HBO launching sex series with graphic details to hold viewers who miss action of 'Sopranos'
July 14, 2007
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- HBO figured out how to replace "The Sopranos" -- with an upcoming drama featuring full-on, male and female frontal nudity and more frank sex scenes than you'll see in a Cinemax skin flick.
The show is "Tell Me You Love Me," a serious, character-based show chronicling four couples as they navigate rocky relationships. Its tone and rhythm is similar to playwright Neil LaBute's 1998 movie "Your Friends & Neighbors" -- but less cruel and more explicit.
For several minutes in an episode, the camera just happens to stay on "Tell Me" characters when they pull off their pants, penetrate each other, masturbate themselves and each other, and engage their mouths lovingly or awkwardly.
Cast members say it's more simulation than stimulation -- that it only looks like men are placing their hmm-hmm's in hoo-hah's. But your eyes may believe otherwise. It seems as authentic as, say, many European commercial films. A lot of things in America claim to be groundbreaking when they're not. "Tell Me" is.
The sex-havers are not just in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Jane Alexander -- who once ran the National Endowment for the Arts -- portrays a therapist to the characters; she goes home to share pleasure with her man in coital detail. Alexander is 67.
Anyone who watches the show, debuting Sept. 9, will see that the mostly unsexy sex is indeed integral to the storytelling, and not just tacked on lasciviously. That's what cast members say, and they're right.
"We are not porn stars. We're actors," Michelle Borth told TV critics Thursday. She plays Jaime, a twentysomething chef who uses sex as a crutch to forge intimacy.
"First of all, it's HBO," says Ally Walker. "You pay to have this in your home." Walker plays Katie, who catches her hubby playing with himself.
Secondly, Walker says, the scenes are naturalistic. "We're having, you know, sex where you're trying to get pregnant, which is not hot. [Some characters are] not having sex, which is depressing. [Another character is] having sex to hide [emotionally], because she's in pain. So it's not really there to titillate you," she says. "It's like reality."
Tim DeKay -- his character David masturbates in the first scene -- struggled with accepting his role as a fortysomething in a sexless marriage. "It took me forever to decide whether or not I was gonna do it," says DeKay, who once played the Bizarro Jerry on "Seinfeld."
Everybody in the cast was scared, he says, but they were eventually comforted in working with high-quality HBO. And the good writing drew them in.
Walker says people who might protest have misplaced priorities about the violence of network TV and the nudity of pay TV.
"What's really awful is you can blow someone's head off and there's no problem," Walker says. "You can decapitate people at [7] o'clock when kids can watch, and there's no problem. But FX and HBO -- [people complain] because someone shows a breast."
Show creator Cynthia Mort seems surprised that TV critics -- the first audience to see the series -- are focusing on the sex, which comprise a vibrant minority of episodes. She just wanted to tell the whole truth about her creations, she says.
"These are sex scenes," Mort says, "between two people who are in love in a committed, long-term relationship. It's not marginalized. It's not perverted."
BY DOUG ELFMAN Television Critic
BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- HBO figured out how to replace "The Sopranos" -- with an upcoming drama featuring full-on, male and female frontal nudity and more frank sex scenes than you'll see in a Cinemax skin flick.
The show is "Tell Me You Love Me," a serious, character-based show chronicling four couples as they navigate rocky relationships. Its tone and rhythm is similar to playwright Neil LaBute's 1998 movie "Your Friends & Neighbors" -- but less cruel and more explicit.
For several minutes in an episode, the camera just happens to stay on "Tell Me" characters when they pull off their pants, penetrate each other, masturbate themselves and each other, and engage their mouths lovingly or awkwardly.
Cast members say it's more simulation than stimulation -- that it only looks like men are placing their hmm-hmm's in hoo-hah's. But your eyes may believe otherwise. It seems as authentic as, say, many European commercial films. A lot of things in America claim to be groundbreaking when they're not. "Tell Me" is.
The sex-havers are not just in their 20s, 30s and 40s. Jane Alexander -- who once ran the National Endowment for the Arts -- portrays a therapist to the characters; she goes home to share pleasure with her man in coital detail. Alexander is 67.
Anyone who watches the show, debuting Sept. 9, will see that the mostly unsexy sex is indeed integral to the storytelling, and not just tacked on lasciviously. That's what cast members say, and they're right.
"We are not porn stars. We're actors," Michelle Borth told TV critics Thursday. She plays Jaime, a twentysomething chef who uses sex as a crutch to forge intimacy.
"First of all, it's HBO," says Ally Walker. "You pay to have this in your home." Walker plays Katie, who catches her hubby playing with himself.
Secondly, Walker says, the scenes are naturalistic. "We're having, you know, sex where you're trying to get pregnant, which is not hot. [Some characters are] not having sex, which is depressing. [Another character is] having sex to hide [emotionally], because she's in pain. So it's not really there to titillate you," she says. "It's like reality."
Tim DeKay -- his character David masturbates in the first scene -- struggled with accepting his role as a fortysomething in a sexless marriage. "It took me forever to decide whether or not I was gonna do it," says DeKay, who once played the Bizarro Jerry on "Seinfeld."
Everybody in the cast was scared, he says, but they were eventually comforted in working with high-quality HBO. And the good writing drew them in.
Walker says people who might protest have misplaced priorities about the violence of network TV and the nudity of pay TV.
"What's really awful is you can blow someone's head off and there's no problem," Walker says. "You can decapitate people at [7] o'clock when kids can watch, and there's no problem. But FX and HBO -- [people complain] because someone shows a breast."
Show creator Cynthia Mort seems surprised that TV critics -- the first audience to see the series -- are focusing on the sex, which comprise a vibrant minority of episodes. She just wanted to tell the whole truth about her creations, she says.
"These are sex scenes," Mort says, "between two people who are in love in a committed, long-term relationship. It's not marginalized. It's not perverted."
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