| Genre: | Sitcom |
| Composer: | Matter Music |
| Country: | United States |
| Language: | English |
| Num Seasons: | 1 |
| Num Episodes: | 13 (1 aired online) |
| Camera: | Single-camera |
| Runtime: | 21 minutes |
| Company: | Imagine Television Big Kid Pictures Pickle Films 20th Century Fox Television |
| Channel: | NBC |
Friends with Benefits (stylized as friends ♥♥ith benefits) is an American romantic sitcom television series created by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber that aired on NBC from August 5 to September 9, 2011. It was originally set to air on as a mid-season replacement during the 2010–11 television season, but was ultimately delayed until summer.[1] The series ended after twelve episodes aired with the thirteenth being only available on iTunes, Amazon.com, and Netflix (until March 31, 2018).
The series follows a group of friends living in Chicago. It involves a very close friendship between two of the friends, who are each looking for the perfect mate, and the others who question their relationship, but at the same time, have their own romantic problems to deal with.
Friends with Benefits was originally developed for ABC with a script order given by the network in September 2009. However, the network did not green-light a pilot for the potential series, allowing NBC to pick up the project.[2] For the pilot episode, Fran Kranz was originally cast as Aaron,[3] [4] and Ian Reed Kesler portrayed Hoon (another version of Fitz).[3] [4] The series was officially picked up on May 16, 2010.[5]
All episode titles (apart from the pilot episode) begin with the phrase "The Benefit of..."
The shows first episode had a 0.7 rating in the 18-49 demographic with 2.34 million total viewers. As the series progressed it declined to a rating of 0.5 with 1.54 million viewers.[6]