Friends left behind

Once again, rumours that the perkiest circle of friends in Manhattan have drunk their last latte together have proved unfounded as the cast of Friends have signed for a 10th series.

Despite insisting for several years that the time had come to make room for other projects, they've been lured by a modest pay rise of £175,000 an episode, upping their individual salaries to £800,000 per show.

The six stars - returning to our screens tomorrow night in the ninth series - have become so indispensable to the winning blend of gossip, romance and witty ripostes, they can hold NBC to ransom.

But while the Friends characters have worked perfectly within the confines of Central Perk and a tightly written half-hour script, on their own, out in the real world, it's a different story. Almost every film featuring someone from the show seems to have bombed.

Matt LeBlanc has reproduced Joey's dumb affability in every film he's been in. In Lost in Space he played a dumb space pilot. Charlie's Angels saw him playing ... a dumb, unsuccessful actor. Typecast? Moi?

Matthew Perry, goofy, hapless, and accident-prone as Chandler, has stuck to the formula in She's Out of Control and The Whole Nine Yards. But what works in Friends becomes tedious, laboured slapstick when strung out over a whole feature.

It goes without saying that no one has heard of - let alone seen - Flight of the Intruder or Wolf. But the real indignity for David Schwimmer (aka, doe-eyed, nerdy Ross) was when the widely publicised film The Pallbearer went almost straight to video obscurity after damning reviews.

There was worse to come. Six Days Seven Nights earned him headlines like "Schwimmer sinking fast". Possibly the final nail was hammered in with Apt Pupil, where it was difficult to get beyond the distracting acquisition of a dodgy moustache.

The women have fared slightly better. Courteney Cox did well with Scream, but her character, Gale Weathers, was still just an uptight cousin of the anal Monica and her film career recently nose-dived with 3000 Miles to Graceland, a Las Vegas heist movie in which her role as a slutty, amoral, single mum didn't quite fly with Monica's perkiness.

Lisa Kudrow did a good job of straight and sardonic rather than kooky and cute in Analyze This and The Opposite of Sex. But both parts lacked a certain je ne sais quois (Phoebe's wacky observations and one-liners, perhaps?).

There is one Friend who is excelling, however. Okay, Picture Perfect and She's the One were cheesy, and Rachel never seemed far away. But given that Jennifer Aniston's film debut was in Leprechaun, a comedy-horror flick in which she was pursued by an axe-wielding midget, she's certainly come a long way. If reviews of her latest flick, The Good Girl, are anything to go by, the future is even brighter.

Aniston's portrayal of Justine, a small-town Texas cashier trapped in a stale marriage, has won critical praise - and she has thrown off the shackles of the perfectly coiffed Rachel. However, Aniston aside, it looks like the cast of Friends have made the right decision in having one more cup of coffee for the road. In fact, perhaps most of them should stick to their day jobs for as long as they can.