Colin Ferguson has a vested interest in seeing NBC's "Coupling" stick around for a while.

So when the actor, who plays self-absorbed cad Patrick on the American version of the BBC hit, says that "I feel like the episodes have gotten stronger week to week," that might be expected. Maybe even required, given the level of scrutiny applied to the show and its scheduling.

TV critics were abuzz when NBC pulled the show from its Thursday lineup this week in favor of a "Whoopi" encore and announced that "Coupling" would also sit out the first night of November sweeps in favor of "super-sized" episodes of "Friends," "Scrubs" and "Will & Grace." (NBC says the sweeps plan has been in place for some time.)

Ferguson isn't just engaging in spin control, though; his interview with Zap2it took place two weeks before NBC made its scheduling moves. He also knew going in to the season that "Coupling's" fate would be more closely watched than that of most other new shows.

"My big fear was that with so much heavy promotion, people would tune into the first episode and sort of make a judgment," he says. "Unfortunately, it's a good news-bad news situation. We're going to be finding our feet in front of everybody as opposed to sort of ramping up and getting some sort of critical [notice] two months from now."

Although NBC's "Coupling" is taking the unusual step of using near-verbatim scripts from the original version -- with some Brit-specific references changed and cuts made to fit a U.S. sitcom's shorter running time -- Ferguson says the adaptation goes beyond that.

"It was a big medium shift coming over here, because the sitcom format we're shooting in ... is pulled back a bit," he says. "Their cameras go in tighter for closeups, and they can get away with more intimacy in the dialogue.

"And because they have a 9-minute longer running time, they can afford more digression; they can amble a bit. Whereas we're so concise with a 22-minute running time, and our cameras are so far away, it's really almost a different medium that we're performing in."

Still, Ferguson and his castmates were encouraged to watch the British version of the show, which he did. He was also excited by the fact that because NBC was using the existing scripts -- along with some freshly written ones -- he knew ahead of time where Patrick's story was going.

"Usually in a sitcom you're given a bunch of promises, which usually mean ... almost nothing, about what they're doing with a character and a show," he says. "With this, what I loved was, I had the outline of where the character's going to go, so I could really base him in something. ... It really gave me something to sink my teeth into."

Patrick, whom Ferguson describes as the id of the show, is "great fun to play." He sees Patrick as someone who has no issues with his identity and makes no apologies about his lifestyle.

"Nor does it even occur to him that he maybe should feel a little apologetic," Ferguson says. "It's the same thing with the ladies: He's completely up front on 'I'd like to take you out, maybe we'll sleep together, and I don't really want to see you tomorrow.' ... He's completely fine with it."

Patrick's attitude toward relationships and sex is part of the show's overall raciness, which was the cause of most of the first flurry of press coverage about "Coupling." Ferguson doesn't think the jokes are too racy for network TV, but he says it has made for some curious discussions with NBC's standards department.

A scene he recently shot involved Patrick, at a club with Sally (Sonya Walger), taking a hit below the belt. The script calls for him to hop around in pain, as most men would in that situation.

"The way we've cropped it, needless to say, is from the waist up," he says. "I've hurt myself, and so I'm moving around, and I got a note to not move because it could be misconstrued. I was like, 'Really?' ...

"You get in these very interesting discussions with them about their perception of what their agency is. It's interesting stuff, I have to say."

Having gone through all that, Ferguson just hopes the show gets a chance to grow.

"Writers and actors work in a very symbiotic relationship. It sort of circles around and you find weeks later that you're doing much deeper work."

Ferguson pauses. "Or not deeper -- I mean, it's a sitcom, that's going to read weird -- but you feel like you're doing more accurate work, more specific work, weeks in. I think it's just the nature of working with the same people. ... It's amazing."