Friends: David Schwimmer is most underrated actor in sitcom, professor claims

Schwimmer is a master of slapstick comedy, says Dr Simone Knox, an Associate Professor in Film and Television at the University of Reading

Friends fans have had 25 years to pick their favourite character from the sitcom – but what about their favourite performer?

David Schwimmer, who played Ross Geller, just might be the most underrated comedian on the show, according to Dr Simone Knox, an Associate Professor in Film and Television at the University of Reading who has praised Schwimmer’s ”physicality, vocal delivery and comic timing”.

Dr Knox and Kai Hanno Schwind, an associate professor and television comedy expert at the Kristiana University College in Oslo, analyse the TV show in a new book titled Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom.

“Schwimmer’s performance frequently draws on slapstick, which has often been regarded as one of the more basic forms of humour, but this does not explain its widespread appeal,” says Dr Knox.

“This dismissal, by audiences, critics or scholars, neglects to explore and assess the challenges and intricacies of a successful physical comedic performance, and the particular skills and craft involved, which are prevalent in a number of scenes in Friends, especially those involving Schwimmer.”

The academic points to Schwimmer’s background in theatre (which he studied at Northwestern University in Chicago), which she links to his awareness of the opportunities and challenges that present themselves when filming a multi-camera series such as Friends, and his ability to manage them in front of a live audience.

“This is particularly visible in Ross’s many slapstick moments in which Schwimmer’s strength of physicality, vocal delivery and comic timing are used particularly well,” she adds.

Dr Knox points to the 11th episode of the show’s fifth season, “The One With All The Resolutions”, to illustrate Schwimmer’s comedic skills.

In this episode, Ross wears a pair of leather trousers on a date but ends up feeling too hot. He goes to the bathroom, where he intends to take off the garment for just a moment – only to find out that it’s impossible for him to pull the trousers back up.

What follows is a sequence of about three minutes that captures Ross’s frantic efforts to get back in his trousers (using a combination of powder and lotion), which fail miserably.

In this moment, says Dr Knox, “Schwimmer realises the slapstick and heightened physical comedy through not only strong physical skills – embarrassment is often explicitly hinged around Ross’s physicality and the materiality of his being – but also nuanced acting choices grounded in realism and naturalism, asking his audience to relate to Ross’s only too human dilemmas, which works to support the programme’s strategy of intimacy.”

Friends: A Reading of the Sitcom will be released on 7 October through Palgrave Macmillan.