Nearly 20 years after they were originally supposed to air in the US, the last eight episodes of the ill-fated Friends spin-off Joey will soon be available to watch.

The short-lived sitcom – which featured Matt LeBlanc back in action as his Friends alter-ego – ran between 2004 and 2006, but was cancelled during its second season after negative reviews and dwindling viewing figures, with its final run of episodes never being shown in the States.

However, after Friends’ popularity began to soar again during lockdown, the American broadcaster NBC started making Joey free to stream on the show’s official YouTube channel earlier this year.

Before that, Joey had been unavailable to stream, rent or purchase anywhere.

According to Deadline, the final eight instalments of Joey will soon be uploaded onto the Friends YouTube channel alongside the existing 38, to complete the whole series.

While these episodes are new to Americans, some international fans had already able to watch the entire series at the time. BBC News pointed out that British fans could watch the whole second season in 2007 on Channel 5, including these eight “lost” episodes.

The spin-off followed Matt LeBlanc’s Joey Tribbiani after he left New York to pursue his acting career in Hollywood.

When in Los Angeles, the character reunited with his highly strung sister, Gina, and moved in with his genius nephew, Michael.

Over the course of the series, viewers were also introduced to Joey’s new agent, his fellow actors and his LA neighbours, with the cast including The Sopranos star Drea De Matteo, Ted Lasso’s Andrea Anders and future Emmy winner Jennifer Coolidge.

While the spin-off never featured any of the core Friends cast, David Schwimmer did direct a handful of episodes, while these newly-unearthed instalments also feature an appearance from Robert Constanzo, reprising the role of Joey Tribbiani Sr from the original sitcom.

Despite following Friends’ hugely successful run, Joey struggled to pull in audiences.

While Friends ended with nearly 66 million American viewers, Joey debuted to 18.6 million, which soon nosedived to 7.1 million by the second series.

That might sound impressive by 2025’s standards, but at the time, this was considered low viewership for a television sitcom.

Even in the UK, audiences struggled to connect with the spin-off, with the second episode losing over one million viewers compared with the first.

The executive producer for Friends, Kevin S. Bright, told The Age in 2006: “On Friends, Joey was a womaniser, but we enjoyed his exploits. He was a solid friend, a guy you knew you could count on.

“Joey was deconstructed to be a guy who couldn’t get a job, couldn’t ask a girl out. He became a pathetic, mopey character. I felt he was moving in the wrong direction, but I was not heard.”