In Treatment: A View

Having just watched the final episode of the first series of the HBO therapy drama In Treatment, I feel compelled to write of its virtue.

Staggered over five weeks, with one 30 minute episode showed every weeknight, I was initially slightly dubious about making the commitment to watching something so time-intensive as I'm not always at home every night to keep up. Fortunately, I started watching and the rest is history. Even when I wasn't at home, I found myself watching a week’s worth in one go at the weekend; each episode hungrily munching into the next.

For those who didn't see any of the mass media publicity geared towards its broadcast in the UK nine weeks ago, In Treatment follows the psychotherapist Paul (played in perhaps the role of his life by Gabriel Byrne) treating four new patients. Each one gets a 30 minute programme each week, with the Friday show being Paul attending his own therapy with Gina (another superb performance from Dianne Wiest).

Nothing much happens physically in these episodes; it is just dialogue, character-to-character. On a week-by-week basis, new developments emerge from each patient as we slowly build up their back-stories and this structure is one of the most entertaining parts of the programme. The reason it works, largely speaking, is the quality of the writing and the timing of new developments with each character and treatment. For the first few weeks as you got to know them, there was one key revelation in each programme - usually about three quarters of the way through and this key moment was often so impeccably timed that it made the whole programme.

The characters are a brilliant mix that illustrated the way that most humans are messed up - on one hand completely dislikeable and then on the other, hard not to love. Take Laura, for example. She's one of the main storylines of the first series, which begins with her announcing that she was in love with Paul in the first episode. On one hand she is clearly vulnerable and scarred but this manifests itself through a series of games and fanciful stories designed to unsettle the natural order. In doing so, she helps to manifest a mid-life crisis in Paul which reaches its climax by the final episode.

At this point, it is clear that she doesn't actually love Paul and that she was chasing after the unattainable, testing the boundaries as opposed to searching for anything else. She is a neurotic and unreliable character, yet still strangely sympathetic.

The other characters are a little more hit and miss. Alex, a traumatised fighter pilot is a riddle of contradictions and the least successful of the patients; he is difficult and cold and there are several puzzling plot holes that restrict him. In contrast, Sophie - a deeply troubled young gymnast who has tried to kill herself - is a much more loveable character and is perhaps the only one of the four that I found real sympathy with. I wanted her to sort herself out and I was concerned about her in a way that I wasn't with the others.

Finally, there's Jake and Amy. Jake is a hothead musician whose relationship with Amy is based upon a volatile dynamic that therapy manages to remove. Rather than strength their marriage, the lack of tension results in the end of it and by the end, the roles have reversed in that Jake is the sympathetic character - once the audience has the time to understand why he acts the way he does, it becomes a different storyline altogether.

Ultimately though, the best thing about In Treatment is that it takes place in a single room, conveying emotions and storyline through dialogue and extreme Ingmar Bergman style close-ups. It is reassuring that there is an audience for slow build up and that you can tell a story without having to lose all realms of subtlety. Sure, you could argue that the characters undergoing therapy are overly dramatic but that is part and parcel of the form that the programme has to take.

As far as fantastic television goes, In Treatment is up there. If you missed the series on Sky Arts then I'd recommend investing in the box-set and gorging on its 43 episodes.