In Treatment : Season One [DVD]

By Clint Morris

Cable Television is producing some magnificent series these days – ”The Sopranos”, ”Mad Men”, ”Breaking Bad”, ”Rome”, ”The United States of Tara”, ”Rescue Me”, ”Brotherhood”, ”Sleeper Cell”, ”Entourage”, “Love My Way”, “Satisfaction” – and honestly, we rarely watch anything that isn’t on Pay-TV in the Morris household.

Seems if you want to experience the best of what TV has to offer these days you’ve got to get yourself a subscription to one of the cable networks…. Or wait for the DVD, as will probably be the case with most people here.

“In Treatment”, which originally aired here on the Showcase channel, is another fine example of a quality subscription-telly offering.

Unlike say, “Rescue Me” or “Entourage” though, “In Treatment” is not a show you really want to watch episode-after-episode of – well, you do, just not concurrently and sequentially. It’s a really good show, don’t get me wrong, but it gets a bit much after 8-episodes-in-a-row. So if you’re planning to watch it, watch one – or two – a week. It works better that way  – which is rather funny considering the show is designed to be aired nightly.

Gabriel Byrne (In what I believe to be his first regular TV role?) plays therapist Dr. Paul Weston, a man who exhibits a perceptive self-assured manner when treating his patients but displays a crippling lack of confidence while counseled by his own therapist Gina (Dianne Wiest, “The Lost Boys”). Australia’s Melissa George (TVs ”Grey’s Anatomy”), Embeth Davidtz (”Schindler’s List”), Blair Underwood (TVs ”L.A Law”) and Josh Charles (”Dead Poet’s Society”) are among Weston’s patients.

Episodes are largely based on scripts from the Israeli series Be’Tipul (on which this is based upon), with a different writer/director handling each consecutive day/patient. Because of this, some episodes/arcs are better than others. By that I mean that quite a few of the writers/directors have a tendency to dip into melodrama. And on the other hand, some are somewhat brilliant. Maybe if the show had had the one voice, or the woman chap writing most of the series, if not directing all of the episodes, it’d be an excellent series… and not simply a good one.

Unlike a lot of the other shows on Cable, there’s not a lot of action in this, and it is a slow-moving series, but it’s got such wonderful performances – particularly from Byrne – that it’d be a shame to dismiss it simply because nobody gets blown up in the pilot.

Extras

Believe it or not, there’s jack-all on here. For such a fat box, you’d expect to find a slab of extras here. Alas, nada.