Coupling

Steve and Jeff go to a wine bar where Steve has decided to dump Jane, his longstanding girlfriend, once and for all; but when he sees her he’s soon ensnared by the basest of male instincts. Meanwhile Susan and her best friend, Sally, go out to the same bar. Susan meets up with Patrick, with whom she has been enjoying “sex with a fringe of conversation”. However, when it transpires they’ve both been unfaithful, it looks as if the fling is over. She then bumps into Steve who is buying condoms in the toilets, and he cheekily asks her out.

Steve is surprised when Susan invites him round for supper at her place. As Jeff expounds on “the sock gap” and offers advice on foreplay and his theory on celebrity marriages, he has no idea Susan can overhear everything. Meanwhile, Patrick invites Sally on a date to a motor show. She feels they just haven’t made that special connection yet – until Susan reveals why she called him Donkey. Elsewhere, to everyone’s surprise, Jane materialises with Howard, a good-looking young man. But it seems she’s going to have a bit of a challenge on her hands if she thinks she’s going to seduce him.

An upset Jane appears on Steve’s doorstep. Her aunt has died and she wants Steve to go to the funeral with her. When Steve tells Susan that he told Jane he couldn’t go, she insists he must, and Susan announces she wants to go, too. Steve just keeps digging himself in deeper and begs a strangely confident Jeff to go as Susan’s partner. Meanwhile, Susan is busy inviting Patrick to the funeral and he is inviting Sally, who has a pathological fear of growing old, to be his decoy date. However, before long, all six of them are heading up a suburban street dressed in funereal black…

When Susan decides to video a tv programme, Steve gets paranoid about her finding his lesbian porno video. Jane is astonished to hear that Steve told Susan he loved her, something he failed to say to her throughout the five years of their relationship. When Susan suggests they have a dinner party and invites her, Jane persuades her therapist, Jill, to go to the dinner party with her. The pair turn up on the doorstep, much to the boys’ excitement. Is this Jane’s new date, they wonder. However, things soon go from bad to worse for Steve…

The boys are sitting in the bar looking at a beautiful girl with the casual lust of no-hopers. When she glances at Jeff, who’s "way past the nudity buffer," the others encourage him to go and talk to her. A man on his way to an execution, Jeff plods off in the direction of the bar. Before long he’s babbling away – but she seems to understand nothing. The girl is from Israel – she hasn’t understood a word. Jeff is transfixed. The next day the girls watch the same beautiful girl in the bar. They’re looking at perfection. Suddenly she’s on boy alert – and it’s Jeff she’s eyeing up…

Jane turns up on Patrick’s doorstep. Stunned, he offers her a drink. She senses his emotional walls. Why does he never talk to her? Meanwhile the boys discuss screen nudity. Then Jane opens Patrick’s cupboard to be confronted by a wall of videos. Jane grabs him and slams him against the wall. It seems Patrick has filmed all the women he’s ever had sex with – including Susan. News spreads about the videos. But just who has the naked rights to Susan now she’s going out with Steve? Slightly anxious, Susan decides to confront Patrick, only to find he’s watching a video – and he’s got company…