TV Review: Hulu's "Not Suitable for Work" is the "Friends" Successor You've Been Waiting For
Warner Bros. Television struck gold with Friends, a series whose cultural footprint has only grown in the decades since it aired its finale. Many shows have attempted to recapture that particular magic — ABC's Happy Endings came closest, and FX's Adults made a strong recent case — but Hulu's Not Suitable for Work may be the most confident swing yet. Created by Mindy Kaling and produced in association with Warner Bros. Television, it wears its influences openly without ever feeling derivative. This is the show a generation of Friends fans has genuinely been waiting for.
The setup is deceptively simple: two New York City apartments across the hall from each other, one occupied by the men and one by the women. The men are longtime friends — med student with acting dreams Kel (Nicholas Duvernay, The White Lotus), finance bro Davis (Will Angus, Prom Dates), and nepo baby Josh (Jack Martin, Pizza Movie). Across the hall is celebrity stylist intern Abby (Avantika, Spin), recently joined by her college friend and new roommate AJ (Ella Hunt, Dickinson). From there, the show tracks these five young adults as they navigate the messy intersections of career ambition, romantic longing, and the slow work of becoming adults.
What elevates Not Suitable for Work above its obvious reference points is its lack of a designated "wild card." Without a Phoebe equivalent to absorb the eccentric energy, all five leads feel genuinely compatible with one another, which opens up the romantic geometry considerably. The will-they/won't-they dynamics are well-constructed — at times recalling the slow-burn pining of early Ross and Rachel, but with enough self-awareness to subvert the formula before it calcifies.
As the title suggests, the show doubles as a workplace comedy, and these subplots are among its sharpest elements. Abby suffers under the exacting demands of nightmare boss Vanessa (Constance Wu, Fresh Off the Boat), a celebrity stylist with sky-high standards and a short fuse. AJ and Davis answer to finance wunderkind Bill Gibson (Jay Ellis, History of the World: Part II), who operates entirely outside conventional professional norms. Kel finds himself navigating an ethically fraught dynamic with a boss who wants more than a working relationship (Ego Nwodim, Saturday Night Live). And Josh leverages family connections to land a job with the show's fictional Anderson Cooper stand-in, Wes Dryden (Victor Garber, Alias). Each workplace thread carries genuine comedic weight.
Structurally, Not Suitable for Work is a streaming-era comedy through and through. Episodes range from nearly an hour for the premiere to around 30 minutes for the rest of the season, and with only nine episodes total, there's no room or appetite for filler. Every episode earns its place.
Kaling, who also executive produces alongside showrunner Charlie Grandy (The Sex Lives of College Girls, The Mindy Project), has assembled something that's funny, sharply cast, and genuinely addictive. It balances the comfort of a familiar format with enough fresh energy to justify its existence beyond nostalgia. That's a harder trick than it looks.
Not Suitable for Work earns 5 out of 5 Wetzel's Pretzels.
The first three episodes of Not Suitable for Work debut June 2nd on Hulu, followed by double-episode drops through June 23rd.