The cast of the TV show Ipartment Photo: CFP
China's Ipartment – which recently entered its third series – follows the trials and tribulations of the occupants of two neighbouring apartments in a Shanghai tower block.
Where the American series Friends focused on the lives of a university lecturer, a struggling television actor and a guitar-strumming masseuse, China's Ipartment features a radio-show host, a computer geek and a university lecturer.
The series, produced by the Shanghai Film Group, was launched in 2009 and is now broadcast across China on satellite channels.
But Chinese television addicts became increasingly suspicious about similarities between the programme and a number of American sitcoms.
Incensed, they began posting angry online messages and screenshots comparing what they claimed were virtually identical scenes from shows including How I Met Your Mother, Friends and the Big Bang Theory.
"Is [Ipartment] only intended for those born after 1990, who have not watched Friends?" questioned one user of China's answer to Twitter, Weibo.
Another user said Ipartment's makers had "unscrupulously copied" from American television.
"Many lines and scenes have been completely ripped off from American shows," one angry viewer, named only as Grace, told the state-run Global Times newspaper.
The Global Times reported that Ipartment's producers had admitted using jokes from "various sources." However, speaking to the Southern Metropolis newspaper, a spokesperson for the programme denied plagiarism.
"We didn't copy the American sitcom," said the representative, named as Mr Cao. "Comedies have stereotypes, like the handsome man, the gorgeous woman, the cheap man and so on. They have that in many comedies. Our creation is not plagiarism, but more a homage to the American sitcom."
In an interview given via social media, the show's scriptwriter, Wang Yuan, played down the scandal claiming his team were "all super-fans of American sitcom." "It's just entertainment," he said.