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Tell Me You Love Me
SERIES: HBO, Sunday 9:00p (60 minutes)


5.8

based on 25 reviews
read critic reviews
how did we calculate this?

based on 36 votes
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Get more information on this show at TV.com.

Starring Jane Alexander, Ally Walker, Tim DeKay, Sonya Walger, Adam Scott, Michelle Borth, and Luke Kirby

HBO courts controversy with sex and couples therapy.

GENRE(S):	Drama
CREATED BY:	Cynthia Mort
FIRST AIR DATE:	September 9, 2007

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Gillian Flynn

Tell Me is an incisive drama, but it's not an easy commitment.

San Jose Mercury News Charlie McCollum

By the end of the first hour of Tell Me, I found myself caring deeply about what was happening to the couples and whether, in the end, they would find some joy of sex and emotional satisfaction. And whether I care about the characters is always my bottom line as to whether a series succeeds.

LA Weekly Robert Abele

Although it manages to be suspenseful about the journey of its jumbled characters, it is an unrelenting examination of the search for the hidden recipe of me, you and us that makes for a strong marriage, and that's something you ultimately have to steel yourself for in a weekly series.

Chicago Tribune Maureen Ryan

[A] deeply interesting, occasionally riveting show.

Hollywood Reporter Barry Garron

It's imperative to make [a commitment] to this series because it doesn't really find itself until the second and third episodes. That's when you feel and recognize the beauty and the pain that Cynthia Mort smartly and sensitively portrays in her fiercely honest examination of sex in relationships.

Washington Post Tom Shales

Tell Me You Love Me is not only more provocative than any of the broadcast networks' new fall shows, but also more sophisticated--even than those shows that aspire to be "adult."

TV Guide Matt Roush

Tell Me You Love Me is an engrossing, searing, sometimes squirm-inducing study of intimacy, told with a fly-on-the-bedroom-wall realism that is both clinical and wrenching. Voyeurism has rarely felt so unnerving yet ultimately rewarding.

New York Daily News David Hinckley

The rest of the drama, though, suspends disbelief much more successfully. The acting, by both men and women, is quite nuanced and well-observed. After a few episodes, you feel their pain, and hope that it is eased.

Newsday Diane Werts

It's daring, disconcerting and/or enlightening.

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Rob Owen

Once you get past the sex and if you can endure the sadness of the stories, Tell Me begins to have an addictive quality.

The New York Times Alessandra Stanley

The series is bold in its candor and unhurried attention to detail, but not quite brave enough to lay bare the bleakest, pettiest injuries that can scar a marriage.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer Melanie McFarland

In essence, you're watching the parts of life we're never supposed to see play out before our eyes, and the effect can be either uncomfortable but fascinating or whiny and dull.

USA Today Robert Bianco

The stories and performances vary in interest, and all would benefit from a bit more humor. Still, even the weaker stories eventually pull you in, if only because you spend so much time listening to these people complain, you want to see how they work things out.

Chicago Sun-Times Doug Elfman

The storylines are not so much entertainingly paced as they are merely interesting, representational or too often plodding.

Boston Globe Matthew Gilbert

The couples are ordinary, and so are their issues. That’s part of the goal of the show--to dissect the mundanity of love and anger. But making a developing story out of these tangles and skirmishes is extremely difficult, and Tell Me You Love Me doesn’t quite pull it off.

Variety Brian Lowry

In short, if you come for the sex, you'll only stay for the characters, and those represent an intriguing but decidedly mixed bag.

San Francisco Chronicle Tim Goodman

Intriguing--but not especially enjoyable.

PopMatters Cynthia Fuchs

Tell Me You Love Me begins within confines, its white, middle class, straight couples all dealing with versions of the same problem. That this focus might be "real" is not the question. More troubling, for a series banking on its newness, is that the focus is so familiar.

Los Angeles Times Mary McNamara

Unfortunately, it is difficult to stay interested in what happens to any of these characters because most of them are so absurdly unlikable.

Philadelphia Inquirer Jonathan Storm

There's no intrigue, no entertainment, and the show's motion, when there is any, is so s-l-o-w, it's virtually undetectable.

Slate Troy Patterson

Why didn't HBO just go ahead and cut each episode of the hour-long Tell Me You Love Me to 50 minutes? The trims would have gone some way toward relieving the boredom inspired by the show's inchworm pace, and the shrink's-hour format would have made an exact fit for the spirit of the exercise.

Slant Magazine Len Sousa

It's not the realism that brings Tell Me You Love Me down, it's the long list of unlikeable characters.

Wall Street Journal Amy Finnerty

Nonorganic dialogue quickly becomes boring for viewers. The directors seem to have lavished so much energy on the choreography of the sex scenes that they have nothing left for verbal expression.

Salon Heather Havrilesky

Yes, [the sex is] all very realistic, but not very hot, thanks to the fact that these are grouchy, humorless people whom we'd rather see hitting each other in the head with two-by-fours.

Detroit Free Press Mike Duffy

Tell Me You Love Me is little more than an intellectually pretentious, emotionally vapid snoozer.

The average user rating for this tv show is 5.8 (out of 10) based on 36 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Joshlyn H. gave it a2:
It's depressing but also too contrived. Having to have the token lesbian sex scene thrown in there, was just the end for me. I guess I don't understand why these people can't communicate better! Is that the point? It's sort of boring and slow. I'm really trying to like it but by the end of the show, I'm annoyed by the whole thing.

Cesar gave it a0:
Awful show. The acting is below average due to the high amount of people whining, arguing, complaining, or just being weird. The sex factor is so overused throughout the season, it's completely inescapable! The nudity is inescapable! The sexually explicit scenes are inescapable. The therapy scenes are, from what we know, the main plot. But unfortunately, they're so boring, no one can be inspired by them to make a TV show of his/her own. All of a sudden, they're comes sex. It's almost like a pornographic drama show, which isn't such a good mixture. These scenes are just disgusting. I mean, there's an episode in which Caroline's breasts grow, and Palek is told to feel them. Jamie and Hugo make up in the sixth or seventh episode, and it's all thanks to sex! You have to have a strong stomach for them. HBO, if you're making a second season, please make it the opposite of what I said just now.

Jamie N. gave it a10:
This show isn't for everyone, but I feel its realistic look at relationships in trouble is worth a look or two for anyone. Its mostly going to appeal to girls, because its a show about emotion, not just sex. Oooo, feelings. Thats a tough one.

David gave it a10:
Excellent excellent excellent. The characters are not unlikable - they are real. There is real pain and real joy and real closeness and real, unbreachable distance. Compare this to Brothers and Sisters, which despite the genius of Sally Field and Calista Flockhart (and all of them), offers us characters who are among the most unpleasant, angry, selfish, bitter, pathologically narcissistic denizens of hell's bottom level whose sole joy is to visit suffering on every other living creature within the camera's range. "Tell Me" is the real deal.

Jaleesa gave it a10:
Honest. Raw. Beautiful.

Russ E gave it a2:
Had potential but moves so slow that you stop caring what happens. They whine, cheat, lie and the sex is as stilted and uncomfortable as their emotional lives. The lack of joy and resolution of any of this marital turmoil will make this show fail. To the one couple: have sex already!

Kate gave it a9:
A brutally honest look at relationships. I've become genuinely engrossed in the characters, despite their self absorption. The masturbation scenes I can do without.

Tell Me You Love Me SERIES: HBO, Sunday 9:00p (60 minutes)

Tell Me You Love Me
SERIES: HBO, Sunday 9:00p (60 minutes)