Seven years after the final series of Friends ended its run on US television, the British digital channel E4, which has been showing repeats on heavy rotation, showed its last episode of the sitcom on Sunday night.

Monica, Chandler, Phoebe, Joey, Ross and Rachel may have annoyed some viewers with their enormous apartments, glossy hair and perfectly timed sarcastic rejoinders, but their popularity endured way beyond the end of the 10th series.

The Last One, the final episode, attracted 8.6 million viewers when it was first shown on Channel 4. E4's repeats of old episodes would often attract 400,000 viewers, but the channel announced last year it planned to wind up its deal with Warner Brothers, preferring to invest in new US imports such as Zooey Deschanel's flatshare sitcom New Girl and an animated version of cult film Napoleon Dynamite.

While investment in new programming is admirable, many will miss the omnipresence of Friends on E4, so easy to dip into when other channels' output proved unappetising. Its familiarity was comforting, its gags relentless yet warm-hearted. But the series should not be damned as merely a sugary snack: the quality sustained by writers and producers was eye-popping for such a long-running show.

People continued to watch it, often sitting through episodes they had seen dozens of times before, because it was built to last. Not a line was wasted or a comic opportunity missed. It was the first and best contemporary flatshare sitcom and only How I Met Your Mother, now showing on E4, has come close to emulating it.

As Comedy Central becomes the new UK home of Friends repeats, the loss of Friends will be felt by Freeview box owners up and down the land.