So now I’ve seen the first episode of series 4 of Coupling, what do I think of it? Well, the main disappointment is the loss of Jeff. Apparently the actor who played him didn’t want to appear in this series and also refused to take part in order to be written out properly. So, we now have a remote Jeff and his replacement: a guy called Oliver. This is a big problem. The actor who plays Oliver just isn’t funny.

The writing however is still good. This particular episode is structurally impressive with a number of repeated jokes whose meaning changes each time.

Will Coupling survive without Jeff and with Oliver instead? I provide below answers to a number of questions regarding other TV shows that lost important people:

• Was Baywatch the same without Pammy? No.
• Was Gladiators any good when Lightning and Jet left? No.
• Was X-Files any good without Mulder? Not really.

This definitive analysis shows that Coupling series 4 won’t be any good. I hope that Oliver’s role does improve however and that he ceases to be a Jeff-lite which seems to the current objective.