The Patient: TV Review

Starring: Steve Carell, Domhnall Gleeson

A limited 10 part series that stretches no longer than 30 minutes with each episode, The Patient's premise is a strong and intelligent one.

But as the show goes on, its fixed scope proves to be too narrow and at times repetitive to be fully engaging - and its denouement doesn't live up to the initial promise.

Carell is Dr Alan Strauss, a therapist whose world is a rocky one. His wife has recently died from cancer, his son has torn a schism in the family thanks to becoming an Orthodox Jew and his faith is faltering. 

Approached by Gleeson's Gene to help him, Strauss soon finds himself literally trapped in a cat and mouse game after Gene kidnaps him and shackles him to the floor of his basement. Desperate for help and revealing himself to be a killer fighting his instincts, Gene is convinced this extreme therapy will stop him once and for all.

The Patient largely works well as a two-hander, with Carell and Gleeson seizing on their acting strengths and playing to them. Certainly the series is no better than when it's just the two of them, but the premise, by necessity needs to widen and open up - and as it does so, it exposes some of the flaws within.

Continually going back and forth to the past and the schism between Strauss and his son, The Patient becomes repetitive and adds little new to the proceedings. It's not that it's well played, simply that it halts proceedings while adding nothing. 

Carell is stunning throughout, imbuing Strauss with desperation, despair and regret. But if Carell is strong, he needs his foil, and Gleeson's edginess more than compensates for it. There's a degree of uncertainty in The Patient, which comes from The Americans' writers, but it doesn't quite lead up to its premise and while it's watchable thanks to truncated episodes and some good cliffhangers, it feels like a two-hander stretched a little too thin in parts.

The Patient is streaming now on Disney+, with new episodes releasing every week on Tuesday.