The ironies surrounding NBC’s new “Coupling” are no more subtle than the humor in the show.
In the beginning, a racy American-style sitcom about the romantic entanglements of six single friends becomes a hit in the United Kingdom, drawing inevitable comparison with “Friends.”
Twisting a slogan for another NBC hit, it’s even billed as “a naughty new comedy about nothing . . . but sex.”
Over here, “Friends” is finally going off the air this year (or so they say) and NBC needs something new for Thursdays. So it imports the story and scripts of “Coupling,” but not the cast.
Boiled down to headlinese that would read: Knockoff of “Friends” Knockoff to Replace “Friends.”
Do not, however let the liberal invocation of the reliably funny NBC veteran fool you. I have seen “Friends,” and the U.K. “Coupling” is no “Friends.”
It’s got the British accents, sure, and that brings an air of sophistication even to toilet humor, but it’s nonetheless more crass, less clever and leaves you with a less clear sense of who its characters are outside of the bedroom.
Stepping down another couple of quality notches, the American “Coupling” is no U.K. “Coupling.”
In trimming the scripts down five minutes or so, and “Americanizing” the references (that’s code for taking out the Aristotle and the slyness) and the cast (that’s code for giving everyone perfect hair and teeth and a sledgehammer way with a line reading), NBC and U.S. executive producer Phoef Sutton (“Cheers,” but several mediocrities since) have turned a so-so show into a stinker.
Quality control, though, is not why several NBC affiliates, including the Notre Dame-owned one in South Bend, are refusing to run the U.S. premiere (8:30 p.m., WMAQ-Ch. 5). They are worried about community standards being violated by a series that opens with a woman asking, with a vulgarism, for oral sex, among other sad attempts to draw attention.
Do not be misled into believing, as you might in reading elsewhere about the British “Coupling,” that NBC has committed some great sacrilege, changed Jane Austen into Judy Blume or some such thing.
Even I overpraised the U.K. show in the Tribune’s fall TV preview, calling it, in an ill-considered line that I’ll blame on the pressure of writing about 37 shows at once, a “smart relationship comedy.” To everybody who is intelligent, in a relationship or funny, I apologize.
Having now seen a lot more of “Coupling” pere, which can be seen here on cable’s BBC America Thursdays (9 p.m.) and Fridays (various times) and WTTW-Ch. 11 Sundays (10 p.m.), I’d like to amend that line so it reads, “a relationship comedy that gropes for intelligence in the least likely place: inside its characters’ pants.”
Still, the original, a show about a new couple, their immediate exes and their best friends, has decided advantages over the imitation.
The settings seem more natural, the dialogue more in keeping with conversational rhythms. The actors may not be destined for the next wave of Austen remakes, but they do understand that muttering a punchline, underplaying it, is often far funnier than virtually shouting it out.
And there are, in comparing with their progenitors the two episodes NBC has made available to critics, numerous instances where humor gets carefully prepared for in England but is rushed on stage in the States.
The show, for instance, has a line about two guys being “porn buddies.” In the American edition we learn what this means right away. Wham bam, and all that.
Comic impact
In the British, it gets teased out so that there’s some comic impact to the revelation that the men have agreed that, in the event of one’s death, the other will rush over to the deceased’s house to gather up and remove all evidence of pornography.
Both editions keep the scene capper: “That’s the beauty of it. Your best friend’s dead, but there’s a bright side.”
Then the Brit laugh track guffaws just like the American one, and it’s awkward in both places because almost none of the action appears to be filmed before an audience.
Steven Moffat, who wrote the British series and gets script credit for the first American episodes, has an unfortunate weakness for trying to craft catch-phrase-worthy labels, something he only imperfectly learned from “Seinfeld.”
So in addition to “porn buddies,” there’s “the boyfriend zone,” “the window” and “the giggle loop” — most of them key elements in his episodes, none the equal of, say, “sponge-worthy.”
Where Moffat succeeds, it’s in his ability to highlight the mores of at least one school of contemporary dating, where friendly exes hang around and everyone’s private business is public knowledge.
He’s also far more amusing with tossed-off character moments than he is with his erstwhile subject, sex.
Him: “You can’t prevent death with face cream.”
Her: “Yeah, that’s what everybody thinks. But no one’s ever used it in the quantities I have.”
NBC takes all of that and puts it through the Sitcom Generecizer, a small, well-guarded device rumored to resemble a Xerox machine. Its ability to turn fresh, wry and surprising into familiar, simple and obvious is treasured by every American network.
So a line about a guy being turned on by a woman wearing stockings gets changed to her not wearing panties. The line with the woman asking for oral sex is inserted.
Pop-culture references, lines that aim to draw humor from their currency rather than their cleverness, get dropped in: “Thank you, bovine spleen injections!”
And a character’s concern over aging, originally expressed in deftly worded worry about the face muscles drooping, becomes a blatant remark about breasts doing the same.
Even the supposed Chicago setting is generic. There’s a city poster in the background in one scene, but little else.
And the actors, collectively, never seem to realize they’re playing people rather than delivering lines. Worst for the translation is the Jeff, best-friend character.
Puckish but hearty
In England, Richard Coyle made him puckish but hearty, an original. In America, as played by Christopher Moynihan (“The Fighting Fitzgeralds”), he is one more bumbling TV L’il Buddy.
Joining Moynihan in this oft-employed but, here, undistinguished cast are Rena Sofer (“Just Shoot Me,” “Friends”), Sonya Walger (“The Mind of the Married Man”), Colin Ferguson (“The Opposite of Sex”), Jay Harrington (“The Division”), and Lindsay Price (“Beverly Hills 90210”).
They’ve been given a prime opportunity, joining the NBC Thursday lineup amid a barrage of publicity that only sexual controversy can create.
But they’ve squandered it. Instead of the next “Friends,” “Coupling” American style looks to be the next “Good Morning, Miami.”
They said, we said
The American adaptors of England’s “Coupling” say they tried to use the same scripts. Here are places where they diverged:
SUBJECT
Metaphor for doomed relationship
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
The Crippens, a marriage that ended in 1910, with hubby killing wife
IN THE U.S VERSION
Kate and Leo on the Titanic
SUBJECT
Label for not-really-over relationship
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
“You’re still in the Boyfriend Zone.”
IN THE U.S VERSION
“You’ve still got your hand stamped.”
SUBJECT
Aristotle reference turned blue
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
“One swallow doesn’t make a summer.”
IN THE U.S VERSION
None
SUBJECT
Feminine wisdom on aging
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
“Remember. Every morning your face has slipped a little bit more.”
IN THE U.S VERSION
“A woman’s breasts are the journey. Her feet are the destination.”
SUBJECT
Place where won’t-let-go gal surprised wants-out guy by showing up
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
Prague
IN THE U.S VERSION
Fiji
SUBJECT
How same gal averts breakups
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
“She just leans over, looks me in the eyes and goes, `I’m wearing stockings.’ “
IN THE U.S VERSION
“She’ll look over and say, ‘I’m not wearing panties.’ “
SUBJECT
Length of that relationship
IN THE U.K.’S FIRST TWO EPISODES
4 1/2 years
IN THE U.S VERSION
1 year
