TV's Best Bromances

The Urban Dictionary lists various definitions of the word 'bromance'. For the purpose of this article, I'm going with this one: 'A non-sexual relationship between two men that are unusually close'.

The traditional interactions of familial concerns and love affairs remain the driving force behind most TV programmes. That will never change. However, some would have it that bromance is an entirely new phenomenon.

Except that it isn't. Go back as far as 1964 and you've got American Napoleon Solo and Russian Illya Kuryakin, polar opposites, palling around saving the world together in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Fast forward a couple of years for Captain James T. Kirk and Mr Spock and in the 1970s, the poster boys for bromance, Starsky and Hutch.

When America's TV Guide placed House's Hugh Laurie and Robert Sean Leonard on the cover with the strap-line 'Isn't It Bromantic?', it was a mainstream recognition of the other love that dare not speak its name. Principally because, for so long, it didn't have one. Now it does. In our gallery, we look at more of these close platonic friendships, including the likes of Friends' Joey and Chandler.