THE MOVIE

Coupling is a BBC comedy series about relationships, love and lust, friends and ex’s. The series revolves around six main characters, Steve (Jack Davenport) and Susan (Sarah Alexander), their ex’s Jane (Gina Bellman) and Patrick (Ben Miles), and their friends Sally (Kate Isitt) and Jeff (Richard Coyle). A large portion of this series takes place at the local bar, where the guys and girls talk about relationships, love, lust and sex. The series was written by Steven Moffat and directed by Martin Dennis. Here’s a brief episode guide.

Episode 1 - Flushed
Today Steve’s going to do it, he’s going to dump his self-obsessed girlfriend Jane and he’s not going to let sex cloud his judgement like it has previously. Jane won’t accept that he wants to break up with her, and before long the couple are back together, getting hot and heavy in the girls toilets at the local bar. While trying to buy some condoms from a vending machine he meets Susan. He ends up asking her out on a date, but he still hasn’t broken up with Jane, how’s he going to work his way out of this one.

Episode 2 - Size Matters
Steve and Susan are now an item, but he’s having trouble talking to her on the phone, he doesn’t know what to say and the ‘pause’ has got out of control. She invites him over for dinner and everyone is under the assumption that dinner means sex will be involved. So Jeff is busy giving Steve advice on foreplay, telling him to watch out for the sock gap. Meanwhile, Sally learns why Patrick is nicknamed Donkey…

Episode 3 - Sex, Death and Nudity
Jeff has a job interview and Patrick is giving him some tips, telling him to simply imagine that the panel is naked. Meanwhile, Jane’s aunty has passed away and she wants Steve to go. Only problem is that her family doesn’t know that the pair have broken up. So Steve asks Jeff to come along as Susan’s decoy date. Susan invites Patrick to get back at Steve, and then Patrick asks Sally to be his decoy date so he doesn’t upset Steve.

Episode 4 - Inferno
Susan is cleaning Steve’s flat and finds a porno in the VCR entitled ‘Lesbian Spank Inferno’. He doesn’t know what to say so he tells her that he loves her. Jane gets wind of this and goes to visit her therapist. Steve never said that to her in the five years they dated. Susan and Steve throw a dinner party, and Jane invites her therapist along. Everyone is under the impression they’re a couple and the therapist mistakenly assumes that Patrick is gay.

Episode 5 - The Girl with Two Breasts
Jeff spies a new girl at the local bar and the pair exchange glances. He’s rather nervous about talking to her though, especially since he’s past the nudity buffer. It’s been more than five minutes, and she’s naked in his mind so he can’t have a proper conversation with her. In the end he approaches her, but it turns out she can’t speak a word of English. Probably just as well, because he tells her that he collects ears.

Episode 6 - The Cupboard of Patrick’s Love
Jane visits Patrick and stumbles upon his cupboard of porn. It seems Patrick keeps tapes of all his ex girlfriends, including Susan. Steve isn’t very happy about this, Susan is his girlfriend now so he has the naked rights to her. Susan hears about this from Jane and goes to see Patrick to get the tape off him, but it’s too late, Steve and Jeff have already seen it. Only, it’s not Susan at all, they discover that Patrick has accidentally taped over her.

THE TRANSFER

Video:

Coupling is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.85:1 widescreen and it is 16:9 enhanced. The level of detail is pretty good, probably not as good as the recently released first series of Linda Green, but still pretty good. The transfer is free of film grain and background noise is only evident during the scenes that take place outdoors at night (very few and far between). There is also some minor aliasing to be seen from time to time.

Colours are incredibly rich and vibrant, especially the letters that make up the word ‘Coupling’ during the opening credits. The clothes worn by the girls are often nice and bright as well. Flesh tones are also nicely saturated and realistic. This is a dual layer (DVD9) disc, although the layer change was not evident. Presumably it has been placed between episode 2 and 3.

Audio:

This DVD comes with just one soundtrack, that being a Dolby Digital 2.0 channel soundtrack. It has a satisfactory soundtrack. Dialogue is highly intelligible throughout all six episodes and the laugh track is clearly audible, but doesn’t detract from the dialogue in anyway. The theme music, ‘Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps’ sung by Mari Wilson is also nice and clear. I didn’t observe any audio synch problems. Unfortunately there were no subtitles.

THE EXTRAS

Unfortunately, this DVD is totally devoid of extra features. It’s a bit of a shame really, I mean there aren’t even any cast bios. The main menu is static with looped audio (theme music). The only options are an episode index and a ‘Play All’ feature.

SUMMARY

Coupling is the brainchild of Steven Moffat, a comedy series about love and lust amongst thirtysomethings, porn buddies, sock gaps, breasts and penis size. The series stars Jack Davenport, Sarah Alexander, Richard Coyle, Gina Bellman, Ben Miles and Kate Isitt. Technically speaking, this DVD is a reasonably good, it has a good visual and audio transfer, although there aren’t any extras on offer.