Coupling

Jeff reckons Steve is still in The Zone with Jane: the time after the breakup when there can still be sex, but he wants to date Susan instead. When he has a meal in a restaurant with Jane, Susan walks in.

Jeff explains to the guys about The Giggle Loop: the danger that the more you try to suppress laughter in important silences, the harder you want to laugh. Janes aunt has died, and she wants Steve to come to the funeral, pretending to be her boyfriend still. Susan invites herself, and so Patrick must come as her boyfriend, and all six end up going.

Jeff and co. cant take their eyes of a beautiful stranger in their local bar. And the girl cant take her eyes off Jeff. Jeff goes over to talk to her, only to discover that she doesnt speak a word of English, which to Jeff of course is quite a relief. Her interpreter, Alice, tells Jeff shes Israeli, then whisks her away. The next day the girl is back and Jeff attempts to chat her up. With neither speaking a word of the others language, it is an utter disaster.

Jeff finally gets to speak to Chrissy, the woman on the train whose leg he has been fancying for days, and tells her that he only has one leg, a lie which becomes ever harder to undo. Meanwhile, Sally is dating a "surgeon" called David, and Jeff wonders whether it would be easier.

When Steve pops into Susans flat, he accidentally sees Sallys naked bottom. This incident leads to dilemmas and awkwardness all round, which are dealt with in the classic sequence outlined by Jeff: the prickles (an embarrassed silence), the blurts (talking too fast), followed by the "head laugh".

Jane gets the sack as a traffic reporter for a local radio station, and decides on a new career in childrens entertainment. She starts rehearsing with a pink snake hand puppet, which turns out to have an unstoppable ability to tell the bald truth. Patrick is trying to dump his latest girlfriend Lynda, but when she says shes interested in a threesome, he desperately starts backtracking.

Patrick has boasted to his business associate, Ivan, amongst other things that he has a wife, and when Ivan comes to the bar, Patrick presses Sally and then Susan into pretending to be his wife. Things turn awkward when Steve proposes to Susan while she is pretending to be faithfully married to Patrick. Meanwhile, Jane is invited on a dinner date by Bill, a man she chatted up in a pub, but makes an unfortunate choice of clothing for the evening.

Steve and Susans relationship is drifting into a new phase. They are beginning to get on each others nerves. A bizarre set of misunderstandings brings on a crisis.

Jane finds herself competing with the Supreme Being of the Universe and she feels it isnt fair on either of them. Jeff finds himself in the middle when he has to decide to cheat his girlfriend Julia with Wilma or not.

Sally is surprised to say the least when Patrick arrives at her flat at three in the morning to get rid of a spider for her. It turns out that he dreamt her distress call. What can this mean? Does Patrick subconsciously want to protect Sally? More shockingly, does Patrick have a subconscious? Encouraged by their friends, Sally and Patrick independently tell the story of how they first met...

Susan has invited everyone over for dinner, which as we know is just asking for trouble. Steve is particularly worried because Susan has recently redecorated the bathroom, and removed the lock, thus robbing him of his Fortress of Solitude. Sallys worry is that Patrick is bringing his new girlfriend: shes frightened that she will overcompensate her feelings of hostility towards her new rival by being embarrassingly nice. Patrick dimly perceives there might be a problem, so has told Jennifer that Sally is a lesbian...

One bar, three different points of view, the same nine and a half minutes. Susan and Steve are pregnant (mostly Susan), Patrick and Sally are discussing relationships (mostly Sally), and Jane has a blind date - but will his job be a problem? Meanwhile, in the skies above an Aegean island, terrible danger grows.

Since the dawn of time, men and women have been falling in love - and men have been trying to get straight home afterwards. Can fallen playboy Patrick Maitland ever find his way home from the Enchanted Glade of his one true love and get a decent nights kip? Kate Isitt as Sally makes her singing debut.

Oliver invites Jane to his apartment, not realizing that things such as porn and dirty dishes now replace the floor. Meanwhile Patrick lets the fact slip that he slept with Jane during a conversation with Oliver and Patrick which gets back to Sally. While all the drama unfolds Susan realizes that the pains in her stomach means the baby is finally on his way.