TV: Chinese fans of ‘Friends’ angry after show re-released with censorship – Gulf Digital News

TV: Chinese fans of ‘Friends’ angry after show re-released with censorship – Gulf Digital News

Chinese fans of US sitcom "Friends" have expressed dismay online after noticing censorship in recently released episodes of the beloved show.

Several major Chinese streaming sites, including Tencent, Baidu's IQiyi Inc , Alibaba's Youku, and Bilibili, started showing a version of the first season of the show on Friday, its first re-release in China for several years.

But fans soon noticed parts of the long-running show were different to what they had seen before and complained of censorship as well as mistranslations.

In recent years, China has shut tens of thousands of websites and social media accounts that contained what it said was illegal content as well as "vulgar" and pornographic material.

"I resolutely boycott the castrated version of 'Friends'," said one user on China's Twitter-like Weibo.

"This is a defiling a classic," said another.

A third user said "if you can't show the complete version under the current atmoshphere, then don't import it."

The discussion was a "hot search topic" on Weibo on Sunday.

But in a sign the discussion itself may have caught the attention of censors, searches on Weibo on Sunday for several variations on the hashtag or search term #Friendshasbeencensored produced either zero or limited recent results.

'Friends' has a vast fan base in