I saw the first episode of Tell Me You Love Me on HBO On Demand last night.
It begins this Sunday, and I was going to wait until then to see it, like a normal person, but (a) who says I'm normal and (b) reporters from the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Sun called in the past week to interview me about whether I thought Californication and Tell Me You Love Me represent a new leap forward in sexuality on television.
It begins this Sunday, and I was going to wait until then to see it, like a normal person, but (a) who says I'm normal and (b) reporters from the Christian Science Monitor and the Baltimore Sun called in the past week to interview me about whether I thought Californication and Tell Me You Love Me represent a new leap forward in sexuality on television.
They do. Network television was and to some extent still is the old maid of media when it comes to sexuality. NYPD Blue made a little bit of progress in the 1990s, but it was HBO on cable which made the big breakthrough in the Bada Bing on The Sopranos, and went even further with Atia and Brutus (separately) in Rome.
Now even that has been surpassed by Hank and his continuous escapades in Californication, and the three couples we see in imperfect and intriguingly difficult relationships, in and out of beds and cars and clothes, in Tell Me You Love Me.
My favorite is the youngest couple - Hugo and Jamie, played very well by Luke Farrell Kirby and sizzling Michelle Borth. Their problem is the most common - they have great sex but Hugo has wandering eyes. Carolyn and Palek - also well played by Lost's Penny (Sonya Walger) (did she give up looking for Desmond?) and Adam Scott - are having trouble conceiving, which is making their sex into clinical baby making motions. And David and Katie - also well acted by Tim DeKay and Ally Walker - are in their 40s, and haven't had sex in a year.
All three couples are or will be headed to couples' therapist Dr. May Foster - Jane Alexander - who has been giving great performances since the Great White Hope in 1970. Dr. Foster may have the best sexual relationship, with her husband Arthur (David Selby), of any couple on the show, but you never know...
So ... three, actually, four couples, all trying to get the most of their physical and emotional relationships, with varying degrees of success. Lots of explicit sex, lots of nudity - yeah, front and back, women and men - and, yeah, if you must know, even more than in Californication.
There will be no doubt be lots of informed and uniformed discussions about whether what we're seeing is real or prosthetic.
Doesn't really matter, I'd say. The stories are real and captivating, even when a litte far-fetched (like David and Katie), and I'm looking forward to more Tell Me You Love Me.
Likely under the influence of the more libertine Internet, which is increasingly a form of television, the screens in our living rooms are growing up, and that's a good thing.
See also Tell You Love Me Seven Times and Tell Me You Love Me on Tell Me You Love Me: Episode 8
5-minute podcast about Tell Me You Love Me
See also:
The Sopranos As A Nuts-And-Bolts Triumph of Non-Network TV
Good Sex on Rome, Bad FCC in Washington
The Plot to Save Socrates
"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book
more about The Plot to Save Socrates...
Read the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates .... FREE!
9 comments:
Okay I'm gonna try to watch this tonight. I saw a promo and it looked good. Hope all is well
They used prosthetics. None of the sex is real. In 'Vegas' magazine recently Michelle Borth said: "I'm flattered. I mean, if you really think I'm having sex, then I deserve an Oscar, but did anybody ask Heath Ledger if he was really nailing Jake Gyllenhaal in 'Brokeback Mountain'?"
dawn - good, glad I talked you into it :)
anon: yeah, I figured as much ... but, like I said, film and tv are all about illusion anyway ... what counts is whether the story is convincing (not what actors and actresses say off camera)....
meanwhile, though, I thought Michelle gave a fine performance...
Sounds like another provocative adult offering from "it's not TV - it's HBO." I look forward to your commentary.
BTW, any plans to add the new BBC America series "Torchwood" to your review list? The Brit sci-fi show is described as a cross between X-Files and Men in Black. It premieres tonight.
Torchwood sounds promising, victor - I'll watch it later tonight and at least put up an initial review, maybe more. Thanks for mentioning it.
As an advocate for older-age sexuality, I'm thrilled by the portrayal of the older couple. The younger couples are frenetic in their diaglogue and sex play, while the oldest couple is gentle, knowing, connecting in a special way, both sexually and in daily life. I hope the writers don't mess with this positive message that sex and relationships get better with age.
Joan Price
http://www.joanprice.com/
Author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty
Join us -- we're talking about ageless sexuality at http://www.betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com
I love tv and I love checking out news shows. I work from home so either I'm playing video games on a break or I watch tv. I don't know how well this show will work for me but I try to watch tons of different new ones to get a nice big line up for the fall
The ironic thing about Michelle Borth’s role as Jamie, a woman whose fiancé won’t commit to monogamy in the new HBO series "Tell Me You Love Me," is that she is the kind of sexy, intoxicating woman that could probably drive the best-intentioned married man to cheat on his wife. This is a Michelle Borth audio interview (with transcription): http://www.mrmedia.com/2007/09/michelle-borth-tell-me-you-love-me.html
The director of 'Tell Me You Love Me', Patricia Rozema, has confirmed that all of the sex scenes in the show were simulated -
'Q: That masturbation scene you mention is particularly startling – it’s not the kind of thing you normally see outside a triple-X video. You must have realized there was a possibility it would just look gross or funny, like something in a Farrelly brothers film.
A: That was a risk, but we’ve avoided it, don’t you think? It looks real, doesn’t it?
Q: It sure does. On the internet, people are discussing whether that and the other sex scenes in the show are real.
A: But it’s not real, it’s simulated. At one point, one of the producers was floating this idea in the trade papers that it would be real sex in the series. I immediately said, “Well, find another director, I don’t want to do that.” I wasn’t interested in that.'
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/tv/rozema.html
Post a Comment