Coupling was created by Steven Moffat based on his own relationship with producer Sue Vertue, and the two main characters, Steve and Susan, were named after them.

When Sue Vertue asked Moffat to write a sitcom for Hartswood Films, he got drunk one evening, went into her office, wrote the word 'Coupling' on a sheet of paper, and told her to ask him about it later.

Moffat and Vertue met at the Edinburgh International Television Festival in 1996 after mutual friends Peter Bennett-Jones and Andre Ptaszynski told each of them that the other fancied them.

The fourth episode, 'Inferno', was written shortly after Vertue found a similar sex tape in the VCR in real life, though Moffat added the 'spanking' element because he felt the real tape wasn't 'quite pervy enough'.

Rehearsals took place in a church hall off Kensington High Street, since British sitcoms typically cannot afford to occupy a studio for the entire production run.

The exterior shots of the bar were filmed in Clerkenwell for the first series, but production moved to a street near Tottenham Court Road from series two after a nearby Thai restaurant complained that filming disrupted their business.

The house where Moffat and Vertue actually lived at the time was used as the exterior for Steve's flat.

In the episode 'Dressed', most of Gina Bellman's scenes were prerecorded because she wore minimal clothing on set to create the illusion of complete nudity, which also prevented her from 'milking' laughs since there was no live audience present during filming.

All laughter in Coupling came from a genuine live studio audience recorded at Teddington Studios, with no artificial canned laughter used, though the audio was sometimes tweaked in editing, such as reusing laughter from earlier takes when a scene was reshot.

Moffat felt uncomfortable and powerless during studio recordings, sitting in the gallery repeatedly writing the word 'help' on the back of his scripts.

Richard Coyle quit his role as Jeff before the fourth series; the character only returns in a dream sequence in the final episode as 'Jeffina', a version of Jeff who underwent sex-reassignment surgery, played by Samantha Spiro.

The first series episode 'The Girl with Two Breasts', half of which is in Hebrew, was so popular that producers tried to include a similarly experimental episode in every subsequent series.

The series used unconventional sitcom techniques such as split screen and nonlinear narrative, including the series three opener 'Split' showing simultaneous perspectives on Steve and Susan's breakup, and the series four opener 'Nine and a Half Minutes' depicting the same bar scene from three different viewpoints.

The theme song, 'Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps' by Osvaldo Farres and Joe Davis, was performed by Mari Wilson over opening and closing credits, while Simon Brint composed the incidental music.

Coupling won 'Best TV Comedy' at the 2003 British Comedy Awards and the Silver Rose for Best UK Sitcom at the 2001 Rose d'Or Light Entertainment Festival.

An American remake commissioned by NBC in 2003 reused Moffat's original scripts (adapted by Phoef Sutton) rather than creating new ones, but was cancelled after only four episodes aired due to poor reception, despite 10 of 13 commissioned episodes having been filmed.

Since a planned fifth series could not be produced because the cast could not be reassembled, Moffat instead posted short storyline 'conclusions' about the characters' eventual fates on the website Outpost Gallifrey.