10 series about psychotherapists – Weekend – Kommersant
[ad_1]
For many years, doctors and policemen were favorite characters on TV, so that we had someone to heal and hold us, but recently, few shows do without a psychotherapist – apparently, the world that has gone crazy now needs them no less. We collected a dozen series of recent years, where shrinks of all stripes work – from trump cards to beaten ones.
“Therapy”
2023 Apple TV+
A new addition to the “good new” series from the creators of “Ted Lasso” (whose second season, by the way, psychotherapy also plays an important role), a cheerful story about losses and traumas that can be overcome, as in the song, “with a little help from friends “. Psychologist Jimmy (Jason Segel) feels lost after the death of his wife. Once, with a hangover, he tells the patient the truth: stop procrastinating on the topic of a “terrible husband” – just get a divorce. Shock therapy works, and Jimmy begins to practice it with others – it brings frightening, but positive changes in life. The radiant plot that everything in the world can be fixed by honestly looking the truth in the eye, balances the skeptical character of Harrison Ford as Jimmy’s senior colleague and his shrink – you can guess from his sad look that not all.
“God Complex”
2023
Russian screenwriters consider therapy an occasion not for comedy, but for a thriller or drama. An ugly rich client (Daniil Strakhov) approaches an experienced therapist (Kirill Kyaro), who is obliged to keep medical secrecy and not to take out information about patients outside the session. In his spare time from business, he chases little girls on the subway, and he was driven to go to the doctor by the desire to get rid of his demons. But when the daughter of a famous pianist is kidnapped in Moscow, the shrink begins to look at the client with suspicion and apprehension. By the way, it would also be nice to send the pianist to a psychoanalyst – he is that still muddy character. It seems that the series of screenwriter Alena Zvantsova (“The Thaw”, “Particle of the Universe”) pronounces a thought from the public collective unconscious: since he is so rich, he killed someone in no other way.
“The Psychiatrist Next Door”
2021 Apple TV+
A chilling story in which it is no longer the patient, but the doctor looks ominous. Psychotherapist Isaac Herschkopf (Paul Rudd) takes it upon himself to help an insecure Marty Markowitz (Will Ferrell) find the determination to run his legacy family business, coaching him through game situations and achievement mantras. Fledgling Marty spreads his wings and does not notice how “Dr. Ike” crosses all boundaries and gets under his skin: crushes his business under him, moves into his country house, and turns a patient who blindly believes him into a butler at his parties with celebrities. All this actually happened: for several decades the doctor exploited the patient until he woke up and filed a lawsuit. An experienced TV viewer will immediately understand what is at stake here: the therapist should not get close to the patient and transfer the relationship into a personal channel – only Markowitz did not know this.
“Trigger”
2020–2021, Kinopoisk, Channel One
Dr. Artem Streletsky (Maxim Matveev), having served time in prison on charges of driving a patient to suicide, is released on parole and goes back to his old ways: he heals the suffering with methods of shock therapy. “Knocks out a wedge with a wedge”, plunging the patient into a stressful state close to when the poor fellow was injured. His father (Igor Kostolevsky), also a professional psychologist, who uses traditional methods, cannot curb his dangerous activity. However, the viewer, who has heard something about Freud, knows in advance that for a fragile psyche there is nothing more disturbing than a paternal dominant figure. Some of the poor fellows who are used by Streletsky Jr., his blockhead methods help. But the plot contains a paradox: the doctor acts according to the principle “it’s impossible to be nice to them”, but he himself subconsciously looks for those who will treat him in an amicable way.
“Psycho”
2020
The fashionable Moscow psychologist performed by Konstantin Bogomolov is also trying to curb the elders: after a client complains about a violation of ethics (allegedly the doctor sniffed cocaine with the patient!) His person is taken care of by a colleague from the Russian Psychological Society (Oleg Menshikov). And he discovers that the doctor is mired in depression and addictions – after the disappearance of his wife, he does not dry out and tries to have a baby from a test tube. This unfortunate shrink is already dominated by a maternal figure – a sexologist mother (Roza Khairullina) arranges a “healing” stress for her child, driving her out of the house. Having seen enough of the wild customs of dynastic psychologists in the series, I want to stay away from them. But what Psych cannot be reproached for is the lack of frankness: according to the plot, absolutely all Muscovites suffer from mental instability and unspoken complexes and traumas.
