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After days of blanket coverage of the royal wedding, we all must be in need of a little therapy, so the return of In Treatment for a second series was especially welcome. Much has changed since we last saw therapist Paul Weston (Gabriel Byrne). He's moved from Baltimore to Brooklyn, he's got divorced, and he also appears to have forgotten he went to the University of Pennsylvania, as he now claims to have attended Columbia University. It's probably a Freudian slip.
But some things remain very much the same. Weston is still a dream TV shrink; good-looking, there for you and with a voice and eyes you could happily fall into. A shrink with whom female patients will have very little trouble accessing their transference issues. The only drawback is that he is also a shrink who seems to have little trouble in accessing his own transference issues with his female patients. In the real world, this would make him unprofessional, but luckily we are in tellyworld, so he is still just attractively and interestingly conflicted.
Coincidences rapidly mounted up in the first of two episodes shown last night. After being served with a malpractice suit by the father of Alex, one of Paul's patients in the first series, who may or (probably) may not have deliberately crashed his plane, Paul found himself being advised by top lawyer Mia, who, yes, you've guessed it, was another of Paul's patients more than 20 years ago and who still had abandonment issues over the way her therapy ended with the implication being there was still a lot of unresolved transference on both sides. Things quietened down a bit in the second episode, which saw Paul seeing April, a 23-year-old student with cancer, though the session had enough unresolved sexual tension for you to reckon there was a world of hurt and pain to be opened up in the weeks to come. Mostly of their own making.
It is still very superior TV, as the central performances are mesmerising, and the scripts tight enough to enable you to suspend disbelief. It's also a real treat to find a programme that dares to put dialogue before action. I don't know whether it will do my psyche much good, but I'm booked in for the duration.
