Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Matthew Perry's memoir traces the arc from a childhood shuttling between separated parents through a nationally ranked tennis career to landing on Friends — and through the addiction that shadowed all of it. Perry writes with the same wit he deployed on screen, turning self-examination into something that reads as honest rather than self-pitying: the void recognition couldn't fill, the fractured family that shaped him, and the hard-won peace of sobriety. Readers who connect with Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing tend to want that same emotional directness across every medium.
Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing is a memoir by the American-Canadian actor Matthew Perry. It was released by Macmillan Publishers on November 1, 2022, a year before Perry's death on October 28, 2023. In the book, Perry details his decades-long struggle with alcoholism and addiction. Perry also details his personal life, including his relationships and time on the Friends TV series, in which he starred as Chandler Bing. The book was made available in digital, paperback, and hardcover formats, with Perry himself narrating the audiobook edition. Lisa Kudrow, who worked with Perry on Friends starring as Phoebe Buffay, provided the foreword, in which she describes Perry as "sweet, sensitive and rational".
From the Wikipedia article Friends,_Lovers,_and_the_Big_Terrible_Thing, available under CC BY-SA.
Film
XX/XY
A relationship that spirals out of control leaves consequences haunting everyone for a decade.
Film
Peter's Friends
Peter reunites his old college friends at a country estate inherited from his late father.
Film
Boyfriends
Three friends in their thirties gather at the seaside with their boyfriends, including one couple already on the rocks.
Film
9 Songs
A man reconstructs an intense, consuming relationship through memory — love recalled from a distance.
Film
Gayby
Two college friends in their thirties navigate stalled lives and the emotional weight of the past.
Film
Little Black Book
Digging into a partner's past relationships surfaces truths nobody wanted to confront.
Series
Bookie
A man's chaotic lifestyle bouncing across Los Angeles highs and lows is his daily survival act.
Series
Undateable
A man in his thirties watches his social world shift as friends pair off and leave him behind.
Series
Foursome
Three best friends help each other navigate the social minefield of growing up.
Series
Fugget About It
A family uprooted and forced to reinvent themselves in an unfamiliar place they never chose.
Series
Friends from College
College friends reconnect twenty years later and discover love hasn't gotten any simpler with age.
Series
The Odd Couple
A college friend's arrival forces a divorced man to share his bachelor life in New York City.
Book
We can't be friends
A teenager subjected to a coercive program absorbs damaging lessons that take years to undo.
Book
The Motherfucker With the Hat
Addiction, love, and the struggle to stay clean collide for a man just out of prison.
Book
The Girlfriend
A secret that felt fleeting refuses to stay buried, upending a carefully maintained life.
Book
Friendsand lovers
Friendship deepens into passion and then burns everything it touched between two people.
Book
Margaux with an X
Two teenagers bond over the shared emotional damage inflicted by family violence.
Book
On the Bright Side, I'm Now the Girlfriend of a Sex God
A teenager records her messy inner life with humor and self-awareness as relationships keep shifting.
We Can't Be Friends and The Motherfucker With the Hat both follow the aftermath of addiction in unflinching detail — the first through a teen subjected to a coercive "tough love" program, the second through a man just out of prison and trying to stay clean while love keeps complicating things.
Friends from College captures how old bonds grow complicated twenty years on; Bookie shares the chaotic Los Angeles energy of a life bouncing between highs and lows with no clean resolution in sight.
The book is bracingly self-aware — it never asks for pity or easy absolution. Perry writes about fame, family fracture, and addiction with the same wit he used to hide the pain, which makes the honesty land harder.