HBO COUPLES' DRAMA TOO INTIMATE TO ENTERTAIN

[Brian Damage]

November 4, 2007 -- TV's most puzzling drama series drifts awkwardly to its conclusion this week and next.

It's "Tell Me You Love Me," a show neither you nor anyone else you know is talking about. And yet, to give HBO its due, the pay-cable channel has renewed the series for a second season.

The decision wasn't based on the ratings. HBO rarely reveals the viewership figures for its shows, but you can be sure the weekly audience tallies for "Tell Me You Love Me" have been a lot smaller than HBO is used to.

HBO must believe that "Tell Me You Love Me" possesses some kind of potential to find an audience with its close-to-real-life stories of couples whose relationships are in trouble.

Well, maybe. There's no word yet on whether the show's second season will continue the stories of the three couples featured in Season One or introduce new couples.

As it happens, the stories of this season's three couples all come to satisfying conclusions in next Sunday's 10th and final episode (which I've seen) - which means the way is clear for producers to come up with new ones.

If you have not experienced "Tell Me You Love Me," this is the show that got all that publicity in the weeks before it premiered Sept. 9 for the frankness of its sex scenes, which seemed to go farther in their depiction of various sex acts than any previous filmed TV series.

The sex, which was seen less often as the series proceeded, was not as pornographic as it was intimate.

In fact, the entire series is so intimate in its depiction of the inner lives of married people that you often feel like you're watching something you shouldn't be - like a peeping Tom, but with feelings of guilt.

The show deals with three couples (all actors) - one whose sex life has dwindled after 12 years of marriage (Ally Walker and Tim DeKay), another married couple (Sonya Walger and Adam Scott) struggling to get pregnant, and a pair of 20-somethings (Michelle Borth and Luke Farrell Kirby) who cannot decide whether to commitment themselves to marriage. Jane Alexander plays a therapist who counsels them.

The truth is, not much happens in "Tell Me You Love Me." And yet, it is also true that this is one of the best-acted and best-written series on TV.

If it was the producers' goal to create a TV show that is as realistic as possible in its depiction of ordinary people having ordinary marital problems, then they succeeded almost too well since realism is not always synonymous with entertainment.

TELL ME YOU LOVE ME

Sunday, 9 p.m., HBO

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11042007...ert_168698.htm