How the Nineties Are Haunting Millennials

There’s a scene in the new apocalypse thriller Leave the World Behind in which a 27-year-old character describes the show Friends as “almost nostalgic for a time that never existed”. Her lip curls with contempt as she says it, and not just for the show itself. Because if Friends was guilty of selling a lie — with its shiny, sanitised, notably non-diverse depiction of life in New York — wasn’t its millennial fanbase equally guilty of buying it? When she sneers at Friends, she’s really sneering at herself, for falling for it.