Michelle Borth and Luke Kirby in HBO’s ”Tell Me You Love Me.”
With “Deadwood,” “The Sopranos” and “The Wire” now consigned to history, HBO’s original programming now seems mired in “misery television.” Both “Tell Me You Love Me” and the recent “In Treatment” focus on miserable people in miserable relationships engaging in miserable therapy sessions. If it were not for the copious sexual couplings, “Tell Me You Love Me” would be borderline unwatchable.
“Tell Me You Love Me” centers on three couples seeking help from therapist May Foster (Jane Alexander). Thirty-something Carolyn and Palek (Sonya Walger and Adam Scott) cannot have kids despite continual intimacy, while 40-something Katie (Ally Walker) and David (Tim Dekay) have kids but no intimacy. Meanwhile, 20-something Jaime (Michelle Borth) is intimate with everyone except her fiancé, Hugo (Luke Kirby). And it is a feast for people who love to watch men and women stew angrily when they aren’t tearing each other’s hearts out.
At its best, “Tell Me You Love Me” plays like a high-minded version of late-night programming on HBO’s perpetually adolescent kid brother, Cinemax, but it never lasts. Walger, a semiregular on “Lost,” plays the most complex character, but Carolyn’s emotional apexes frequently end with crying over a dissatisfying home pregnancy test. It is hard to love “Tell Me You Love Me,” and HBO needs to fall back in love with its former sense of narrative adventure instead of mistaking mere misery for captivating drama.