Ah ha, an episode guide. Episode # Prod # Original Air Date Episode Title Season 1 1. 1-1 12-May-00 Flushed 2. 1-2 19-May-00 Size Matters 3. 1-3 26-May-00 Sex, Death & Nudity 4. 1-4 02-Jun-00 Inferno 5. 1-5 09-Jun-00 The Girl with Two Breasts 6. 1-6 16-Jun-00 The Cupboard of Patrick's Love Season 2 7. 2-1 03-Sep-01 The Man with Two Legs 8. 2-2 10-Sep-01 My Dinner in Hell 9. 2-3 17-Sep-01 Her Best Friend's Bottom (1) 10. 2-4 24-Sep-01 The Melty Man Cometh (2) 11. 2-5 01-Oct-01 Jane and the Truth Snake 12. 2-6 08-Oct-01 Gotcha 13. 2-7 15-Oct-01 Dressed 14. 2-8 22-Oct-01 Naked 15. 2-9 29-Oct-01 The End of the Line

Coupling - Episode Guide Season 1 1. Flushed gs: Raji James (Waiter) Jeff reckons Steve is still in 'The Zone' with Jane: the time after the breakup when there can still be sex, but he wants to date Susan instead. When he has a meal in a restaurant with Jane, Susan walks in. b: 12-May-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Size Matters gs: Angus Deayton (Himself) Mariella Frostrup (Herself) William Scott-Masson (Howard) Adam Astill (Barman) Susan invites Steve for a date at home, and offers to cook. Jeff warns him about 'The Sock Zone', and Patrick alerts him to her collection of remote controls. Somehow everyone's conversation seems to revolve around Patrick's size, and Jeff is asked by several people to accompany him to the toilet to check. b: 19-May-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Sex, Death & Nudity gs: Nigel Betts (Neighbour) Adam Astill (Barman) Simon Bateso (Michael) Gwenllian Davies (Aunt Muriel) Katharine Page (Agatha) Jeremy Peters (Undertaker) Brian Shelley (Vicar) Jeff explains to the guys about 'The Giggle Loop': the danger that the more you try to suppress laughter in important silences, the harder you want to laugh. Jane's aunt has died, and she wants Steve to come to the funeral, pretending to be her boyfriend still. Susan invites herself, and so Patrick must come as her 'boyfriend', and all six end up going. b: 26-May-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Inferno gs: Elizabeth Marmur (Jill) Steve is worried that Susan has discovered a compromising tape in his video collection. Jane persuades her therapist to come along as a guest at a dinner party. Steve ends up explaining why his tape is �artistic� and not pornographic. b: 02-Jun-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5. The Girl with Two Breasts gs: Anat Dychtwald (The girl) Ruth Lass (Alice) Sarah Joseph (Girl at bar) Alaistair Southey (Barman) Jeff has a torturous time when he tries to chat up a beautiful foreign woman in the pub, as they do not have a language in common. b: 09-Jun-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6. The Cupboard of Patrick's Love Patrick has a cupboard of video tapes of his former girlfriends, not to mention Britt Ekland in The Wicker Man. Jeff is excited, but Steve is appalled, when he realises that Susan must be amongst them. Susan is also horrified when she realises this in the company of the other girls. Later on, she arrives at Patrick's, and is outraged at what she finds going on there. b: 16-Jun-00 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Season 2 7. The Man with Two Legs gs: Alison King (Chrissy) Paul Moody (David) Simon Chadwick (Liam) Imogen Bain (Woman on train) Jeff finally gets to speak to Chrissy, the woman on the train whose leg he has been fancying for days, and tells her that he only has one leg, a lie which becomes ever harder to undo. Meanwhile, Sally is dating a "surgeon" called David, and Jeff wonders whether it would be easier... b: 03-Sep-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 8. My Dinner in Hell gs: Mariella Frostrup (Herself) Wanda Ventham (Edna) James Woolley (Robert) Nick Moorcroft (TV presenter) Wendy Wason (Sex shop assistant) Samuel Barnett (Sex shop assistant) After watching an embarrassing program on TV with Susan, Steve bumps into his dream celebrity, Mariella Frostrup, in the bar, but it is not the dream encounter he might like, as she pours her drink down his trousers. Jane and Sally's attempt to make friends with her get him into more trouble as he then has to have dinner with Susan's liberal-minded parents, which turns into a nightmare as misunderstandings multiply. b: 10-Sep-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9. Her Best Friend's Bottom (1) gs: Jack Pierce (Junior shop assistant) Alan Cowan (Senior shop assistant) When Steve pops into Susan's flat, he accidentally sees Sally's naked bottom. This incident leads to dilemmas and awkwardness all round, which are dealt with in the classic sequence outlined by Jeff: the prickles (an embarrassed silence), the blurts (talking too fast), followed by the �head laugh�. b: 17-Sep-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10. The Melty Man Cometh (2) gs: Gresby Nash (Mark) Eddie Allen (Patrick's friend) Following their disastrous encounter, Patrick seeks reassurance from Steve & Jeff, and Sally seeks reassurance from Jane & Susan. b: 24-Sep-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 11. Jane and the Truth Snake gs: Susan Earl (Lynda) Shaughan Seymour (Jeremy Phillips) Jane gets the sack as a traffic reporter for a local radio station, and decides on a new career in children's entertainment. She starts rehearsing with a pink snake hand puppet, which turns out to have an unstoppable ability to tell the bald truth. Patrick is trying to dump his latest girlfriend Lynda, but when she says she's interested in a threesome, he desperately starts backtracking. b: 01-Oct-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 12. Gotcha gs: Sue Kelvin (Madge) Robert Purdy (Waiter) Seema Bowri (Waitress) It's one year since Steve and Susan's first date, and he is dreading questions about their future. And then a wedding invitation drops through their front door. Patrick meets an ex who appears to fail to recognise him. b: 08-Oct-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 13. Dressed gs: Matthew Bose (Bill) Stewart Wright (Harry) Unknown (Walter) Dominic Taylor (Ivan) Georgia Kelly (Emily) Patrick has boasted to his business associate, Ivan, amongst other things that he has a wife, and when Ivan comes to the bar, Patrick presses Sally and then Susan into pretending to be his wife. Things turn awkward when Steve proposes to Sally while she is pretending to be faithfully married to Patrick. Meanwhile, Jane is invited on a dinner date by Bill, a man she chatted up in a pub, but makes an unfortunate choice of clothing for the evening. b: 15-Oct-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 14. Naked gs: Lou Gish (Julia Davis) Anwen Williams (Jeff's mother) Ian Ralph (Boss) Mike Sherman (Jeff's colleague 1) Suzann McLean (Jeff's colleague 2) Ewan Watson (Jeff's colleague 3) Ben Homewood (Waiter) Simon Clayton (Policeman) As Jeff's 30th birthday approaches, his new boss Julia Davis questions the girls about whether one should kiss a junior work colleague, while Jeff admits to the lads that he had a close encounter of the Nat (Nose Avoidance Tilt) kind in a stationery cupboard at work... b: 22-Oct-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 15. The End of the Line gs: Lou Gish (Julia Davis) Mark Frost (Richard) Jules Leyser (Yvonne) Hazel McBride (Giselle) Steve has stupidly swapped phone numbers with a girl he chatted to in a bar, and fearing that she may actually call him, takes to answering the phone in an Australian accent, as "Bruce's Bar and Grill". Meanwhile, Susan, in order to get out of an awkward situation being chatted up by an Australian in another bar, phones home using a French accent. b: 29-Oct-01 w: Steven Moffat d: Martin Dennis --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/EpisodeGuideSummary/showid-7895/ source for the above episode guide

illiant! I can't wait for the next series! A Very Useful Opinion Advantages: Good character interaction., Fantastic scripts., Disadvantages: Only 6 episodes made so far. Product Rating: written on 07.05.01 by spiffo Who has rated this opinion? View comments Six twentysomethings. 3 male and 3 female. Plotlines revolve around sex and relationships. Shown on a Friday night. I know what you're thinking, and yes, the show is a little bit like Friends. In fact, the only weak point of Series 1 seemed to be that it was trying to be like other shows. In one episode, five of the characters are in a room and there's a knock at the door, leading to a sarcastic question of "I wonder who that could be" penned by writers who must have had Friends on their mind. In another episode, the writers have a go at being a bit more like the writers of Seinfeld by trying to have the characters articulate ideas that we all know of by giving them clever names. Thus, the term "giggle-loop" is coined for the way in which the more you know you shouldn't laugh, the more you do. Both of those examples are handled masterfully, though. The giggle-loop concept worked so much better than most of Seinfield's phrases and the way in which six people with tenious links almost end up together is less irritating than the way the six "Friends" are always hanging around in one person's appartment. There were only six episodes made, and the time taken over each script shows with the intensive scripts. One particularly good episode, "Lesbian spank inferno" managed to fit as many really good, laugh-out-loud jokes into half an hour as you'd get in about 5 or more episodes of most American sit-coms. I'm hoping that the BBC are going to do another series of Coupling. If they're not, I hope they repeat Series 1... I only realised how good the show was after a couple of episodes, so I've only got half the season on tape! from http://www.dooyoo.co.uk/review/252381.html

