.”

Thankfully, Perry (who tragically passed away in 2023 at the age of 54) eventually did make it big with that beloved NBC sitcom and was immediately catapulted to megastar status. Unfortunately, that did little for his personal feelings of inadequacy — something which he discusses in detail in his memoir “Friends, Lovers, And The Big Terrible Thing.” Nonetheless, the years after Friends ended would see Perry once again struggling for a hit, and while most of his projects were short-lived, there was one sitcom which, though it was far from a “Friends”-level success, at least lasted beyond one season.

Matthew Perry remade a comedy classic that had already been rinsed dry

After “Friends” wrapped up in 2004, the ensemble all had very different experiences. Matt LeBlanc fronted spin-off “Joey,” which was cancelled after two seasons. Matthew Perry, however, initially stayed away from sitcoms, only returning to the format in 2013 with “Go On,” and like his pre-“Friends” series, it lasted just one season. He then appeared in an episode of his former co-star Courteney Cox’s show “Cougar Town” before once again trying his luck with the sitcom in 2015. This particular project was a reboot of “The Odd Couple,” which had been revisited several times since the 1965 play of the same name debuted.

When Neil Simon wrote his stage comedy back in the mid-60s, he likely had no idea it would spawn what is one of the most deceptively sprawling franchises in TV and movie history. The play debuted on Broadway in 1965 and followed two incompatible roommates, Felix Ungar and Oscar Madison. The former was a fastidious neat freak and the latter was, well, a slob, leading to one of the most enduring fictional dynamics in history.

After the play proved successful and closed in 1967, mass audiences would have a chance to experience that very dynamic when Walter Matthau reprised the role of Oscar alongside Jack Lemmon as Felix in a 1968 “The Odd Couple” movie, which Simon adapted from his play with Gene Saks directing. Once again, the mismatched pair of Felix and Oscar proved popular, and the “Odd Couple” saga was officially established.

The 1970s would see the arrival of a TV series based on the concept with Tony Randall starring as Felix and Jack Klugman as Oscar. That ABC sitcom ran for five seasons from 1970 to 75, proving that this simple concept had widespread appeal. A Saturday morning cartoon followed, before a reboot of the sitcom arrived in the 1980s. In 1993, CBS aired the made-for-TV movie “The Odd Couple Together Again,” which reunited Randall and Klugman. Hollywood even churned out a sequel to the 1968 movie with “The Odd Couple II,” which saw Lemmon and Matthau back in the roles of Felix and Oscar, capitalizing on their “Grumpy Old Men” success.

Unfortunately, the late-90s sequel very much seemed to suggest that audiences had grown tired of the franchise, but by the time Perry came to the IP, he was hoping things had changed. They sort of had, but not really.

The Odd Couple lasted longer than some of Perry’s other shows

Matthew Perry’s “The Odd Couple” took the form of a CBS sitcom which ran from 2015 to 2017. This particular effort did manage to go beyond one season, running for three seasons before CBS pulled the plug. With this being the seventh on-screen re-imagining of the story, audiences would have been within their rights to dismiss it outright, but the show also debuted almost a full 50 years after the 1968 film, which Perry claimed he watched “like 50 times” while developing the series (via Twitter).

That Walter Matthau and Jack lemmon-led comedy, rather than the ’70s sitcom, was seemingly the main inspiration behind this sitcom reboot, which featured Perry as Oscar Madison and Thomas Lennon as Felix Unger (the character’s second name had been spelled differently in the original sitcom, and it seems the writers stuck with it for the modern reboot). Perry also executive produced and developed the series, which depicted Oscar as a sportswriter and sports talk radio host whose slovenly ways don’t mesh well with Felix, a professional photographer who moves into Oscar’s apartment after his wife kicks him out.

The critical reception wasn’t great. Perry’s “The Odd Couple” wasn’t exactly one of the best TV show remakes, currently bearing a 26% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. Reviewers were mostly disappointed with the dated sitcom humor and the inescapably derivative nature of yet another “Odd Couple” revisit. That didn’t bode well for the series’ longevity, though three seasons wasn’t bad for yet another “The Odd Couple” reboot.

According to Deadline, season 2 of the show “exceeded (modest) expectations” in terms of ratings, which secured a season 3 renewal. But that third run of episodes didn’t fare nearly as well, becoming the lowest-rated CBS comedy series of that season, according to the outlet. As such, the network decided to forgo another renewal, and “The Odd Couple” was once again abandoned. Surely, it won’t be long before it returns in some form.