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From Monsters and Critics.com Smallscreen Reviews "Tell Me You Love Me" (8 p.m. Sunday, HBO) is frighteningly depressing for a show with loads of sex, in fact, it makes Showtime’s “Californication” look like an after school special with regards to the bits and bobs we get to see. Chris Rock summed it up perfectly in one of his HBO comedy specials, “If you like f***ing, marriage ain’t for you.” Joyless, burdened, high on Ecstasy, on a timer and with a purpose, the sex in this show is about as enjoyable as a cattle prod to the nads. I have my own bias against couples therapy. This series only further reinforces my feeling that if you have to attend a marriage counselor to work out your issues because you don’t have the stones to talk honestly and openly with your mate, Elvis has left the building on your relationship, and good luck to you in resurrecting the dead. People who love voyeuristic melodrama without histrionics will like this show. People who do not approve of seeing sex in their primetime drama will be horrified by the sight of balls, wives manually stimulating their husbands to orgasm with visible resulting ejaculate scenes, and did I say balls? We’ve come a long way if the balls scenes equal the boob scenes, so there’s some progress. The producers of “Tell Me You Love Me” seemed to be using the graphic sex as fishing bait to keep the husbands of their intended target audience of middle-aged women planted with this effort. Again, if the sex was sexy, maybe this ruse could have worked. Even senior sex gets a shout out, as therapist May Foster, 67 year-old Jane Alexander, gets down and funky with her husband, played by actor David Selby. Again, this is all good, but watching it for entertainment is another story. The show is an intense hothouse broken into well-blended vignettes of couples in their twenties, thirties, and forties all grappling with common ailments that derail a healthy marital sex life. The recreational drug loving teacher, Jamie (Michelle Borth) and Hugo (Luke Farrell Kirby), are the twenties young couple who are fighting jealousy issues, and are in engagement phase of the relationship. Palek (Adam Scott) and Carolyn (Sonya Walger of “The Mind of a Married Man” fame), are a yuppie couple who live in a Frank Lloyd Wright-styled modern home and are trying to conceive a child. Sex on demand for procreation gets old quickly. The last couple case is Dave (Tim DeKay) and Katie (Ally Walker), in their 40s, raising two nice kids while artfully dodging the 800 pound gorilla in the room; why does Dave masturbate furtively while avoiding sex with his wife for a year now? Nobody wants divorce, but no one wants to live feeling lonely and unhappy either. The truth of relationships is that people grow at different rates within them, and have different needs at times, combined with failing pheromone and olfactory chemical romance of sexual attraction, which can happen to nearly everyone. What sacrifices are made and deals struck in preserving a union depend on the couples' religious beliefs, concerns for social appearances or just plain old apathy. The dialogue is well-written, the scenes are edited precisely, and the casting is nicely done, but what is missing is juice to any of the characters that would make me want to tune in to see what unfolds. If the arcs of human relationships fascinate you, the waxing and waning of male-female passions, you will probably like "Tell Me You Love Me" very much. For me, this show, like the recently canceled “John from Cincinnati,” will not fill the adult drama void left after the demise of "Deadwood," "Rome," "Carnivale" and "Sopranos," sadly.
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