Coming to HBO2 tonight, Wednesday, August 14: AMERICANS IN BED
Pippa Robinson’s quirky and poignant peek into couples’ bedrooms made its debut earlier this week as the closing film of HBO’s popular Summer Docs series.
Robinson’s doc is a US-specific adaptation of THE BRITISH IN BED, which provided humor and pathos as it explored the relationships of eight diverse British couples, interviewed from the comfort of their own beds. This version, produced for HBO, follows the same format, offering a refreshing look at a cross-section of modern relationships in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of marriage – and, notably, divorce. Functioning as a sort of couples counselor or confessor, Robinson elicits details both amusing – how middle-aged couple Joe and Patty regularly find their sex life interrupted by either children or their pet dog – and uncomfortable – what happened when Fatima found evidence of Kevin sexting with another woman. While it would be impossible to fully represent the diversity of a country’s romantic relationships in a single documentary, with couples ranging from young Muslim newlyweds to two who’ve been together for seven decades – and including lesbian, gay, straight, and even polyamorous pairs – Robinson has a fairly rich landscape to mine, making for a candid, and often quite charming, examination of our need for love and companionship – for better or for worse.
what (not) to doc 