"Coupling": The Next "Friends"?

NBC hopes so. The Peacock has bought the rights to Coupling, a sexy British sitcom, in hopes that it can be reconfigured using American actors into a possible replacement for their super hit sitcom when it likely leaves the air in 2003 after nine seasons.

The thirtysomethings-in-love-and-lust import has been described by the Peacock "as Friends with sex." (Um, so where did Rachel's baby come from?)

NBC says it's "excited" about the show, which is being developed for a midseason premiere. The network says the U.S. version has not been cast, yet.

And while Wednesday's edition of the London Times touts Coupling as a replacement for Friends, it is but one of a handful of candidates for the prime slot.

Coupling was masterminded by Steven Moffat and his wife Sue Vertue, who based the sitcom on the shenanigans of their own lives. Jack Davenport and Sarah Alexander star as fictional versions of Moffat and Vertue. Filmed in front of a live audience and aired commercial-free on the BBC, the series, which contains nudity and many a reference to "wanking," currently airs late night in the U.S. on BBC America. The cable network publicizes the show as "a very grown-up Friends."

BBC America executive Paul Lee, speaking to the Television Critics Association last July, said the show has drawn favorable comparisons to American-grown shows. Lee said he's heard people say, "Oh my God, everybody's good-looking, it's bright colors--this can't be a British comedy."

Alexander told the TV critics she thought the comparison to the phenomenally successful NBC show was "really flattering," but posed the question, "Can Friends fuck?"

Coupling's three male characters (Steve, Jeff and Patrick) and three females (Susan, Jane and Sally) do plenty of that--so much so that Alexander claims the show is more like HBO's Sex and the City than the NBC prime-time series.

Costar Richard Coyle, who plays the lusful and frequently naked Jeff, dubbed the show "rude."

Too rude for primetime America? Maybe not. Beryl Vertue, Sue's mother and executive producer of Coupling, told the London Times that NBC producers were "very enthusiastic about the show and said they didn't want to tone it down."

Ben Silverman, who will oversee the American adaptation, said, "We think Coupling would be a perfect show for the fans of Friends." He calls the show "next-generation...really honest and edgy."

Blighty comedy transposed to the good old U.S. of A. has often turned into a complete bollocks. It worked dandy for Norman Lear who bought the dysfunctional family sitcom Until Death Us Do Part and translated it into the groundbreaking '70s CBS sitcom All in the Family.

But many other transatlantic adaptations have proved less than fab. For example, Roseanne Barr bought the rights to the outrageously unpolitically correct Absolutely Fabulous, but drug- and drink-fueled hotties like Patsy and Edina simply weren't America's cup of tea. Maude star Beatrice Arthur's Amanda's by the Sea was a bloody awful travesty of John Cleese brilliantly loony Fawlty Towers; a second version of the hotel-based show featuring John Larroquette never even materialized on air at CBS. Survivor made the leap successfully in the reality-show field, but Big Brother has never really caught on. In the game-show arena, the novelty of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Weakest Link soon died off. Men Behaving Badly, also executive produced by Beryl Vertue, is another larky sitcom that failed to hit in the States, though it's currently headed for a revival back home.

If Coupling can't make it as the next Friends, maybe it can aim to be the next Seinfeld.

Said Alexander, "Nothing much happens in Coupling. It's concentrated on the sort of minutiae of life and relationships, and small details about, you know, when you take your socks off during sex."