Donna and I have become engrossed in HBO's reruns of their psychiatry series IN TREATMENT, starring Gabriel Byrne (pictured) as psychologist Dr. Paul Weston, which somehow premiered under our radar last January. It's an American remake of an Israeli series (which I'd like to see with subtitles someday), with each episode presenting a real-time therapy session involving five different patients (two of them a couple, played by Josh Charles and VWSE cover girl Embeth Davidtz). Every fifth episode showing Paul himself in therapy with his doctor, Gina (Dianne Wiest).I became captivated with the series somewhere near the middle of the 43-episode first season and watched it through to the end, intending to catch up with the first half when the shows were issued on DVD later this month by HBO Video. Unfortunately, it seems that HBO have pulled the plug on this release for reasons tied to the green-light recently given to the show's producers for a second season. We assume the first season set's release will be rescheduled to help cross-promote the show's return "sometime in 2009."
Currently, HBO's subsidiary channel HBO Signature is running the first season again but with a twist -- this time, they are showing all the individual case studies back-to-back, four episodes on Saturdays and Sundays, from 7:00pm to 9:00pm eastern. They began this past weekend, so the arc featuring Laura (Melissa George), a sexually compulsive anaesthesiologist who falls in love with Paul, concluded last night. However, for those of you who still haven't seen the program, you still have time to capture the very best of the first season this weekend (9/13-14), in the arc featuring Blair Underwood as Alex, a guilt-ridden Army bomber -- the following weekend (9/20-21) with Mia Wasikowska as Sophie, a teenager seeking escape from a broken home in athletics. Underwood and Wasikowska give the most powerful performances of the season, as does the Emmy-nominated Glynn Turman who shows up in a later episode as Underwood's father. Start watching these and I guarantee you'll search out the remaining episodes.