“Lucifer”
2016–2021 Netflix
Lucifer, who escaped from hell in Los Angeles, becomes the assistant of a detective girl who did not leave a movie star, which may be why she is not subject to his charms. The rest, mostly suspects, tell him everything like a ghost (or like a couch) when he looks them in the eye. When this cunning demon makes acquaintance with a psychoanalyst, Dr. Linda Martin, she already squeals from the desire to sleep with him, so he pays for the sessions with sex – he is the temptation, he can. According to Neil Gaiman, who invented this character in comics for DC, once on Earth, Lucifer becomes subject to “attacks of humanity” – which means he needs psychoanalysis. Still: to know the whole truth about people is a heavy burden even for the devil.
“Patient”
2022, FX
Respected psychoanalyst Dr. Strauss (Steve Carell) wakes up with a headache, in an unfamiliar place, to find himself chained to a battery. He was kidnapped and imprisoned in his secluded home by a patient named Sam (Donal Gleason), a would-be serial killer who has read a couple of mindfulness books and wants to heal. Best of all, the patient reveals himself in sessions where he feels safe – this is how Sam ensured his safety: the doctor chained by the leg will definitely not be able to snitch on him to the police. A suitable plot in order to knock down professional arrogance from psychoanalysts: since you have comprehended the depths of the human psyche, try to deal with a psychopath, and even from the position of a victim.
“Alarm Calls”
2018, Channel 4
In the past decade, Lisa Kudrow came up with the online series Web Therapy based on the premise that not all patients want to spend hours on the couch confessing: some prefer to “fix the problem” in three minutes from the comfort of their home. The Bells is a remake of an American show that, thanks to actor Stephen Mangan, has become perfectly British. His hero also begins to practice online from poverty and plunges into a continuous bedlam: teenage children rush around, and instead of clients, family members, friends and, of course, an authoritarian father (Charles Dance) annoy with Skype calls. You can get rid of this only by calling your own psychoanalyst (Richard E. Grant), who will advise you to squeeze the testicles with one hand and the “off” button with the other when talking with your father. The British series is not like the progenitor, but they have the same theme: people always suffer from lack of time and money – that’s the whole psychology.
“Too close”
2021
Forensic psychiatrist Emma Robertson (Emily Watson) is scheduled to conduct several sessions with Constance (Denise Gough), a suspected child murderer who put them in the back seat of her car and drove off a bridge. A car crash survivor, the “bloody mom,” as the press dubbed her, is overcome by memory loss, and Emma must determine if she’s faking. This is a viscous psychothriller about the fact that the doctor, as usual, is sick herself – and here you won’t understand who is analyzing whom, and all the troubles and injuries come from the fact that loved ones hurt each other the most. “We are in an expensive area of North London where there are more psychologists than psychopaths,” says the patient. This is not so, but it is precisely such a formula that looks like an ideal picture of the world.
“Homecoming”
2018–2020 Amazon Prime Video
In the Amazon series, a doctor played by Julia Roberts suffers from traumatic amnesia. In the past, as an aspiring psychologist, she got a job at a veterans’ rehabilitation center, where they were supposed to help them cope with PTSD. But the center looks extremely strange, and one of the patients begins to build a conspiracy theory, according to which the clinic and treatment are just a screen for preparing veterans for the next war not in a hot spot, but on their own territory. The series perfectly managed to wind up phantasmagoria and sow doubts about the reality of what is happening. And say your main idea: it’s not you who has gone crazy, but the whole world around you.
Subscribe to Weekend channel in Telegram
[ad_2]
Source link
