Modern English

he cultural exchange between Americans and Brits is legendary when it comes to certain fields, and television certainly hasn’t been one of them.
    While the music industry has long thrived on cross-Atlantic cribbing, bringing us everything from the evolution of rock to Dizzee Rascal and The Streets, recent attempts to Americanize British sitcoms have never fared better than utter disaster.
    John Cleese’s Fawlty Towers, the gold standard of all Britcoms, was re-invented as 1998’s dreadful Payne, starring John Larroquette as hotel owner Royal Payne (see, his name is Royal Payne, but he’s, you know, a royal pain — it works on so many levels!). Similarly, Rob Schneider took a brief swing at Men Behaving Badly, while NBC’s plans for a U.S. version of The Office (set to debut this month) have already prompted groans from fans of the brilliant original.
    But perhaps the most treacherous Yank attempt to capitalize on a Brit hit was Coupling, a show whose UK original has provided snort-inducing laughs for the nouveau yuppies on the other side of the Atlantic.
    The story of the American version of Coupling has quickly become television bomb lore. After a pilot starring Breckin Meyer was scrapped, the show was recast and pitched to the public as a replacement for Friends, which had

just left the air. The first episode tanked in the ratings, prompting star Rena Sofer to make a personal plea to the public via Entertainment Tonight to watch the second episode and just give it a chance. They did not. NBC yanked the show after only two episodes, and those of us who actually saw the American version were left wondering why the Brits loved their version so much.
    But as American hits such as Arrested Development and Curb Your Enthusiasm have proven, the new way to a cult audience’s heart is through DVDs, and the recently released fourth season of the original Coupling allows us to see what all the fuss is about, not to mention show where the offshoot went wrong.
    With each season coming in Brit-efficient style — no more than nine half-hour episodes at its peak — Coupling offers a glimpse into the life of six horny and neurotic young professionals who usually break into male and female camps when they’re not bedding each other. Upon watching the first season, I found it curious that the American version skipped the first episode and simply went straight to the penis-size-themed second installment. Dialogue was line-for-line the same, the only exception being that the well-hung yet morally reprehensible Patrick (Ben Miles) was cast as a Republican instead of a Tory. This of course denied the audience any sort of background given in the first episode, in which main character and emotional target Steve’s (Jack Davenport) first date with stable and confident Susan (Sarah Alexander) is soon turned into a six-person dinner thanks to the clique’s tendency to date each other and panic about it later. With all the background taken care of concerning who had dated whom, the show was then free to take off in many fantastic and absurd directions, something that hobbled the American version.
    The fact that critics called the American cast “cardboard” didn’t help either. The Brit cast has a certain dignity about them that allows for big laughs when they fall on their faces. Patrick may have a walk-in closet full of tapes of his affairs with various women, but the real punchline comes when

Sally (Kate Isett) finds out her romp was taped over. Similarly, the even-keeled Steve is thrown into shambles when his ownership of a video entitled Lesbian Spank Inferno is revealed at a dinner party. Coupling worked because it took the real-life anxieties of dating and imagined the worst possible scenario.
   The fact that red state puritanism hasn’t washed up on UK shores also helps; while the American pilot was pulled from several stations for being “crude,” the Brits gleefully delighted in episodes involving painful blowjobs, bondage mishaps and a constant stream of public nudity. The height of it all surely came during a memorable episode in season two when goofy Jeff (Richard Coyle) attempts to woo a woman on his morning commute, stumbling over his words so poorly that, in an attempt to recover he tells her he only has one leg. Of course this leads to her falling for him and his poor leg, and before he knows it, he’s being introduced to the woman’s truly disabled brother and being invited to a girl-girl lingerie party, prompting the penultimate lament, “I’ve got a key to the gates of heaven, but I’ve got too many legs!”
    Throughout the silliness, the U.K. Coupling managed to string along intriguing relationships between the characters, which of course accounts for the show’s success. Much like the Dawn-Tim saga in The Office, the fact that characters actually have feelings and problems that any real couple would made the cast likeable and believable, as Friends did in a more vapid way.
    The DVD, without spoiling anything, seems to be a swan song for the series, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Steve hallucinates about his impending fatherhood, and despite the maintenance of his “cupboard of love,” Patrick seems to be making steps to becoming an honest man with Sally. The unfortunate part of this installment is the conspicuous absence of Jeff (Coyle quit the show after season three), replaced by jittery comic-book nerd Oliver (Richard Mylan). In previous seasons, Jeff was always the one with the knack for naming social disorders, such as the mythical “giggle loop,” (in which you can’t stop laughing at an inappropriate time, in this case a funeral) or the terrifying “melty man,” ghost of withering male erections. While the laughs are still there, a cast change is always the first sign of sitcom disaster.
   Knowing the British and their love of brevity, it would serve the show best to quit while they’re ahead, or at least do nothing more than a wrap-up special à la The Office, before Coupling takes its well-deserved place in the Britcom cupboard of love.  n°

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
	Ryan Kennedy is a freelance gonzo journalist based in Toronto. His work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Adbusters and Maissoneuve.