Coupling

For the past couple of weeks, my girlfriend Swatra and me have been laughing our asses off watching the four seasons of the British sitcom called "Coupling" on DVD. I know it's close to a mortal sin to explain what's funny about a show, but in the interest of bringing this one to more people's attention, I'd like to give it a shot anyway.

It's the 'sit' in sitcom
Imagine being a man stuck at a dinner table, explaining to the assembled guests the artistic merits of a movie called 'Lesbian Spank Inferno'. Imagine being a girl arriving at a guy's apartment dressed only in your raincoat, only to discover that he's throwing a party for a few dozen friends. Imagine going on a date with a girl who you made believe you have an artificial leg.

Experimental narrative techniques
One episode of Coupling is almost entirely shot as a split screen, one side showing the guys, the other showing the girls. In other shows, flashbacks and flash-forwards abound. In yet other shows, the same scene is played out several times from different characters' perspectives (even in different languages), each new version shedding more light on the whole.

Bizarre characters
Few comic characters can match the weirdness that is Jeff, the sex-obsessed loon who blurts out inappropriate phrases at every opportunity. His universe is inhabited by strange concepts such as The Melty Man ("the arch-enemy of trouser confidence") and The Nudity Buffer (the amount of time he can look at a woman before imagining her naked, rendering any normal conversation impossible).

Oh yeah, I almost forgot
It's simply hilariously funny.