Definition is the first problem when one is to comment on sitcoms. What is a sitcom? Where do the boundaries lie? If we are to say that Friends is the absolute sitcom, one is left to wonder whether it constitutes a genre of its own.
The etymology of the word may explain its meaning. Sitcom is short for “situation comedy.” Therefore, a comic system related to a situation. The word “situation” is a difficult one to explain: it may be described as a display of things and people within a location. As such, the sitcom would be the comic display of things and people within a specific location. The term “location” also offers its challenges: is the location a specific set, one that never changes—as was the case in the early, original situation comedies of the 1950s and ‘60s? Or is the location a city, for example, as in the more modern, genre-bending Beverly Hills 90210? What happens if the location is central, but the action of the program happens in many other places—as occurs on the recent hit French Netflix show Call my Agent!
Another difficulty in identifying what a sitcom might mean lies in the
