NBC "Coupling" New Affiliates

The moral of the story? Sex sells. Even in Mormon country.

Just days after two affiliates dropped NBC's Coupling from their schedule after fielding complaints about the show's racy content--before the sitcom even aired--the Peacock has found two replacement stations willing to run the new comedy in time for its premiere Thursday night.

NBC has sealed a deal with WB affiliate KUWB-TV in Salt Lake City and UPN affiliate WSBT-DT in South Bend, Indiana, to air Coupling for a full season.

The whole Coupling conflict commenced when NBC affiliate KSL-TV in Salt Lake City opted not to broadcast Coupling following vocal protests from its mostly Mormon audience over the series' frank sex talk, including bits about threesomes, masturbation, sexual performance, lesbianism, genitalia, condoms and porn.

The show was also deemed too hot for prime time by South Bend's WNDU-TV, an NBC affiliate owned by the University of Notre Dame, whose staunchly Catholic constituency didn't approve either. The station's manager said the sitcom's "crude sex jokes" pushed "the envelope well beyond the boundaries of our community standards."

Essentially a note-for-note American remake of a BBC sitcom of the same name, Coupling centers on the sexploits of six thirtysomethings (three men and three women). The envelope-pushing dialogue includes bits like "I just want to see how your breasts are holding up--I haven't seen them since Mardi Gras."

NBC, which has been trying to position Coupling as the next Friends, was forced to scramble for surrogate stations in those markets.

The network had to make some concessions to get Coupling on in the two cities. For South Bend, the network ended up contracting with WSBT-DT, which airs only on cable and HDTV sets. And the show will air at 10 p.m. in those markets, instead of its normal 9:30 slot in the rest of the country.

"The viewers should be able to decide for themselves," NBC spokeswoman Rebecca Marks told the Associated Press. "It's unfortunate that they can't. We're pleased that these other stations have picked it up."

The big question mark for Coupling is whether it can live up to NBC's high hopes.

So far, according to the critics, the answer is a resounding no. "At a loss to develop a 'must see' sitcom on its own, NBC has purchased the three short-season run of the British series Coupling lock, stock and terrible scripts, and reshot it with an American cast. And so now, the network that once brought you Friends brings you a rip-off of a preposterously randy rip-off of Friends as filtered through Sex and the City," says USA Today's Robert Bianco. "Coupling inarguably treads a few paces beyond any previous broadcast network sitcom, but it does so with a measured step and a light touch. It is risqué, not raunchy. It is bawdy, not brassy. It is about body language, not booty jokes," writes Barry Garron in the Hollywood Reporter. "Frank sex talk and a constant stream of double-entendres are considered the height of wit and creative risk-taking on such shows, when in fact, it's all about as sophisticated as little kids looking up 'naughty' words," opines the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Jim Vejnoska. Coupling, which aims to make sex funny, stands just as good a chance, ironically enough, of making sex dull," says Tom Shales of the Washington Post. "Coupling's six are just Friends' characters taken to obnoxious extremes. The three women are, respectively, bitchy, desperate and crazy, but what saves the show from misogyny is that the men, in turn, are selfish, preening and pathetic," writes Time's James Poniewozik.

Now it's up for the home audience to judge. Coupling premieres tonight at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, or 10 p.m. if you happen to live in South Bend or Salt Lake City.