‘We cranked up the madness’: Jack Davenport and Steven Moffat on making Coupling

‘If this lot aren’t hot enough, who is?’ … clockwise from top left, Gina Bellman, Kate Isitt, Richard Coyle, Ben Miles, Jack Davenport and Sarah Alexander in ‘the British Friends’ in 2000. Photograph: BBC/Allstar

Steven Moffat, writer

This was semi-autobiographical. I’d just got together with my wife Sue [Vertue, a producer]. After a boozy lunch, I walked past her office on my way home, a bit worse for wear, and left a note on her desk – just the word “Coupling” and “Ask me about it later”. When I woke up and recovered, I suggested: “Why don’t we make a sitcom about people becoming couples for the first time? That’s what we’re living through, so the material is constantly delivered to our door.”