Fed Up with Modern Comedy? Coupling Is the Cure

A Blast from the Past: Coupling (UK)

I’ve reached that point. The point where modern sitcoms have finally broken me. Everything now is beige, worthy, and so terrified of causing offence that it might as well be written by a committee of nervous HR managers. So, in a moment of weakness—and mild rage—I dusted off my DVD collection. And there it was. Coupling.

Suddenly, joy returned.

This show was often lazily described as “the British Friends”. Which is like saying a Jaguar E-Type is essentially the same as a Toyota Corolla. Yes, both are cars. One makes your pulse race and occasionally scares you. The other exists to get you to Tesco and back without emotion.

Coupling was faster. Sharper. Filthier. And crucially, it assumed the viewer wasn’t an idiot. If you blinked, you missed a joke. If you were slow, the show didn’t wait for you—it simply moved on, leaving you behind in a cloud of cleverness.

The premise was simple: six friends in London trying to navigate sex, relationships, and adulthood while being spectacularly bad at all three. But the brilliance was in the writing. Steven Moffat hurled dialogue at the screen like it owed him money. Conversations overlapped, meanings twisted, and misunderstandings piled up until the whole thing collapsed in glorious chaos.

Jeff was a walking warning label. A man whose mouth operated several seconds ahead of his brain. Watching him flirt was like watching someone reverse into disaster while maintaining eye contact. Steve was the romantic fool, endlessly hopeful even as love repeatedly kicked him in the teeth. Patrick treated monogamy as a rumour. And Susan, Jane, and Sally weren’t there to prop up the men—they were sharper, smarter, and usually five moves ahead.

And the sex. Not the sanitised, candle-lit nonsense you get now, but the real British version: awkward, overanalysed, endlessly discussed, and almost always ruined by someone saying the wrong thing at exactly the wrong moment.

Structurally, Coupling was fearless. Multiple timelines, different perspectives, jokes layered on top of jokes, and not a single pause to explain what was happening. It trusted the audience to keep up. Imagine that.

Is it dated? Of course it is. People talk instead of text. Phones are used for calling. Nobody mentions “boundaries”. But that’s not a flaw—it’s a reminder of a time when sitcoms were allowed to be clever, fast, and unapologetic.

So yes, I’m fed up with modern sitcoms. Fed up enough to clean DVDs. And frankly, after rewatching Coupling, I’m not sure I want to go back.