‘We cranked up the madness’: Jack Davenport and Steven Moffat on making Coupling

Steven Moffat, writer

This was semi-autobiographical. I’d just got together with my wife Sue [Vertue, a producer]. After a boozy lunch, I walked past her office on my way home, a bit worse for wear, and left a note on her desk – just the word “Coupling” and “Ask me about it later”. When I woke up and recovered, I suggested: “Why don’t we make a sitcom about people becoming couples for the first time? That’s what we’re living through, so the material is constantly delivered to our door.”

The lead characters were played by Jack Davenport and Sarah Alexander. We named them Steve and Susan, after ourselves, as a way of being honest about the story and as a constant reminder that it was loosely based on our early days – that strange new business of coupling up and the little constellation of friends that forms around you. It was pretty obvious we’d get called “the British Friends” because we’d accidentally ended up with a cast of six. I was trying to be playwright Neil Simon in tone and probably failing. Ridiculously, our real house ended up being used as a location. I’d be writing the scripts upstairs, then go downstairs and tidy up for the film crew coming.

It was lightly plotted but we’d make mundane incidents interesting by pulling them apart in gimmicky ways – telling it backwards, splitting the screen, girls and boys describing the same event differently. The general tenor was that women were smarter and men were useless. Steve was sort of me, while the other two guys were the opposing forces sitting on my shoulders and chatting in my ears. Richard Coyle played Jeff, the paranoid voice; Ben Miles was Patrick, the cocky one. Other true-life details made it in, like Sue always being late or her finding an old porn video of mine.

The show got good reviews and entirely decent ratings. A year later, The Office came along and flattened everything in its path. We became the show that wasn’t The Office but was on the same night. Good luck with that! We ran for four series but the last was without Richard Coyle. Richard Mylan came in as Oliver and was excellent but replacing such a popular character was tough. Two of the couples got together and Susan was pregnant, so it wasn’t quite the same any more. The BBC wanted a fifth series but I wasn’t bursting with ideas and reluctantly called it a day.

NBC made an awful American version. Friends was coming to an end but the worst possible replacement was a show that looked exactly like it. I knew we were in trouble when they said: “Obviously, we’ll need a new cast because yours aren’t good-looking enough.” I thought: “Shit, if our lot aren’t hot enough, who the hell is?” It was an utter disaster, axed after four episodes.

To my surprise, people still bring up Coupling and always fondly. They often mention Jeff’s one-legged lie or Steve’s rant about cushions. I still have a “sitcom twitch” – trying to put jokes on every page whatever I’m writing. Which probably isn’t always a good thing. But hey, if you can make people laugh, you’re doing all right.

Jack Davenport, actor

I’d just finished The Talented Mr Ripley, so Coupling was a bit of a swerve. I’d made this big, fancy Hollywood movie, did I want to go and do dick jokes in Teddington? Actually I did, thanks to the scripts. Steven Moffat is one of a kind. It just flows out of him. The idea of three guys and three girls was similar to Friends, obviously, but Steven’s voice and worldview were so different. We could also be more ribald than a US network. It was about youngish adults figuring out who they are and how they relate to each other. In your 20s and 30s, sex is a massive part of that.

The job slightly terrified me but when was the next time I’d be asked to do a multicamera sitcom? Never, it turned out. Episodes were perfect little 28-minute farces. Recording in front of an audience was ideal because it’s like theatre. Well done farce is the greatest live experience. You keep cranking up the madness until it’s delirious.

Steven and Sue weren’t like: “Don’t fuck it up because you’re playing us.” They were more like: “Here, borrow some of the embarrassing shit we got up to. Have a laugh with it.” When he gets going, Steven can be hilariously ranty. He certainly gave that part of himself to my character. Once or twice a season, I’d get an unbroken page of dialogue. The speech where I rage about cushions speaks to an eternal truth. “WHAT are they for?” There have been moments when I’ve wanted to show it to my wife [actor Michelle Gomez]. I’m looking at our couch right now and see the chubby little bastards sitting around like fat litter.

Coupling was like being inducted into a family business. Not only did Steven write it and Sue produce it but the late, great Beryl Vertue – Sue’s mum, a gigantic figure in British showbusiness – was exec producer. I even ended up suggesting the theme tune. Sue offered a case of wine for whoever found the best song, so I came up with Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps – mainly because Michelle’s music taste is frozen in about 1957 and she always played mid-century loungecore around the house.

Filming live was adrenalised. I’d look in the whites of Richard Coyle’s pin-wheeling eyes as we both freaked out, whereas Ben Miles was a nerveless beast. There was lots of corpsing. It’s easy to make Richard laugh, so me and Ben enjoyed tormenting him. Sarah was an inveterate giggler too. Each week, we’d build up towards the taping, then pile into the bar afterwards and have a mini-wrap party. We were all younger and drunker in those days. It was a buzz. A sugar high.

I never expected to do four seasons – I’ve never done four years of anything else – but it was a blast. Coupling has staying power. To this day, people quote it at me in the supermarket. I showed a clip of Richard and me doing the Spider-Man dance to my son recently and it made him laugh. It’s good for your kids to see you being a dick sometimes. Besides, I’m proud of it.

• All four series of Coupling are now on BBC iPlayer