Commit to Coupling A Very Useful Opinion Advantages: cast, lines, Stories Disadvantages: none Product Rating: written /modified on 03.06.01/21.10.01 by Terry Mcintyre It seems that every other year someone has a moan about the state of British situation comedy and that it�s not up to the standard of Only Fools and Horses or Dad�s Army. The only show to emerge from all that seems to be The Royle Family that, while being original and funny, is a little overrated. Nobody seems to mention the marvellous Coupling though; one of the funniest sitcoms of recent years and it�s only had one series so far. When I first tuned in I immediately thought �Friends clone� which to be honest it is in a way but is perhaps more like Seinfeld in creating its own weird world but still strives to be different. For a start the main characters are not all friends and only get to know each other through the getting together of Steve (Jack Davenport from This Life) and Susan (Sarah Alexander from Smack the Pony). The others are: Jeff (Richard Coyle) Steve�s Welsh sex-mad best mate who works with Susan, Sally (Kate Issitt) Susan�s neurotic beautician best mate, Jane (Gina Bellman) Steve�s mad ex and Patrick (Ben Miles) Susan�s sex-mad ex. And most of the action takes place in a bar. Sounds familiar so far but that�s where the similarities end. The series concentrated on Steve and Susan�s blossoming relationship and used it as an excuse to put its own spin on the dating game. For example: the first phone call- in which Steve can�t think of anything to say �it�s like the pause becomes a third person in the conversation� notes Jeff �only one that doesn�t say much�. It�s these Seinfeld-like pearls of wisdom that pepper the show and help it create it's own language and world therefore setting it apart from Friends and every other clone. When the first show ('Flushed')opens, the action flits between Steve and Susan talking to their friends about breaking up, and they both enter and sit by opposite partners, taking no notice of each other and fooling the viewer, that you know this is something different. There are many great moments such as the men doing their Reservoir Dogs impression while dressed in black suits for a funeral, Patrick�s �Cupboard of Love� containing videos of everyone he�s slept with, Steve trying to explain the plot of �Lesbian Smack Inferno� without making it sound pervy. It also put a new spin on the old �pretend the audience is naked� chestnut when Jeff, nervous about an interview, starts picturing everybody naked (�I can�t switch off the naked people�) until he goes into the interview room and looks in a mirror. The same episode,'Sex, Death and Nudity', introduces the �giggle loop� �the thing that makes you laugh in solemn situations. There are some great conversations such as Jeff claiming he and Steve are �porn buddies� (if one should die then the other immediately clears his house of porn before his parents come round), Sally saying that �age brings you more to shave�, Jane dating a gay guy because she�s bisexual, Patrick spending an episode thinking up porn film names (�The Girl with Two Breasts�) and a discussion about politics using Star Wars metaphors. The series is further enhanced by flashbacks during on going situations or similar visual devices that enhance the comedy rather than becoming it like �Teachers�. Richard Coyle�s nervous, neurotic, helpful but dateless Jeff is the best character along with Gina Bellman�s nutty, clingy Jane (�now the lesson we can learn from the Crippen�s��). Jeff has possibly the best episode in which he attempts to chat up an Iranian girl. After the conversation has finished we hear the whole thing back in her language which then leads to a brilliant finale. The acting is good but there�s something about Sarah Alexander that sets her apart, for the worst reasons, perhaps she�s playing it too straight, I don�t know. Another problem would be that the format isn�t that original and it�s a bit strange that Patrick and Jane manage to integrate themselves with their respective groups so quickly. These are just silly quibbles though in what is overall a brilliant, hilarious and shamefully underrated production. I know it�s a clich� to say it but if you like Friends and Seinfeld then this is definitely for you. Luckily a second series is in production and I hope it will keep up to the quality of the first and that in itself is a rarity- a good first season that is critically acclaimed (except for the bloke in Time Out who must�ve been watching a different show). Relationships will never seem the same again. Now if only I could get a date�

