Show Pieces

Couch potatoes looking for respect for their favorite easy chair won’t find it on two popular TV shows, NBC’s “Friends” and “Frasier.”

The staff on “Frasier” joked about “good taste running rampant” when they went scavenging for a truly ugly recliner. A BarcaLounger spokesman thought the tattered recliner had been referred to on the show as a BarcaLounger, but it is, in fact, an impostor.

The show needed a hideous chair for Frasier Crane’s cantankerous father, Martin, to conflict with the gorgeous modern set that is Frasier’s apartment. When none of the test chairs were ugly enough, the staff created their own by reupholstering an old one, then aging it, ripping it and taping it up. “It kind of broke our heart to put it on the set. We had created this sharp environment, but it was wonderful. It said so much about the character,” says Roy Christopher, production designer on “Frasier.”

But the his-and-his black leather recliners in Joey and Chandler’s apartment on “Friends” are the real thing, authentic BarcaLoungers that would retail for $799 apiece. When the show contacted the chair company, they didn’t come calling for “real high fashion,” but chairs that were a “better-made casual contemporary” design, says Philip Cooper, vice president of merchandising for BarcaLounger, who was quick to add the company makes plenty of contemporary chairs with “much higher style.”