FX has unveiled the trailer for its upcoming series The Patient starring Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson.
The Office funnyman goes serious in the clip as Alan Strauss, a therapist tasked with analyzing the needs and psyche of a new patient named Sam, played by Domhnall Gleeson. “I’m not content,” the latter despairs in their initial session. “I…get angry. That’s the sort of thing you help people with, right?”
Correct, therapy is generally for helping people work through their issues. Except things take a turn when Gleeson’s character reveals he doesn’t just have an anger problem: he’s a serial killer. One who decides to kidnap Alan and hold him hostage to get the help he needs, to be exact.
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“Successful therapy requires a safe environment,” Carell intones while finding himself chained to a chair in the killer’s remote hideaway, “without anything like fear hanging over every session.”
The show’s official description follows: “In order to survive, Alan must unwind Sam’s disturbed mind and stop him from killing again… but Sam refuses to address critical topics, like his mother Candace. Alone in captivity, Alan excavates his own past through memories of his old therapist, Charlie, and grapples with waves of his own repressed troubles – the recent death of his wife, Beth, and the painful estrangement from his religious son, Ezra.”
Produced by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg of The Americans, The Patient also stars Linda Emond, David Alan Grier, Laura Niemi, and Andrew Leeds, and begins streaming exclusively on Hulu starting August 30th. Watch the trailer below.
While Netflix recently canceled Carell’s comedy series Space Force after two seasons, he returned to the big screen earlier this month in Minions: The Rise of Gru.