In Treatment

I RECEIVED preview discs for HBO's latest experiment, IN TREATMENT, (Monday, 9pm, Movie Central and TMN in Canada/HBO in the USA) a while back, and I've worked my way through some of them.

If you're the kind of person who believes the idea of seeing a shrink talk to four different pages for a half hour a night seems deadly, I have to say: it's surprisingly compelling.

There's also no doubt that HBO, having lost the crown of innovation it once wore so effortlessly, is looking to try something new.

IN TREATMENT follows psychiatrist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) as he has sessions with four different patients, one a night, Monday to Thursday.

The patients are various degrees of screwed up. The series is an adaptation of an Israeli series, as the New York Times recounts:

“In Treatment” is not entirely a plunge into the unknown, however. The show is HBO’s version of “Be’ Tipul,” one of Israel’s most successful and most talked about dramas ever. The American adaptation hews close to the original, with minor adjustments: a patient is a combat veteran of the Iraq war, not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It also helps that Paul’s patients have an interesting patchwork of neuroses. Laura (Melissa George) is a young, very pretty hospital worker with a fierce erotic attachment to her therapist. Alex (Blair Underwood) is an ace Navy pilot who had a heart attack after a disastrous bombing mission in Iraq. Sophie (Mia Wasikowska) is a 16-year-old schoolgirl and a gifted gymnast who may have suicidal impulses as well as an unhealthy relationship with her coach. Jake and Amy (Josh Charles and Embeth Davidtz) are a couple straining over whether to have a second child.

All of them are intelligent, cagey and hard to classify, let alone treat. And as the problems pile up, Paul’s confidence begins to sag.

The interesting thing, as the Times points out -- is that the conversational sessions themselves are puzzles. They're as much about what the patients are not saying as what they're saying.

On the fifth day, we see the cost all this takes on Paul, as we view his sessions with his own therapist, played by Dianne Wiest.

In Treatment runs for four weeks. It's an interesting experiment. Whether you bond with one patient and choose to follow only their night, or go for all five -- it's evidence that HBO, though not as sure footed as it might have once been, still knows how to take that TV frame and shake it up when needed.