Coupling - British TV Series - Intelligent, Irreverent and Hilarious
Okay. my last post was pretty exhausting for me, so I thought I'd lighten things up a bit.
Well, okay, a lot.
When Marek and I first started dating, I was thrilled to discover that he is a fellow staunch fan of British comedy, which was always a mainstay in our home when I was growing up.
And Marek introduced me to several series I had missed, including the fabulous "Coupling," not to be confused with the one-season abysmal (by comparison) American remake by the same name.
Not to suggest that the American remake was worthless, but its funny moments were entirely due to lifting dialogue verbatim from the original series.
And, since it randomly combined characters, and changed who said what, it simply made less sense then the original series. A LOT less sense. As in Trump speaking dialogue. Enough said.
The original British series lasted four seasons, kept getting better and better, and there are so many great one-liners that it was sometimes hard to catch our breath between laughter. Marek and I agreed that, although we love them all, Geoff was our favorite character by far.
An innocent in innocent's clothing. GIR pretending to be GIR. A man who is content not to know everything. Or anything. Except that he does. Sort of. At the oddest possible moments. And in the sweetest possible ways. Go Geoff.
Imagine "Friends" meets "Monty Python," and you have the beginnings of a glimmer of understanding.
Or not. No holy hand grenades here. Nor any killer rabbits. Not even Galahad. The Chaste. Just people, in relationship with other people, all human and flawed, and therein lies the basis of some truly excellent comedy.
The basic premise is that, when any two people start dating, it isn't just the two of them, but also their friends, their exes, their coworkers, and the dynamics of all these intertwined and convoluted relationships as they evolve.
Six friends form the core of the series; three women and three men, brought together by the newly forming relationship between Susan and Steve. Both of them have dated other members of the group in the past. And the other members have their dating histories too. In multiples.
Is there sexism? Oh, yes. On both sides; the women and the men.
And here you go, let's give the women some equal time with this hilarious clip, in which they seriously mess with their poor hapless waiter. ;-)
And they never fail to call one another out, and even occasionally, themselves. These are people who (mostly) actually learn and grow over the course of four seasons. What a concept.
Everyone in the series is wonderful, and they are great in their respective roles.
And Geoff is beyond hilarious, though he is only in the first three seasons. Oliver joins the cast for the fourth season, whom I love as well, though no one could ever replace Geoff. Ever.
All four seasons are gems. Enjoy. And then enjoy again, as we are getting ready to do, because it is just too funny a series not to revisit it from time to time. After all, we have Patrick Junior to think of. ;-)
If you're British or European, and you remember the series from when it originally aired on the BBC, I would LOVE to hear your take on it, and on whatever else you choose to share.
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Imagine "Friends" meets "Monty Python" -- ooh! Yes!
You will be shocked to hear that British comedy is my favorite, too. I grew up with "Dinsdale!" lurking, the world's deadliest joke, the school of funny walks, Confuse-a-Cat, and best of all, the Killer Sheep (Basil!). I've got to find "Coupling," the British version, of course, not the awful American remake. I've not seen the American version of a K-drama I like, "Dr. Park," about an autistic savante who makes it through med school and becomes a Korean Dr. House, solving cases nobody else can. The remake of "The Humans" is said to lack the humor of the original show (which was something European). Ok, 'nuff said... gotta find Coupling!
You also owe it to yourself to check out Anna Russell's work, who was a British operatic singer and comedienne - for real. I did a post on her take on Wagner's "Ring of the Nibelung" cycle a while back, which includes a couple of links to videos, which I think you'll enjoy.
I'm also interested in your take on my Day 99 Haiku post, which was my entry for the "Feminist Fire" competition, if you get a chance. It is admittedly one of my longer posts, brevity not always being among my strong suits. ;-)
Yeah, I probably should have said "Friends" meets "Monty Python" meets Eddie Izzard, which might actually be closer, but I figured that most Americans wouldn't know Eddie Izzard, so there you go. I can pretty much guarantee that you'll love "Coupling."
And if you haven't seen "Eddie Izzard, Live at Wembley," do yourself a favor and grab that too. You can thank me later. ;-)
All of his specials are well worth seeing, but that is my special favorite, and his bit on Greek mythology just about did me in. And, like Monty Python, the more history you know the funnier he is, and since my sister and I were both really into Greek mythology as kids, it was doubly funny to me. Both Marek and I kept having to go back, because we were frequently laughing too hard to hear the next jokes.
My former spouse, as smart as he was, never "got" British humor, which had a lot to do with the fact that he couldn't understand English accents. At all. Which completely mystified me, because . . . drum roll please . . . they're speaking English. But he literally had no idea what they were saying.
So when my stepdaughter "discovered" Monty Python, we had some serious bonding time, and sat one evening rolling on the floor in hysterics over "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," while her dad sat perplexed on the couch, every so often offering a plaintive, "What's so funny?"
For her part, April couldn't believe that I saw the film in the theatre the year she was born, just as she was blown away the day she "introduced" me to Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody," only to have me sing it along with her word for word, as I had known the song for nearly as long. ;-)
And a year or so ago, I had my own Monty Python moment on our farm, when I was on my way to bring in my goats for the evening, and suddenly realized I was hearing them up ahead of me, rather than down and to the left, where they should have been.
I was getting concerned, until I realized that the sound was coming from above my head, and that it was one of our local mockingbirds giving me his flawless goat bleating from one of the trees at the edge of the woods. Can you say flying sheep? ;-)
They had me going one day by the main house as well, when we had had a guinea pig escape, and I had managed to recapture and secure all but one male, who kept eluding me. I started hearing a guinea pig by the Bradford pear tree, in front of our house, which is a good fifteen or twenty yards from their enclosure . . . not good, with Lolo and both cats outside.
Then, as with the goats, I realized the sound was coming from up. And guinea pigs do not climb. Ever.
And, to this day, we have a couple of our mockingbirds that, every so often, give us their best guinea pig calls. Hilarious. ;-)
Ohhhhh the mockingbirds - last week our daughter presented the Starling for her college ornithology finals, and we were listening to their incredible imitations of chainsaws, camera shutters, and any sound they hear. Yours imitating the goats and the guinea pig, and for years to come having them in their repertoire, is sheer genius. And comedy! Birds should take over the cat monopoly on the internet!
And I totally love the Bohemian Rhapsody story. Never underestimate a mother!
Our local mockingbirds also speak fluent chainsaw, weedeater and tractor, and one has even started imitating the hammering sounds of our local woodpeckers.
We have a few different species, including pileated woodpeckers and flickers, so I always check to see who it is, and was dumbfounded one day to realize that the sound was coming from the mockingbird.
Definitely not what I was expecting.
We had a neighbor in Florida, who was having starter problems with his car, and one of our mockingbirds there started perfectly imitating his car refusing to start, which was pretty hilarious.
What amazed me the most about mockingbirds, however, is that we were a short block away from Lake Seminole, so we had a lot of ospreys and bald eagles in the immediate neighborhood, and the mockingbirds would regularly chase the MUCH bigger raptors out of their nesting areas.
Bald eagles and ospreys both have wingspans approaching six feet - mockingbirds, when protecting their young, are absolutely fearless.
They even chased away red-tailed hawks, which sometimes prey on song birds, including mockingbirds.