I had a nice time this weekend ingesting the first season of Coupling, which is a pleasant little BBC comedy. Think Friends, but with more sex and cleverer writing, sort of like Sports Night but without Jeremy. (Hey, that metaphor crashed and burned. Don’t point, it’s rude.)
Alas, in England “season” means “six episodes.” Still enjoyable, and it gives me a proper base from which to mock the NBC remake. Man, that’s gonna suck.
Anyhow, it’s not terribly deep but it’s fairly witty and it’s got Jack Davenport who was so good in Ultraviolet. As the viewpoint protagonist, he’s got a fairly tough job being the straight man, and he does a good job centering the show.
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I have to watch the original to mock the remake? I can’t just go on this, from the linked page: “Based on the outrageous British hit series”? It seems to me that for any X, “based on the outrageous X” sucks.
I accidentally ran across “Coupling” last year on a late-Saturday-night PBS broadcast. Fell in love with it immediately, and started catching all the episodes I could on BBC America. I guess I don’t find it particularly “outrageous,” at least not in the way that Absolutely Fabulous or other British sitcoms are. Sure, there’s a lot more talk about sex, but “outrageous”?
Unfortunately, the American remake will probably assume the show is good *because* of the sex component, and once again fail to realize that character design and tight writing are what make “Coupling” click.