This season viewers are privy to fewer patients. Sunil (Irrfan Khan), a Bengali professor, is a depressed widower living with his son and American daughter-in-law. Jesse (Dane DeHaan) is an adopted gay teenager struggling with all sorts of crises, including the discovery of his birth mother. And in a rare television role, Debra Winger plays Frances, a former movie star having trouble with her lines, her age and her family.  Paul has stopped seeing Gina, who retired and wrote a well-received novel. Paul views one character in Gina’s book as a thinly veiled version of himself and all his personal and professional inadequacies. That brings him to the waiting room of Adele (Amy Ryan), a younger, less experienced therapist.  The show’s producers recruited the novelist Jhumpa Lahiri (“The Namesake”) as a cultural consultant for Sunil’s story line, and whatever the reason, he is the most interesting patient. It helps that Mr. Khan, who played the father in the film version of “The Namesake,” is deft and compelling in the role of a grieving Indian émigré struggling to retain his dignity in an alien culture. Sunil is brought to Paul’s office by his son Arun (Samrat Chakrabarti) and Arun’s wife, Julia (Sonya Walger). Julia, an attractive, brittle literary agent, finds her father-in-law’s withdrawal hostile and unnerving. Sunil refuses at first to speak to her or Paul directly; instead he responds in Bengali and relies on Arun to translate.  Once his minders leave the room, Paul puts Sunil at ease, and the patient begins to reveal glimpses of his isolation and alienation in American society, not without wry humor. “She named her daughter after a company that makes bottled water, Naya,” Sunil says of Julia. “Perhaps the next child will be called iPod.”  Mr. DeHaan is equally persuasive as Jesse, the gay teenager with a quicksilver temper and charm that just barely conceals his insecurities and rage at his adopted parents and the birth mother he hasn’t met.  Oddly, it is Ms. Winger who has the hardest time with a role that seems tailor made, namely as a former movie star trying to make a comeback. Frances comes to see Paul because she finds herself forgetting her lines in a revival of “The Night of the Iguana,” and it soon becomes evident that there are deep-rooted reasons for her sudden memory lapses.  Frances, like most patients, is a liar, armored in defenses and self-delusion. Actors live a lie for a living, which adds an extra layer of falsity. Perhaps because Ms. Winger’s strength as a performer was baring the inner truth of her characters in movies like “Terms of Endearment” and “Rachel Getting Married,” she seems uncomfortable with Frances’s facility for deceit. Resistance is an inevitable part of psychotherapy, but in this case it seems more like the actress is resisting her role.  It doesn’t matter. “In Treatment” is still bracing. Reality television teems with celebrity shrinks like Dr. Phil and Dr. Drew who provide make-believe therapy. “In Treatment” is fictional, but it carries a stronger whiff of truth.  HBO, Monday and Tuesday nights at 9, Eastern and Pacific times; 8, Central time.  Directed by Paris Barclay; written by Adam Rapp (“Sunil”), Alison Tatlock (“Frances”), Sarah Treem (“Jesse”), and Anya Epstein and Dan Futterman (“Adele”); Stephen Levinson, Mark Wahlberg, Ms. Epstein, Mr. Futterman, Mr. Barclay and Hagai Levi, executive producers; Noa Tishby, co-executive producer; Eric Overmyer, consulting producer; Ms. Treem, supervising producer; Sarah Lum and Mark Baker, producers. Produced by HBO Entertainment. WITH: Gabriel Byrne (Dr. Paul Weston), Debra Winger (Frances), Irrfan Khan (Sunil), Dane DeHaan (Jesse), Amy Ryan (Adele), Samrat Chakrabarti (Arun) and Sonya Walger (Julia).  A television review on Oct. 25 about “In Treatment,” on HBO, misspelled the surname of the actor who plays Sunil. He is Irrfan Khan, not Kahn. (A reader pointed out the error in an e-mail message this week.)  A version of this review appears in print on October 25, 2010, on Page C1 of the New York edition with the headline: HBO’s Talking Cure: The Moody Doctor Is In. Order Reprints| Today's Paper|Subscribe
In the third season of “In Treatment,” beginning Monday on HBO, the therapist Paul Weston’s relationships with his new patients are as finely etched as before.