So I'm reading the review
Californication in the new New Yorker (even though I don't like that show, as stated in the thread about it I think it's too derivative, particularly of FX's 'Rescue Me', and the whole writer's block/Hollywood/male fantasy stuff is so played).
Nonetheless, I read everything in the New Yorker, so I'm reading the review and one of the problems with the show it alludes to is the numerous sex scenes. Not their number, but rather the way they are shot:
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But what’s most puzzling about “Californication” is that much of the time it resembles a soft-porn film, in the sense that there isn’t just nudity and sex but a particular kind of nudity and sex, shot in a particular way, aimed at a particular audience: girl invariably on top, man below keeping hands more or less to himself, in order to give the ta-ta cam maximum access. This kind of cheesiness is all about what the camera sees, rather than about the story and what the characters are feeling.
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This is of course true of a lot of shows, I've only seen one episode of Californication, but on the three seasons worth or so of Rescue Me I watched before I gave up on that show, it was funny to notice the sex between every couple was almost always on the couch with the woman on top.
Anyway, this part of the review acts as a segway in the article toward discussing HBO's new show "Tell Me You Love Me", set to premiere in Sept (side note: how many new shows has HBO premiered this year?).
Billed as a drama which follows three couples in couples' therapy as well as a fourth couple, that of the therapist herself, the thing that makes the show special:
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"Tell Me," at least in its current form, will set a new precedent for prime-time TV when it has its premiere Sept. 9: No previous series, on pay cable or anywhere else, has dared show anything even close to this much skin; the climax, if you will, of the first episode finds a woman (Sonya Walger) in her 30s masturbating her husband (Adam Scott) to orgasm, with the entire act and all relevant body parts plainly visible. Even Jane Alexander — yes, that Jane Alexander, the snow-domed, regally poised 67-year-old former chief of the National Endowment for the Arts — drops trousers for some frisky senior sex.
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from Chicago Tribune
Now these are fairly well known actors in this thing (including Sonya Walger, "Penny" from "Lost") portraying graphic (simulated with props) sex acts on screen.
Can this work as a dramatic tv show? Certainly it will create buzz, will prob get an audience for its debut and I imagine would never do to bad as a 3 a.m. rerun, but beyond those who will get upset if there's more than 5 minutes between sex scenes, can this work as a storytelling vehicle comparable to some of the great shows that have been on HBO and will the sex help or hinder efforts to do so?