Greatest neighbours from cult TV series
Good neighbours are often more than just neighbours – they're helpers, advisers and good friends who are there when you need them. Whether they live next door, in the same building or in the same street, quite a few TV neighbours have grown really dear to our hearts over the years of their series. Let's take a look back at the most lovable, funniest, most bizarre and sometimes also most irritating neighbours from TV series.
FRIENDS
"I'll be there for you": Few people have never heard of Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe. The popular characters are the iconic friends among neighbours and made Friends one of the most successful sitcoms of all times. The six were neighbours or flatmates in some form or another over a ten-year run. Viewers were privileged to share the friends' personal and professional highs and lows against the backdrop of Manhattan. And they would have loved to drop by for a coffee at Central Perk.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES
Wisteria Lane was home to one of the most famous TV series neighbourhoods: this is where friends Bree, Susan, Lynette and Gabrielle lived. Their daily lives as housewives were anything but boring because of the vast array of rumours, intrigues, love affairs and dark secrets in this street ... Despite that – or maybe because of it – this neighbourhood was always very appealing to the viewer.
THE FLINTSTONES
What would Fred and Wilma Flintstone have been without their lovely neighbours and best friends, Betty and Barney Rubble? In their company, the Flintstone family engaged in many adventures in the Stone Age village of Bedrock, which wasn't much different from the 20th century. Watching the two neighbouring families trying to reconcile work and family life was amusing and endearing at the same time. The Flintstones was the biggest cartoon series hit for many years, until The Simpsons came along. Which takes us to the next neighbourhood...
THE SIMPSONS
What would Fred and Wilma Flintstone have been without their lovely neighbours and best friends, Betty and Barney Rubble? In their company, the Flintstone family engaged in many adventures in the Stone Age village of Bedrock, which wasn't much different from the 20th century. Watching the two neighbouring families trying to reconcile work and family life was amusing and endearing at the same time. The Flintstones was the biggest cartoon series hit for many years, until The Simpsons came along. Which takes us to the next neighbourhood...
THE BIG BANG THEORY
The sitcom about brilliant flat-sharing physicists Dr Sheldon Lee Cooper and Dr Leonard Leakey Hofstadter finished not long ago. For twelve seasons, their friends engineer Howard Wolowitz and astrophysicist Dr Rajesh Koothrappali also popped in and out of the apartment. The four nerds conformed above all to the old cliche of lacking skills in dealing with the female gender. When waitress Penny moved in opposite, the lives of the oddball scientists were turned upside down. Gradually, the mismatched neighbours became friends, providing the audience with many, many funny moments.
SEINFELD
In contrast to the underlying positive mood of other comedy series, the dominant note of Seinfeld was cold cynicism. In this popular 1990s sitcom, the four New York friends Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer quarrelled over minutiae of everyday existence and the vanities of life. The show was mainly set in Jerry Seinfeld's apartment, the door to which was apparently never closed, with his neighbour Kramer constantly rushing in unannounced. Jerry really had his hands full with this nightmare neighbour: Kramer ate his food, settled comfortably in front of his TV, lost his things ... And thanks to his special nature, still always remained part of the group.
LINDENSTRASSE
The TV era of Lindenstrasse ended in March this year after 34 years and 1,757 episodes. In Germany’s oldest and most successful TV series, everything revolved around the residents of Lindenstrasse in Munich and their everyday lives. Families, couples and singletons experienced all kinds of ups and downs here as neighbours. Viewers could share the joys, fears, problems, hopes and desires of the neighbourhood, soap-opera style. An entire generation grew old along with Mother Beimer and co.
FULL HOUSE
The popular 1990s sitcom was about widower Danny Tanner, who had his hands full bringing up his three high-spirited daughters, D.J., Stephanie and Michelle. His brother-in-law Jesse and best friend Joey helped him to get the everyday chaos under control, but were rarely successful. Without Kimmy Gibbler, the very, very annoying daughter of a neighbour and D.J.'s best friend, however, Full House would only have been half as comical. With her unannounced visits and exhausting and cheeky personality, she often brought the Tanner family to the brink of despair – and made the viewers laugh.
KING OF QUEENS
They're not really neighbours as such, since they lived under one roof, but Doug Heffernan's father-in-law Arthur Spooner was the prototype of the whining neighbour. After Arthur accidentally burned his house down in the sitcom's pilot series, Doug and his wife Carrie were forced to let him move into their basement. Arthur's stubbornness and constant complaints drove the already argumentative couple completely bananas. But the quirky "basement neighbour" in The King of Queens also made for many wonderful family moments in the house.
