Coupling writer hits out at US studios

The creator of Coupling has said his show was ruined by the American studio system.

NBC chiefs pulled the plug on the much-vaunted remake last week, after just four episodes had been aired.

Now writer Steven Moffat has claimed the production process robbed the show of its distinctive voice, even though scripts were almost word-for-word remakes of the BBC2 originals.

"Blandifying is the wrong word - mainly because it doesn't exist," Moffat said. "But you lose the voice of the characters.

"I never saw the American team of writers, in hindsight it was blindingly stupid that I wasn't there."

Moffat was talking at an event in London's Soho Theatre, discussing the pros and cons of sitcoms written by teams, as favoured by America, against those written by individuals, the norm in Britian.

He said: "Coupling was a demonstration of how it could go wrong. A TV show is about tone, not characters and format, and somehow the tone went awry."

Meanwhile, in New York, NBC president Jeff Zucker admitted that his network's ratings had been falling because "some of the programming just sucked," and singled out Coupling as their biggest mistake.

Moffat shared the stage with Fred Barron, a veteran of Seinfeld and Larry Sanders, who introduced team writing to the BBC with My Family.

He said team writing was usual in America because the amount of money riding on shows required economy of scale.

"Studios need 60 shows to break even," he said. "You need to have constant writing over all those weeks."

But he admitted: "Most team writing, like any kind of writing, is done by hacks and is mediocre. But if it's done right, you turn out something special.

"You can't just put together randomly funny people, you have to come to an agreement."

Barron said that the writers' table system produced gems like Frasier and Seinfeld, but the reason much of America's comedy output was bland was because of network interference.

"There is network invasiveness," he said. "And they are very stupid people.

"You get more homogenisation as networks are taken over by corporations it's horrible."

He said he was attracted to Britain because the system favoured individual voices, and spurned the US instincts for all characters to be likeable. "Everything America wanted, the BBC said, 'Don't go there'," he said.

Sophie Clarke-Jervoise, the BBC's head of comedy, said her plan was to have one or two team-written sitcoms a year, running alongside solo writers' comedies.

"Nobody's saying The Office would work as a team-written sitcom," she said. "Except NBC," retorted Moffat.

Published: 6 Nov 2003