We have three chilling episodes of FX’s The Patient out streaming on Hulu. The show so far has received generally good reviews, even calling it out to be some of Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson’s best work. It’s got us hoping that the rest of it will be just as interesting, if not better!
As with such subject matter, viewers often wonder if shows like The Patient are based on an existing novel, movie, or even a true incident.
FX’s The Patient starring Steve Carell and Domhnall Gleeson is not based on any novel or true story. Co-creators Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg came up with the idea as they both have been in therapy and wanted to put an interesting spin on it.
While there are quite a few novels called The Patient, I can confirm that none of them served as source material for the show.
As you may already know, The Patient follows the story of Carell’s Alan Strauss, a Jewish therapist who is approached by a severely disturbed man, Sam Fortner. As we go down this rabbit hole, we find out that Fortner is a serial killer keeping Strauss hostage and seeking therapy in hopes of reforming himself.
Although the inspiration came from Field and Weisberg’s experiences in therapy, rest assured that neither of their sessions involved serial killers or the like. They simply wanted to juxtapose two quite contrasting scenarios to see how it would work in a thriller series.
However, simply having therapy as the core of the show would not make it nail-biting, which is why there’s added chaos and danger to raise the stakes in each episode.
“We realized that there was a problem which was that therapy doesn’t have a lot of you know inherent propulsion to it […] So we sort of put it aside and started thinking, ‘What if we go some of the more traditional routes of a serial killer and what if we had a serial killer that wanted to get better?’”
Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg
To ensure authenticity, the co-creators also did in-depth research on serial killers and worked closely with therapist Dennis Palumbo, who serves as co-producer on the show.
Now that we’ve dealt with where this interesting premise cropped up from, it’s time to shift our focus on where it’s going: Will Fortner redeem himself, or give in to his uncontrollable tendencies? Does Strauss have any hope for escape? Find out in The Patient’s next episode, releasing on September 13 on FX for Hulu.
About The Patient
The Patient is an American psychological thriller limited series created by Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg for FX on Hulu. Premiering on August 30, 2022, the series consists of ten episodes.
Therapist Dr. Strauss is kidnapped and imprisoned by his patient Sam who needs him to find a therapeutical solution to help him stop his homicidal tendencies.
The mini-series stars Domhnall Gleeson, Steve Carell, Linda Emond, Andrew Leeds, Laura Niemi, and David Alan Grier. The thriller series streams on Hulu, with weekly episodes on Tuesday.
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