Coupling Steven Moffat

Based purely on his brilliant sci-fi scripts, I decided to pick up the entire series of Coupling (that it was available cheaply didn't hurt). Many people would immediately say "this is the British version of Friends", and I can't deny that charge, although Steven claims more influence from Seinfeld and the series is more of a form of ripped off autobiography of his life with now wife (and series producer) Sue Vertue.

Being from Moffat is it extremely funny, although watching it all in one go does make the later episodes feel like an effort to get through, and I starting skimming through the opening titles before the end of series one.

Would have to say that my favourite character is Jeff, the insecure one, who unfortunately didn't get into the fourth series. (He is replaced by Oliver, through whom Steven gets to make lots of sci-fi geek references, and throw in a lot of Doctor Who moments, including having Nicholas Briggs give a rather familiar vocal performance!) [And seeing Gina Bellman did cause some cognitive dissonance as I had seen her in Jekyll.]

There was an attempt to recreate it as a US series (to put on versus Friends), but seems like it fell over before it got through the first season because it was so terrible (as anyone who's seen US-adaptions of UK shows would have predicted).

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