HBO likes Mark Wahlberg, and well they should. With Six Feet Under pushing up daisies, Rome conquered, Carnivale's big-top tent packed up, and The Sopranos getting ready to sleep with the fishes, for example, much of the network's original series programming hits have dropped off the radar a bit.
Not so for Entourage, executive producer Wahlberg's sort of auto-biographical show about being a hot young Hollywood actor but still hanging with your old friends. The show is one of HBO's most popular, and they're hoping for some more programming magic.
The Hollywood Reporter says that the pay cable network is going to the Wahlberg well again, and have ordered a 5-episode block of In Treatment, a new half-hour drama based on a popular Israeli show of the same name. Rodrigo Garcia, who has directed HBO's other new show Big Love (which is strangely addictive, despite being so depressing), will also direct. Production is set to begin next month.
The show centers on a therapist who is all self-assured, calm, caring and friendly with his patients, but becomes just the opposite when he is a patient seeing his own therapist. As my teenager likes to say... "meh."
Hasn't this been done many times before, the old "the doctor makes the worst patient" angle? HBO always manages to make these things interesting (except for Arliss, of course) so I'll check it out. I'm just a little tired of neurotic doctor shows... plus I hate therapists. I went to one during the whole divorce thing, and the guy spent the entire time trying to look up my skirts. He would always fidget in his chair... don't think I didn't know why, Dr. Erecto-Pants! Sick. I should have been charging HIM.
