feeling listless

Review! The Brit-com Coupling's second series begins tonight. Unfairly referred to as a rip-off of 'Friends' (mostly by me) the first series went from a shaky start to a must see programme. More likely to take risks than the American show (and at times much funnier), other than the premise of three men & three women talking about sex, the writer Steven Moffat takes the format in another direction. The episode everyone talks about features a mis-understanding regarding the advances or not of a girl who speaks Hebrew. As Mark Lawson writes in The Guardian: "The point about Moffat is that, unusually among television sitcom writers, he works in the genre of farce. Critics have often suggested that farce is impossible to write in a contemporary setting because the plot motor of the form - the need to lie to prevent loss of face or exposure - is implausible in a society which has ever less sense of shame." This was a stumbling block Moffat encountered with the great lost sit-com of the Eighties, 'Joking Apart' - which at one point played out the classic plotline of having three different lovers in different rooms - something Oscar Wilde was a dab hand at. Let's hope this new series gets the airing it deserves...
Update! Just saw the first episode - gives a whole new meaning to 'I'd give an arm and a leg...'