From the NY Times:
TV REVIEW | 'COUPLING'
Two Nations Split by a Sense of Humor
By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
BC's racy new comedy, "Coupling," about the tangled sex lives of six single men and women is shameful, but not because it is so singlemindedly focused on sex.
"Coupling" is the Milli Vanilli of network television: the sitcom equivalent of lip-synching someone else's song.
The series was cloned from a popular British sitcom that is also shown on BBC America and is also called "Coupling." NBC bought the rights to the British series and transported it, script by script, to Hollywood, a little like Robert P. McCulloch, the chain-saw magnate who bought London Bridge and rebuilt it in Arizona in 1971.
NBC's folly is not nearly as innocent as McCulloch's. There was something bold and bizarrely American about the reassembly of a condemned bit of European history â?? London Bridge was about to fall â?? in the open desert of the New World. What NBC did, with the help of Ben Silverman, an agent turned producer who helped import European reality shows like "Big Brother" and "The Weakest Link," is less inspired. "Coupling" is a spasm of insecurity by a network desperate to find a potent successor to "Friends," which tonight, at long last, begins its final season.
America invented the sitcom; it is as indigenous as jazz. "Coupling" in fact was a more ribald British riff on "Friends." The American "Coupling" is just a pale imitation. American actors were cast, some jokes were rewritten, and the laugh track is far more manic, but there is little evidence of homemade wit, even the jaunty title music is the same.
At a time when some of the brightest Harvard and Yale graduates are choosing to intern on "Saturday Night Live" rather than to clerk for the Supreme Court, there must be some domestic talent for NBC to exploit. "Coupling" suggests that the network of "Cheers," "Frasier," "Friends" and "Will & Grace" has lost its nerve.
None of that would matter of course if "Coupling" were truly funny. It is instead sort of funny. It is not as winsome as "Friends," and it does not come close to the madcap originality of "Will & Grace," the hit that "Coupling" has the good fortune to follow. But the new series's sheer tenacity â?? its creator, Steven Moffat, once said he wanted to pull off a series in which the only topic of conversation was sex â?? is amusing. Not all the jokes made the trip across the Atlantic, and the American version omits words like "daft" and "knickers." There is plenty of likably loopy material and old-fashioned farce, though less in tonight's episode than in others down the line.
The real problem with the Americanized "Coupling" is that the best jokes wilt in translation, particularly when viewers can so easily compare the NBC version with the original. British wit is not always dry or inventively droll. (For every "Monty Python" there are several "Benny Hills.") But British humor about sex is highly idiosyncratic. Like bathroom humor, it works by playing havoc with the English cult of good manners and reticence.
Some British pundits have said that Americans are too puritanical to accept so risqué a show. The real problem is that Americans are too nice. Rudeness, the ultimate British taboo, is at the root of "Coupling," set loose in the characters' cavalier, even callous, attitude toward sex.
The catharsis of discourtesy is not as vital to the American psyche.
And NBC did not help matters by casting generic, bland actors in the six roles. The story, based on the lives of Mr. Moffat and his wife, Sue Vertue, a writer and producer of the show, revolves around a couple, Steven (Jay Harrington) and Susan (Rena Sofer), who are also part of a sextet: each comes to the romance with a best friend and an ex-lover attached. Steven's best friend is his porn buddy, Jeff. (They have pledged that should one die suddenly, the other would go straight to his apartment and remove all pornographic videos before any parents arrive.) Jane, a vapid seductress who won't accept their breakup as final, is Steve's ex. Susan used to sleep with Patrick, a vain, handsome Don Juan who is now dating her best friend, an age-obsessed beauty expert. ("A woman's breasts are on a journey, and her feet are the destination," she warns in tonight's pilot.)
The American version is set in Chicago instead of London, but for no apparent reason. None of the characters have Chicago accents or Midwestern quirks; they are all homogenized Hollywood actors with plastic good looks. On the British "Coupling," Jeff is a sex-addled, doltish Welshman, a little like Hugh Grant's roommate, Spike (Rhys Ifans), in the 1999 movie "Notting Hill." The American Jeff has no regional accent or eccentric flair. He just has messier hair.
NBC hoped it could minimize risk by duplicating the reality show situation: recreating at home a show that is already a proven hit abroad. But "Coupling" is not a perfect clone. It is a weaker twin.
