Bravo is cable's "arts" network, which today means a steady schedule of reality shows about hairdressers, makeovers and poker-playing celebrities. That's the only explicable reason that this gem of an improvised sitcom got almost no attention while Matt LeBlanc got magazine covers for riding Joey Tribbiani into pitiable middle age. The tautly intercut story of four yuppie couples in counseling — they speak into the camera for their sessions, making you their therapist — is simultaneously unsentimental and disarming as it teases out their every whine, self-deception and indiscretion. In the second season, currently airing, a man returns to couples with his sister-in-law, with whom he had an affair that his wife found out about at her mother's funeral. "And what we want to do," she says, brightly, "is we want to build on that positive foundation!" That's what I call love.
Come fly with us, and Leo, through the best (and worst) of 2004. Tops in the cinema this year include Scorsese's Howard Hughes biopic The Aviator. Elsewhere, Deadwood was good TV, and a Strange tale fascinated readers.