Joyless sex in 'Tell Me You Love Me' a turnoff

Trying to stay out in front of the competition -- on premium cable and on broadcast TV -- HBO gets more daring and bold (and, not coincidentally, more revealing) than ever with the new series "Tell Me You Love Me." But sometimes even a groundbreaking show can go so far it moves backward.

The hourlong drama has already generated a lot of buzz with its full-frontal nudity and abundant sex, and that buzz only figures to increase after it debuts at 8 p.m. Sunday. But by then it might well turn into more of a drone of complaint because, if "Tell Me" depicts sex more openly than ever before on TV, it also makes it seem more dreary than ever.

"The Joy of Sex" was a popular self-help manual in the '70s, but it seems as if HBO could use a refresher course because rarely has sex seemed more joyless than it does in "Tell Me."

The show concerns three couples loosely connected in that they're all clients (or figure to be) of Jane Alexander's therapist, May. But as a unifying force what that really means is they're all unhappy.

Ally Walker's Katie and Tim DeKay's Dave are parents who've hit a dry patch in their sex life. Sonya Walger's Carolyn and Adam Scott's Palek are young professionals having trouble getting pregnant. And while Michelle Borth's Jamie and Luke Farrell Kirby's Hugo have the hottest time in bed (and in the car and in a vacant apartment while house-hunting) as a couple engaged to be married, they're also still tussling with commitment issues.

Just be sure to memorize that paragraph because it's the closest thing to a scorecard a viewer is going to get.

HBO is always urging its show creators to go further, to leave the usual constraints of TV storytelling behind, and that has paid dividends in series such as "The Sopranos," "The Wire," "Curb Your Enthusiasm" (which we'll return to soon enough) and, most recently, "Flight of the Conchords." But that can also push writers beyond what they're capable of pulling off, as was the case with David Milch's "John From Cincinnati" and, now, "Tell Me."

Writer-creator Cynthia Mort cut her teeth on "Roseanne," so she has some experience mining marital discord for laughs. But the laughs get lost in "Tell Me," which affects a European art-house sensibility closer to Ingmar Bergman's "Scenes From a Marriage" (times three).

"Tell Me" is so clinical, it makes even something as serious and self-absorbed as "thirtysomething" seem like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

The characters rarely use each other's names, and there's no exposition to speak of. There's no background music, not even the canned jazz-funk of the Showtime Saturday-night porno. When May and her equally gray-haired companion get randy at the end of the pilot and some music finally pipes up, it's a relief -- except the episode quickly cuts to the credits, soundtrack interruptus.

"Tell Me" wants to be all about realism. But because it can't take the time to really show a couple having a nice, loving, 15- or 20-minute session of slapping bellies to, say, Miles Davis' "In a Silent Way," all the sex tends to come in manic bursts that leave a viewer cold.

"This isn't who I want to be," pleas Katie, and that's fine as far as it goes. But what is it you want your life to be like? Aside from the grayhairs getting it on at the end, "Tell Me" lacks anything resembling a fulfilling experience -- sexual or otherwise. It's never prurient, but maybe that's the problem. It's not without redeeming social value, and it excels at depicting the way couples fall into bad habits and cement them with resentment. But as entertainment, it's the visual equivalent of eating granola.

Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" follows at 9 p.m. Sunday on HBO and, after "Tell Me," its comical depiction of a dysfunctional man in a barely functional marriage has never been more welcome. Yet the sixth season finds it falling into the same sort of rut as the couples in "Tell Me."

Once again, it thumbs its nose at political correctness, this time as David and his fictional wife played by Cheryl Hines take in a family of hurricane refugees (thus the episode title, "Meet the Blacks"). And once again it recruits fellow celebrities to act out David's story lines with their own ad-libs, with the talented Richard Lewis joining Jeff Garlin and Ted Danson as David's foils.

But when a smoke alarm goes off at the beginning of Sunday's season premiere, or when David can't procure a bottle of his wife's favorite perfume at the beginning of another episode, a viewer can set his or her watch by how long it takes those incidents to circle around and come back to bite him.

Beginning with "Seinfeld" and taken to its reductio ad absurdum in "Enthusiasm," David's best work has been about undermining sitcom conventions. This season, however, appears to find "Enthusiasm" succumbing to those conventions.

But it does have a few laughs -- and no discomfiting sex to speak of. Just don't go giving David any ideas.