‘In Treatment’

The word “talky” is sometimes thrown around in a pejorative sense to describe television shows, as though having characters converse is an unwanted relic of the radio age. How refreshing, then, to have a show appear that willfully ignores the potential of a visual medium. On HBO’s In Treatment, the talk is the action. Based on an Israeli format, each episode is a voyeur’s dream—a peek inside a person’s therapy session. Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne) is the therapist, who like many of his real-life peers, struggles to keep his professional distance from patients dead set on blurring the boundaries of the doctor-patient relationship. Feats of thespian derring-do come faster than you have time to process them all, as the patients lunge and Paul ripostes. For those who live in a town without a robust theater scene, In Treatment is the closest thing to a spectacular off-Broadway play starring name actors.