I cried until I laughed! (Coupling)

Member Name: grahamp3

Product:	Coupling
Date:	16/10/01 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Gina Bellman, her eyes, her hair, her voice, everything really

Disadvantages: the wine bar (does it really exist?), Jack Davenport (wooden), the unnerving air of dreamlike unreality

Sometimes you just get stuck on the sofa with beer and snacks and can barely raise the energy to change the channel. That's what happened with me and Coupling, BBC2's peculiar Monday night sitcom.
Yes, it's a UK version of Friends but somehow manages to be even less funnier. It does, however, retain the smugness, the one-dimensional characteristion and unconvincing sets. (What's with that wine bar they hang around in?) It seems to exist in a parallel universe composed of leftovers from fashion shoots and car ads.
Basically, I watch it because the three girls in it are lovely and they struggle so hard to make their lines interesting and funny. I feel like I'm on their side and, against all the odds, they make me laugh in a painful kind of way. Like when you bang your head and it hurts but it was quite amusing how you did it.
Oh, the 'situation'. Well three early-30s men and three early 30s women flap about in wine bars and hair salons being scared of commitment and obsessed with sex, like they do these days. One of the men goes out with one of the women, and one of the men used to go out with one of the women, and one wants to go out with ....
They're all rich and good looking and don't do much work and each has one characteristic which determines their conversation and action. It's like watching computer generated sims go about their daily lives, behaving in one preprogrammed way, only responding to one stimuli.
So, it's poorly written and vacuous, yet strangly compelling, and I'd like to watch it with YOU!

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