Coupling Intro Song
Vinnie Frevert
Coupling is a British television sitcom written by Steven Moffat that aired on BBC Two and BBC Three from 12 May 2000 to 14 June 2004. Produced by Hartswood Films for the BBC, the show centres on the dating, sexual adventures, and mishaps of six friends in their early 30s, often depicting the three women and the three men each talking among themselves about the same events, but in entirely different terms.
The series was inspired by Moffat's relationship with producer Sue Vertue, to the extent that they gave their names to two of the characters. Coupling is an example of the "group-genre", an ensemble show that had proven popular at the time.[1] Critics compared the show to the American sitcoms Friends and Seinfeld.
The critical reaction was largely positive, and the show was named "Best TV Comedy" at the 2003 British Comedy Awards. The show debuted to unimpressive ratings, but its popularity soon increased, and by the end of the third series, the show had achieved respectable ratings in the UK. The series first aired on PBS stations and on BBC America in the United States beginning in late 2002 and quickly gained a devoted fanbase there, as well. The show is syndicated around the world. Short-lived American and Greek adaptations were briefly produced in 2003 and 2007, respectively. In a 2004 poll to find Britain's Best Sitcom, Coupling came in 54th.
Moffat had used the breakdown of his first marriage as inspiration for his 1990s sitcom Joking Apart.[2][3] Retaining this semiautobiographical trend, Coupling was based on him meeting his wife, Sue Vertue, and on the issues that arise in new relationships.[4]
Moffat met Vertue at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 1996.[4] Vertue had been working for Tiger Aspect, a production company run by Peter Bennett-Jones. Bennett-Jones and his friend and former colleague Andre Ptaszynski, who had worked with Moffat on the sitcoms Joking Apart and Chalk, told Moffat and Vertue that each fancied the other. A relationship blossomed and they left their respective production companies to join Hartswood Films, run by Beryl Vertue, Sue's mother.[5] After production wrapped on Chalk in 1997, Moffat announced to the cast that he was marrying Vertue.[6]
When she eventually asked him to write a sitcom for Hartswood, he decided to base it around the evolution of their own relationship. Drunk one evening, he went into her office, wrote the word "Coupling" on a sheet of paper and told her to ask him about it later.[4]
The couple formed the basis for the main characters Steve and Susan. The four other characters are Steve and Susan's best friends and last ex-relationships (one of each for both Steve and Susan). The fourth episode, "Inferno", was written shortly after Vertue had found a similar tape in the VCR, although Moffat added the 'spanking' element to the script as he "didn't think the real tape was quite pervy enough.'"[4]
The show used the "group genre", a type of programme using ensemble casts that was proving popular, with then-recent successes as Friends, This Life (also starring Davenport), and Cold Feet. Moffat feels the group genre reflects young people's modern mores more so than traditional sitcoms, saying, "Young people watch because it is the lifestyle which is just ahead of them and older people reminisce. Coupling is about two people who get together and bring with them baggage from their past, friends, and ex-partners - people who would never meet under normal circumstances. It deals in the kind of trivia people talk about, important questions like when should a man take off his socks during foreplay?"[1] Moffat believes group shows would not have been popular with earlier generations of television audiences, stating:
Friends would have run for only half a series if it had been set during my parents' time. I am sure there has always been misbehaving by people before they settle down, but there was this perception that anyone who ever got married before the '60s was a virgin. What has changed is that all important gap between having left mummy and daddy and becoming a parent yourself. This is the time in which you make decisions which will define you. These few years are pivotal and they are getting longer. There are now people running round with disposable incomes who still want to do lots of things before they settle down to one partner.[1]
According to Vertue, Steven Moffat wrote on the top floor of their family home. Once he finished a script, she read it two floors away so he could not hear her laughing. The producer says that his first drafts were "pretty much ready to shoot".[7] She did not give him many notes; she would tick all of the places where she laughed, and then he revised the script accordingly.[7]
The humour of the show, according to Moffat, is in the context. He says that there are "no jokes per se" and if they did put jokes in, they were normally taken out because they did not work. He found writing the show difficult at first because he was writing his own voice six times over, with none of the characteristics and inflections of the performers to inspire him.[7]