"Coupling" BBC America is showing a British sitcom called "Coupling." Now in its second season, the show is often inspired. Have you seen it? It has received zero coverage in the U.S. The show is very much a "Friends"-type situation, but much funnier. Most episodes give me at least one laugh-out-loud, a rare thing for an American sitcom (save "Scrubs" or "Undeclared"). I think something must be wrong with me. "Grapevine," "My So-Called Life," "Cupid" � everytime I like a new show, it gets cancelled. For a while there, I thought ABC held some personal vendetta. HBO seems to be the only channel willing to let an audience develop these days and as great as Dream On, Larry Sanders, Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Six Feet Under were and are, it would be nice to have an actual full season of shows. � Sam Israels "Coupling," which you liked a lot more than I did, is a Beeb production that airs here on BBC America a few months after it premieres in England. It is currently in its second season (or "series," as they say over there), and BBC America will show all nine episodes in a Valentine's Day marathon beginning 1 p.m. on Feb. 14. You've been spoiled by American television. Here, the networks typically air 22 episodes of a show over 39 weeks, which means 17 of those weeks, or nearly half the season, are taken up with reruns and pre-emptions. The British show all the episodes in a season consecutively, but their "series" are much shorter, usually no more than seven episodes ("Coupling's" popularity apparently led Beeb programmers to order a couple extra). You may not think 13 episodes of an HBO program constitutes an "actual full season," but by British standards 13 episodes is epic. from http://www.tvbarn.com/ask/asktvb-01302002.shtml

Tired of NBC's 'Friends'? Why not try 'Coupling'? By DONNA J. PLESH of TheColumnists.com SHORTLY AFTER I watched the first episode of NBC�s "Friends," a friend asked me what I thought about the show�s chances for success. Pleased to be asked my opinion as a person considered knowledgeable about television and the industry, I replied, "It will be gone by the end of October." Right. Wrong! It�s 2001 and the show about a group of now thirtysomethings living in Manhattan is in its eighth season as part of NBC�s "Must See"--or perhaps it should be retitled "Must See Sometimes"--Thursday night lineup. Last season the show faced its first real ratings competition when CBS dropped its 800-pound gorilla "Survivor" opposite it in the 8 p.m. Thursday slot. The ratings told the story: "Survivor" won the 8 p.m. war, but "Friends" survived. The ratings brought no real panic in the NBC camp, but was it just a coincidence that the long-running hit�s season-ending epsidode featured the wedding of "Friends" friends Chandler (Mathew Perry) and Monica (Courtney Cox Arquette) and the surprising pregnancy of Rachel (Jennifer Aniston)? In the past, the marriage of lead characters on a hit TV show hasn�t ended happily ever after. (Anyone remember what happened to "Rhoda�� when the title character got married? In fact, does anyone remember much about the show at all?) When sexual tension is gone, where does the plot--and the hook to keep viewers coming back week after week--go? Of course, in the case of "Friends," there still are the unmarried Joey (Matt LeBlanc), Ross (David Schwimmer), Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) and Rachel. But the sexual tension, whatever little there ever was on "Friends" (Ross and Rachel--the early years) pales in comparison to the overt sexuality and seemingly constant talk about sex on BBC America�s "Coupling." After watching the first season of "Coupling," I thought it would be interesting to get a "Friends" fan�s take on the show described by BBC-A Chief Operating Officer Paul Lee as a "very grown-up 'Friends' meets 'Sex and the City.'" "Coupling" begins its second season of episodes on BBC-A on Oct. 26. Like "Friends," the Brit import focuses on a group of thirtysomethings.The friends on "Friends" hang out a lot in a coffee bar, while the "Coupling" gang spends a goodly amount of time at the neighborhood pub, preoccupied with finding someone of the opposite sex for sex. Or at least talking about sex. A lot. from http://www.thecolumnists.com/plesh/plesh1.html This is just a tease, visit the site to get the rest of her article.