The Israeli series, B’Tipul (In Treatment), became iconic for a reason: It’s a brilliant concept, executed with great skill. Now that it has been 20 years since it was first released, it is streaming on Hot VOD and Next TV, and will start running on Hot 3, Sundays through Thursdays, at 2:30 p.m., on November 30.
I saw it when it first came out, but hadn’t seen it since, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it holds up. The most revolutionary element of the series is its simplicity. It’s about a psychologist, Reuven Dagan (Assi Dayan, in one of his last and best performances), and each episode shows him with a patient or with Gila (Gila Almagor), another therapist who acts as his supervisor. It was originally shown, one episode at a time, every evening of the week, and it created a sensation in Israel in 2005. Eventually, the series, which was created by Hagai Levi, Nir Bergman, and Ori Sivan, was adapted all over the world, in dozens of languages and countries. English speakers are most likely to be aware of the HBO version, In Treatment, starring Gabriel Byrne. Another US version, with Uzo Aduba as the therapist, came out in 2021. Part of the reason it has been adapted so frequently is that it must be so cheap to produce: All you need is one set and two actors (or, in the case of the couple therapy sessions, three).
But the real reason for its success is that nothing is so dramatic as characters revealing the secrets of their souls. Many series, such as The Sopranos, used the device of having a character see a therapist. B’Tipul cut out everything else, and it turned out that a therapist and a patient talking was so entertaining that it was all you needed to see.
The first two episodes will grab you right away. Ayelet Zurer, the Israeli actress who went on to star opposite Tom Hanks in Angels & Demons, plays Na’ama, the patient in the first episode. She was never better than in this episode, playing a commitment-phobic young woman who reveals how she cheated on her boyfriend, and then admits that she has fallen head-over-heels in love with Reuven. He is taken aback, more than he should be – therapists are taught that transference, a phenomenon in which patients feel they have developed romantic or sexual feelings for their psychologist or psychiatrist, is a common part of treatment. His shock gives away the fact that he is also smitten with her, and we learn later in his session with Gila that he is having trouble with his wife, Yael (Meirav Gruber).
Lior Ashkenazi plays his second patient, Yadin, an arrogant, conflicted pilot who bombed a house that turned out to have been filled with civilians, including children, on the orders of his commanders, who mistakenly thought terrorists were hiding there. He is both vulnerable and demanding, and Reuven struggles to be sympathetic toward him.
The other patients in the first season are Ayala (Maya Maron), a suicidal teenage gymnast, and a couple, Orna (Alma Zack) and Michael (Rami Heuberger, who died recently), who have been trying for years to have a baby, but now that the wife has finally gotten pregnant, she isn’t sure she wants this child.
The second and final season features some new characters, played by Tali Sharon (Srugim), Assi Levy, Yisrael Poliakov of HaGashash HaHiver, and Moni Moshonov, among others.
In addition to having been remade, the series has been endlessly imitated, so it may not have quite the impact that it did when it was first released, but seeing Israel’s biggest stars get such a dramatic showcase is still fun to watch. The real star, though, is the writing, and it hasn’t dated. The characters talk like real people, with all the repetitions and hesitations of actual speech, and that’s a big part of what makes the show so gripping. The scripts were edited by a therapist, and they were widely watched by Israeli mental-health professionals, who mostly gave them high marks for accuracy.
The Beatles Anthology rerelease
THE NINE most enjoyable hours of television you are likely to see this year are the rerelease of The Beatles Anthology, which is streaming on Disney+. Even if you saw this series in 1995 when it was first shown, anyone who loves the Beatles will want to see it again. The sound has been tweaked and improved, and a new episode was added with never-before-released footage of Paul, George, and Ringo working with George Martin on bringing to life two songs John had recorded on cassette that were found after his death, “Real Love” and “Free as a Bird.”
While the much-publicized series, Get Back, was an edited version of the footage of the band’s 1969 recording and rehearsal sessions, it showed them right before their breakup, when animosity among the four was at an all-time high. The Beatles Anthology, by contrast, is like a Beatles home movie, and it emphasizes that while they may have bickered after nearly a decade into a uniquely intense partnership, they never stopped caring for each other.
Neil Aspinall, the Beatles’ friend and road manager, started putting together this series, based on their personal photos, videos, and interviews, as well as other previously released pictures and clips, in the mid-1970s, but it was shelved for decades. In the early 1990s, the surviving three Beatles went back to work on it, and it was clearly a labor of love. While John’s life was tragically cut short in 1980 when he was murdered outside his home in New York, his voice is heard throughout, from the many interviews he gave over the years. The voices are those of the Beatles, joined occasionally by Martin and Aspinall; it’s their story, in their words.
The series, which was co-produced by Ringo, Paul, and various family members of John and George, is a sweet-spirited, extremely detailed look at the group’s evolution. No matter how many other documentaries you have seen about the Fab Four and no matter how many memoirs and articles about them you may have read, there is much here that will be new to you. There are clips of George performing “Raunchy,” the song that got him accepted to the band, as well as rare early performance clips and their very earliest recordings.
Other highlights are filmed clips of the Beatles snapping photos of the New York skyline from inside the plane, bringing them to the Big Apple for the first time, and audio clips from inside the studio, as the Beatles, in collaboration with Martin, became more adventurous on every record they made. It’s interesting to see how the song, “A Day in the Life,” was put together: the first and last parts were by John, and Paul contributed the “Woke up, fell out of bed” middle section.
It’s especially nice to see the three in the 1990s, reminiscing and jamming together. George puts their long, strange trip – to borrow a phrase from another band – into perspective when he notes that at 17, he was performing in Hamburg with the group, and by age 23, he was recording Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. This series will make you realize what a lot of living and music they packed into just a few years when they were so very young.