It’s time to bust out our celebratory leather trousers, teeth-bleaching kit and Thanksgiving sandwiches: Ross Geller is returning to television.

Ex-Friends actor David Schwimmer lands Channel 4 sitcom spot Read more

I mean, it won’t be Ross Geller, obviously. Yesterday it was announced that David Schwimmer is to star in the upcoming Channel 4 sitcom, Morning Has Broken, in which he’ll play an American producer brought in to rescue a flailing breakfast show. The series will consist of six parts and is the brainchild of Julia Davis, who’ll also co-star.

This is also the first time Schwimmer’s starred in a sitcom since his turn on Friends (which ended more than 10 years ago, in case you’d like to feel as old as I do). And it’s about time.

It’s easy for us to discount Ross, especially since Ross is, well, all of us. He wasn’t funny like Chandler, neurotic like Monica, hip like Rachel, free-thinking like Phoebe, nor did he have “game” like Joey. Ross was a thrice-divorced, dinosaur-loving sad man, whose first words in the series pilot were a morose, “Hi.”

In fact, to be told you’re most like Ross is almost an insult. This was the man who moped, complained and at one point forced his pals to listen to his keyboard stylings, which sounded something like whatever Luke Skywalker’s college band strived for. (Read: spacey and awful.) He overtanned (that one time) and made “Pivot!” an essential moving-day catchphrase.

So, to be Ross is to be needy, kind of annoying and severely flawed. To be Ross is to be human. Which is why Schwimmer deserves this new vehicle so much.

It takes talent to embody a character who’s most like the rest of us – or more accurately, a character who embodies all of our biggest fears. In an ideal world, we’re the ones who offer one-liners like Chandler Bing or whose apartment everyone flocks to on big holidays like Monica’s. It’s terrifying to think we’re The Ross™; that we’re the friend whom our social circle rolls their eyes at, or whose life is the fodder for pity, or worse: the one who really thought we were on a break. (I mean, in this case Ross and Rachel were, but it’s just bad form to hook up the day after that status is established.)

But it’s our kneejerk reactions to Ross that are a testament to Schwimmer’s talent. Especially since, despite our annoyance with him, we still wanted him to end up with Rachel, and we never wanted him to actually bottom out. (And hands up if you still cite his leather trousers storyline as a touchstone for your own personal failures.)

Despite Ross’s shortcomings, Schwimmer still injected heart into the role. He made Ross vulnerable, damaged and over the top, and committed to creating a character who was actually the most three-dimensional of all six. Ross may have been over the top, but never a caricature. Which is a talent Schwimmer’s brought to the small screen before.

In his four-episode arc in The Wonder Years, Schwimmer played Michael, Karen’s hippy boyfriend with whom she “lived in sin” and eventually married. Understandably, Karen’s uptight, stereotypically 60s-era strait-laced dad hated him, and frankly it was easy to: Michael was the embodiment of hippy culture seen through the eyes of a relatively conservative protagonist (Karen’s brother, Kevin). He could have been Ross’s dad: emotional, over-sensitive and kind of weird. And despite those traits, Schwimmer still made him a person you couldn’t actually hate. (And you wanted to, my God, you wanted to so much.) He made him a person – end of thought. And people are complicated, flawed and dislikable, as we all know.

So it’s about time we see Schwimmer do his thing again – especially since an American TV producer is exactly the type of role he’ll do justice to. (Honestly, imagine Schwimmer trying to manage a character played by Julia Davis. Right? Exactly – it’s a dream.)

Of course, we’ll probably roll our eyes at his uptightness, compare him to any bosses who’ve demanded we try harder and wait with bated breath to hear him say, “Unagi”. But that’s just a testament to the magic of Schwimmer.

Which, actually, is what I think whenever I see anybody wear leather trousers.