HBO Plays Defense at TCA Tour
Premium Network Grilled on Sopranos Ending, Tell Me You Love Me
By Linda Moss -- Multichannel News, 7/13/2007 6:47:00 AM MT
TCA Photo Gallery
Beverly Hills, Calif. -- HBO got grilled twice Thursday by the nation’s TV scribes. At the Television Critics Association tour here in sunny Beverly Hills, first HBO officials had to -- once again -- defend the finale of The Sopranos. Then they also got interrogated about the premium network’s new drama, Tell Me You Love Me.
HBO and the show’s creator and cast defended the sexually graphic drama at length. Some might think that they doth protest too much.
HBO -- no wallflower when it comes to stretching limits -- is going where other networks have dared not go before with Tell Me You Love Me and its raw, anatomically revealing bedroom scenes. The show debuts this fall, but it has already drawn much attention -- and some fire -- from TV critics.
Creator and executive producer Cynthia Mort told the skeptical TV writers that she wasn’t being disingenuous when she said she was surprised by the stir the show’s sex scenes were causing. Tell Me You Love Me tracks the lives of three screwed-up couples who are in therapy, Mort insisted that the realistic depiction of their painful sex lives reflects their emotional problems.
“The sex always was there in service of intimacy and in service of love,” she said, describing the show.
Both Mort and Carolyn Strauss, president of HBO Entertainment, denied that they purposely set out “to push the envelope” with Tell Me You Love Me.
During the panel, cast member Michelle Borth told the writers, “We are not porn stars. We’re actors,” adding that depicting the sex authentically was integral to the show. Actor Tim DeKay, asked about his character’s inexplicable inability -- or refusal -- to have sex with his wife, became so nonplussed that he stammered and his microphone fell off.
Some of Tell Me You Love Me’s biggest jolts are delivered via the graphic sex scenes between the therapist, played by Jane Alexander, and her husband. Talk about breaking new ground: When has a U.S. TV show shown older characters with grey hair, naked and enjoying a vigorous romp and loud orgasms? Alexander should be on the cover of AARP’s magazine.
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