The Matthew Perry Sitcom Before Friends You Literally Can't Watch
Before Friends made him a household name, Matthew Perry had already been grinding through a series of short-lived sitcoms.
One of them, Home Free, came just a year before Friends—and has become one of the most obscure, least accessible projects of his entire career.
Aired in 1993 as a midseason replacement on ABC, Home Free starred Perry as Matt Bailey, a local newspaper reporter still living with his mom. When his sister moves in with her two kids, family tension and sitcom clichés ensue. Critics were not impressed.
Variety dismissed it as "a dysfunctional sitcom subpar for ABC's Wednesday night," and noted that "Perry's charms stretch thin" with the limited material he was given.
The show only ran for 13 episodes before getting the axe. It was Perry's third one-season flop in a row, following roles on Sydney (1990) and Boys Will Be Boys (1987). After Home Free was canceled, Perry filmed the pilot for LAX 2194, a bizarre sci-fi comedy about baggage handlers at a futuristic airport. That didn't get picked up either — which turned out to be very good news. If it had, Perry wouldn't have been available for Friends.
If you're curious to see Home Free today, good luck. The show has never been released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, or any official digital platform. ABC never bothered with a home video release, and streaming rights have never surfaced.
Here's what's currently out there:
- The pilot episode is available on the Internet Archive in decent quality.
- A few badly degraded VHS rips float around YouTube, but they're hard to find and often incomplete.
- The remaining 12 episodes have never been officially or unofficially compiled online.
At this point, Home Free has become a near-lost artifact — a pre-Friends blip that even serious Perry fans may have never seen. Unless someone unearths a box of old tapes, it's likely to remain buried in broadcast history.