Reviews are in for HBO's much-ballyhooed "Tell Me You Love Me", and they're extremely mixed.
The show is an intimate look at marriage, told through 4 couples, one each in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and 60s. The wife in her 60s, May Foster (played by former NEA chair Jane Alexander) is the therapist of the other three.
The show has garnered huge amounts of chatter because it features, even for cable, explicit sex scenes and full frontal nudity from both sexes.
According to the LA Times reviewer Mary McNamara, "It's boring":
Oh, I know this sounds impossible since everyone's been talking about all the sex involved, including graphically portrayed masturbation and so much full frontal nudity that you feel positively European while watching it....
The sex is indeed graphic, though all very vanilla, and most of it occurs in early episodes, which makes it appear a bit calculated. The sex is there, as it always is, to hook you -- although the shock of seeing Foster, the Jane Alexander character, having sex is an effective and unsettling reminder of how desexualized anyone older than 50 is in this society.
The New York Times was more forgiving, if still unimpressed:
The sex in HBO's "Tell Me You Love Me" is bold, but not brave.
Explicit scenes of young, lithe bodies having it in many places and in all manners, including solo, are plentiful in the first few episodes. Yet when it comes to a white-haired, elderly couple, the camera looks away, sparing viewers the shock of seeing sagging bellies and wrinkled limbs in the throes of carnal bliss...
The series bores deeply and single-mindedly into the marrow of marital relations, and it does so with sympathy and insight. It's daring but not revolutionary.
Variety was also tempered in response, as well as distracted by the wayward ball sack:
Unlike Showtime's "Californication," which also exploits pay cable's sexual latitude, "Tell Me You Love Me" does feel raw, honest and real, pulling you along as ordinary couples grapple with bad decisions (again, mostly the women) and struggle to find happiness. Moreover, the Alexander-Selby union is symbolically thrilling: When was the last time, after all, you saw a couple in their 60s graphically have sex anywhere, much less on TV?
Yet those positives are leavened by the program's deadly sincerity and almost total lack of humor, as well as moments when the sex's graphic nature proves distracting (as in, "Hey, were those his balls?"), disconnecting you from the show's reality.
Elsewhere, the Hollywood Reporter loves the show, and insists that as one reads Playboy for the articles, one watches this show for the characters:
The early buzz on this series largely was based on the first episode, which tends to use sex the way a carnival barker uses a spiel: to get you into the tent. Mort is so eager to show how sex is both vital and corrosive that initially she goes overboard. Graphic scenes of sex in the premiere rival those in soft porn, and the visual shock distracts from the larger theme.
But stick around, and what starts as a modest character study punctuated by holy-cow nudity turns into a brilliant depiction of sexual conflict, frustration and dysfunction...
It's pay cable, and there's sex. But don't make the mistake of thinking this is the Kama Sutra and fast-forward until you get to the good parts. Yes, the cast is attractive, but the most powerful and beautiful moments occur when everyone has their clothes on.
The New York Daily News also loved it, and unlike other, even had high marks for the sex scenes:
The simulated sex in HBO's new drama series, "Tell Me You Love Me," has gotten most of the attention leading up to this weekend's premiere.
It's shot almost clinically - no slow-motion or soft focus, no sensitive editing, no soundtrack music and certainly no well-timed fades to black.
They're shot persuasively, too - so much so that if it's nudity you're after, you'll find it, and if it's intimate behavior that verges on late-night Skinemax titillation, you'll find that, too.
But here's the dirty little secret about "Tell Me You Love Me." Though graphic sex has created buzz for this series, it's the show's least interesting and most distracting element...
Whether you wish to commit to "Tell Me" on a weekly basis may depend upon your tolerance for, or personal experience with, infidelity, infertility and incompatibility. These couples' stories, though, are told very well. Come for the sex, if you must, but stay for the honesty.
The show airs from 9-10 pm Sundays.
Do you plan to watch it, and if you've seen it, how is it? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.