Moffat used a range of styles and techniques, such as split screen and nonlinear narratives, that are unconventional in sitcoms.[7] The first series episode "The Girl with Two Breasts", in which half of the episode is in Hebrew,[8] proved so popular that the producers tried to do something similar every series. Moffat says that the simplicity of the setting encouraged an "epic, ridiculous way of telling an ordinary story."[7] The opening episode of series three, "Split", uses split screen to simultaneously depict what happens with Steve and Susan after separating.[9] The series four opener, "Nine and a Half Minutes", depicts the same events in the bar from three different perspectives.[10]
British sitcoms usually cannot afford to occupy a studio facility for the entire run, meaning that they are unable to rehearse in the studio.[7] Rehearsals for Coupling took place in a church hall off Kensington High Street.[11]
The actors received their scripts on Friday mornings. Following a read-through, Moffat was generally forced to cut minutes worth of material to achieve the requisite length.[7] Director Martin Dennis designed and compiled the camera script on Saturday afternoons. After a day off on Sundays, the sets were erected for a producer's run on Mondays, and then a technical run on Tuesdays. Much of Wednesdays was spent camera blocking, a process which regularly overran at the expense of a dress rehearsal.[7]
As the actors became familiar with the material, they would sometimes develop a joke. However, according to Moffat, such elaboration could overcomplicate a joke for an audience coming to the material for the first time.[12] Martin Dennis, according to Moffat, regularly told the actors, "You know that funny thing you're doing? Don't do that".[12] The director encouraged them to deliver their lines as well as they had in the original read-through.[12]
All of the location sequences for each series were filmed in London during the first week of each production block. As Moffat was generally late delivering the final few scripts of each series, those episodes contained no location material.[11] The exterior shots of the bar were filmed in Clerkenwell in the first series. After a nearby Thai restaurant complained that filming was disrupting their business, a street just off Tottenham Court Road was used from series two.[11] The house in which Moffat and Vertue lived at the time was used as the exterior for Steve's flat, with the surrounding area used for other sequences.[12]
Material that was technically difficult was filmed the day before the recording with the live studio audience. A common example of this would be a dinner table sequence, where some characters would be filmed against the fourth wall, rather than the often-used contrived method of cramming everyone together around the proscenium. Readjusting the set and refilming against the fourth wall would have been too time-consuming.[7] However, the absence of the studio audiences made it more difficult for the actors to judge the timing of the laughs. For instance, Moffat says that this prevented Gina Bellman from "milking" a particular laugh in the episode "Dressed", an episode in which most of her scenes were prerecorded because she was wearing minimal clothing on set to provide the illusion of complete nudity.[12] The prerecorded sequences were tightened in the editing process once the scenes had been played to the studio audience.[11]
Episodes were mostly filmed in front of a live studio audience at Teddington Studios in London Borough of Richmond upon Thames on Wednesday evenings. Sue Vertue says that the live audience reinvigorated the company because no one had laughed at the material for a few days, as everyone knew it so well.[7] A warm-up comedian updated the studio audiences about any important plot detail, introduced them to the performers, and provided entertainment while cameras and sets were being repositioned. Rob Rouse fulfilled this role for the fourth series.[7]
Despite some critics' comments, all of the laughter in Coupling was from a genuine live studio audience.[11] Although artificial canned laughter was not used, the laughter sometimes had to be tweaked during the editing process. For instance, the studio audience might laugh for longer than might be expected of the home audience. Also, the audience's laughter decreased if a scene was shot multiple times; in these cases the laughter from an earlier take would be used.[7]
Moffat felt uncomfortable and powerless during the studio recording. Sitting in the gallery, he wrote the word 'help' repeatedly on the back of his scripts. In an interview for the DVD release, he says he was aware that their most successful show received the least amount of laughter from the studio audience.[7] Conversely, studio audiences reacted emphatically to his previous studio sitcom, Chalk, yet it received a poor critical reception upon transmission.[5] Martin Dennis would start editing from the following Monday afternoon. The episodes were then colour graded and dubbed with sound effects and music.[7]
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