Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Cast: Steve Carrell, Domhnall Gleeson, Linda Emond, Andrew Leeds, Laura Niemi, Alan Blumenfeld, Alex Rich, David Alan Grier.

The measure of our guilt is such that we no longer seek out absolution and forgiveness from a member of the clergy, we seek enlightenment to the course of our actions from someone who can glean through analysis and psychotherapy that our engagements are not our responsibility; the cop out of our times that leads to blaming others and leading to a discordant view of reality.

Reality and passing on blame is at the core of Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg’s immensely unsettling drama series, The Patient.

The subject matter of the serial killer seeking explanations for their thoughts and deeds might seem a controversial one, but its sense of the modern self-confessed killer seeking a truth to their terrible and terrifying deeds, it perhaps fits the narrative of that of a Frankenstein experiment gone awry; instead of taking ownership, we deflect, we push our name onto another beast, and that victim of our hubris and arrogance is then punished in our stead.

In what is for the most part a three hander of performance character, Steve Carrell, in arguably his toughest screen role to date, takes on the mantle of the Jewish psychotherapist Alan Strauss, and into his office and life walks Sam Fortner, played with fierce charm by Domhnall Gleeson, a self-confessed serial killer who plans to strike again, but to whom the need is not understood, not completely, and not with a shred of sanity that can be initially placed at his door.

The three hander is completed by the one to whom blame could easily have been attributed to, a mother who did not remove her son from the savage nature of her husband, and to this dramatic effect of blame and counter accusation, Alan Strauss is found to be the captive arbiter and councillor of those that deal with death.

It is a fascination of tightly kept secrets that the series is given its space to develop, to look directly at the consequences of the actions of Time of the three main characters of blame of fear, and in the end regret, and in the flashback and reveal of Alan’s own issues with his Orthodox son, we find that some consequences are far more reaching, and like Frankenstein himself, the one who finds themselves persecuted for other’s creative deeds.

A serious in-depth interpretation of condemnation and discussion of the inner workings of psyche; The Patient is a series of objective design.

Ian D. Hall