Produced by Hartswood Films for the BBC, the show centres on the dating, sexual adventures, and mishaps of six friends in their early 30s, often depicting the three women and the three men each talking among themselves about the same events, but in entirely different terms.

The series first aired on PBS stations and on BBC America in the United States beginning in late 2002 and quickly gained a devoted fanbase there, as well.

A relationship blossomed and they left their respective production companies to join Hartswood Films, run by Beryl Vertue, Sue's mother.

'"[4] The show used the "group genre", a type of programme using ensemble casts that was proving popular, with then-recent successes as Friends, This Life (also starring Davenport), and Cold Feet.

"[1] Moffat believes group shows would not have been popular with earlier generations of television audiences, stating: Friends would have run for only half a series if it had been set during my parents' time.

After a nearby Thai restaurant complained that filming was disrupting their business, a street just off Tottenham Court Road was used from series two.

A common example of this would be a dinner table sequence, where some characters would be filmed against the fourth wall, rather than the often-used contrived method of cramming everyone together around the proscenium.

[7] A warm-up comedian updated the studio audiences about any important plot detail, introduced them to the performers, and provided entertainment while cameras and sets were being repositioned.

[7] Mari Wilson performed the song "Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps", written by Osvaldo Farrés and Joe Davis, to accompany the opening and closing credits.

[13] The title sequence, as Mark Lawson described, consists of "brightly coloured and suggestive shapes swirl around the screen: circles, curves, and angles tumble like limbs locked together in sex.

In the series, "the women are mainly confident and sexually quite voracious, whilst the blokes are completely useless, riddled with self-doubt and awkwardness.

When angry, she generally says "apparently", a habit first noted in the first series episode "Inferno" and shown to be inherited from her mother in "My Dinner in Hell".

Jeff's constant sexual frustration, ridiculous stories, and fantasies about women and sex make up a major part of the comedy.

From titbits he occasionally lets slip, his problems apparently can largely be traced back to his eccentric and domineering mother (who appears in series two's "Naked", played by Anwen Williams).

[19] However, his character returns in a dream sequence in Steve's imagination in the final episode, "Nine and a Half Months"; portrayed by Samantha Spiro, "Jeffina" has undergone sex-reassignment surgery whilst living on the island of Lesbos, in a failed attempt to see another woman naked again.

Two explanations for this given in the series are his own claim that he "doesn't have a subconscious" and thus "nothing is going on" in his head and Sally's remark that there is not enough blood in his body for "both ends" (making reference to his abnormally large penis).

Patrick's love of the ladies often backfires, and the series frequently features story lines about his possessive lovers and ex-lovers.

Her character also seems not to be too bright, perhaps even disturbed, and is known to be incredibly self-obsessed, as shown in a second series episode when a "subtext detector" shows that the only thing she ever really means when talking is the word "me".

She was once briefly fired for telling all the drivers to close their eyes to centre themselves and changing the names of streets for her own amusement, among other things, but was rehired due to her popularity.

Julia and Jeff soon fall for each other due to their shared inability to hold a reasonable conversation with a member of the opposite sex.

Tamsin (Olivia Caffrey) is Oliver's Irish ex-girlfriend, who left him for unknown reasons around six months prior to the beginning of the fourth series, and has since become pregnant by another man, with whom she has now split.

She witnesses one of Steve's monologues about loving naked bottoms when the subject of one of his videos, the legendary Lesbian Spank Inferno, comes up.

Things quickly spiral out of control as Jeff tells Wilma that his girlfriend had recently died, on Jane's suggestion, to get out of 'the fork'.

[25] However, to finalise Coupling, Moffat posted some short storyline "conclusions" about the eventual fate of the characters on the website Outpost Gallifrey.

"[32] Scholar James Monaco comments that Coupling is "witty and elegantly structured ... [taking] the Seinfeld/Friends model to new heights with intricately wrought plots built on the interactions of six young friends.

"[28] Further comparisons were made to Friends when NBC commissioned an American version of the show in 2003, although some newspapers still pointed out that Coupling "owes much to Seinfeld, with laugh-out-loud riffs on 'unflushable' exes, escalating 'giggle loops' during solemn moments of silence and 'porn buddies,' who in the event of your sudden demise will remove all of the naughty pictures and videos from your flat before your parents arrive.

"[35] New York's Daily News, which quotes Moffat "boozier, smokier, more shag-infested series" than Friends, also thought that "some characters ... have ties closer to Seinfeld ... Jane, who, despite her beauty, is so abrasive she's like a female Newman.

[39] All four series were released in the UK, US, Israel, Canada, Hungary, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, Sweden, Portugal, the Benelux countries, Kenya, Turkey, and Latin America.

[36] Moffat and Sue and Beryl Vertue served as executive producers alongside Phoef Sutton and Ben Silverman.

[4] The US version starred Colin Ferguson, Jay Harrington, Christopher Moynihan, Lindsay Price, Rena Sofer, and Sonya Walger; Gina Bellman, who plays Jane in the British series, made a cameo appearance in the first episode.