BeTipul and In Treatment: The Format Adaptation
BeTipul launched in 2005 on Israeli cable. HBO's In Treatment adapted it three years later. The transaction defined the Israeli scripted format export model that has shaped global television since.
BeTipul — the Israeli drama about a psychotherapist and his patients, created by Hagai Levi — premiered on Israeli cable channel HOT3 in 2005. HBO's American adaptation, In Treatment, launched in 2008. The transaction between the two — Israeli scripted format licensed and remade for an American premium cable audience — was not the first Israeli television export, but it became the canonical example of the model that has shaped Israeli content export ever since. Hatufim into Homeland. Sheli into multiple international adaptations. The pattern of low-budget high-concept Israeli original that travels into global premium content was established here.
The Format
BeTipul's structure was unusual when it launched. Each episode ran approximately half an hour. The visual language was confined almost entirely to a therapist's office, with two actors in conversation. The week's episodes rotated through the therapist's patients on different weekdays, with a Friday episode in which the therapist himself sees his own therapist.
The format was production-efficient — one set, small cast, dialogue-driven — but the writing demands were extraordinary. Every episode had to function as a self-contained therapeutic encounter while building character and narrative across the season. The actors carried the show without action, without spectacle, without environmental variation.
The original cast included Assi Dayan as the therapist, with Ayelet Zurer, Lior Ashkenazi, and other Israeli actors playing the patients. The show ran for three seasons on HOT and established Hagai Levi as one of the most significant Israeli television creators of the era.
The HBO Adaptation
In Treatment debuted on HBO in January 2008, with Gabriel Byrne in the therapist role and a rotating cast of patients across the week. The format was preserved largely intact — same half-hour episodes, same weekly rotation, same one-room visual confinement, same demand on the lead actor and the writing.
The adaptation worked. In Treatment ran for three original seasons through 2010 and earned awards and critical recognition that established the BeTipul format as a credible scripted property in the American premium content market. A revival season aired in 2021 with Uzo Aduba in the therapist role, demonstrating that the format had institutional staying power beyond the original adaptation.
Hagai Levi served as executive producer on the American adaptation, establishing a pattern of Israeli creators retaining creative involvement in their formats' international remakes rather than simply selling the rights and stepping aside.
What the Transaction Established
Three things were established by the BeTipul to In Treatment adaptation that became durable features of Israeli scripted format export.
First, the production economics. Israeli scripted television operates at budgets that are a fraction of American premium content costs. The creative bet on a format can be taken at lower risk, the format can be developed and tested in the Israeli market, and the proof of concept can be sold into the American market with reduced uncertainty. The economic gradient runs strongly in favor of Israel as the development laboratory.
Second, the creator economics. Hagai Levi's continued involvement in In Treatment established that Israeli creators could maintain influence over their formats' international remakes rather than being one-time licensors. The model has been followed by Gideon Raff (Hatufim/Homeland), Avi Issacharoff and Lior Raz (Fauda), and other Israeli creators who have moved between original Israeli productions and international adaptations or directly authored productions.
Third, the institutional pipeline. After In Treatment, American premium content buyers — HBO, Showtime, Netflix, and others — established active scouting relationships with Israeli broadcasters, producers, and writers. The Israeli television industry became, structurally, a development pipeline for American premium content rather than a separate national market.
Hagai Levi's Later Work
Levi's subsequent career has illustrated the pattern. He co-created The Affair, which ran on Showtime from 2014 to 2019 and won the Golden Globe for Best Television Series – Drama in its first season. He created Our Boys for HBO and Israeli television, an English-Hebrew bilingual co-production about the murder of Mohammed Abu Khdeir. He directed Scenes from a Marriage for HBO, the 2021 adaptation of the Ingmar Bergman series, starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain.
Levi's trajectory from a Hebrew-language Israeli drama in 2005 to direct creative authorship of major American premium content productions across the past two decades represents one of the most successful sustained creative careers to come out of Israeli television. The path he established — Israeli original to American adaptation to direct American authorship — is the model that subsequent Israeli creators have followed.
The Broader Format Export Wave
BeTipul and In Treatment did not exist in isolation. Israeli scripted format exports across the past two decades include Prisoners of War (Hatufim), which became Homeland on Showtime. Fauda, which Netflix licensed and continued to produce in Hebrew with global distribution. Shtisel, a Netflix global success in its original Hebrew. Tehran, which Apple TV+ has distributed internationally. False Flag, which has had multiple international adaptations.
The cumulative effect of this wave has been to position Israeli scripted television as a category-defining content source for global premium content buyers. The Israeli production base, the creator network, the institutional relationships with American and European buyers, and the cultural permission for narrative risk-taking on contested topics combine to produce content that travels.
Strategic Implications
The BeTipul to In Treatment transaction in 2007 to 2008 codified a Israeli content export model that has shaped global premium television ever since. The economic, creative, and institutional patterns established by that adaptation have compounded across two decades of subsequent format sales and direct authorships.
For Israeli television production, the implication has been a sustained institutional pipeline that funds local Hebrew-language content while also producing exportable formats. The dual-purpose business model is healthier than either pure local production or pure export development would be alone.
For global premium content buyers, the implication has been a reliable scouting relationship with a foreign production base that consistently delivers high-concept formats at low development cost. The relationship has institutionalized.
For Israeli creators, the implication has been a path from Hebrew-language television to direct authorship of major international productions — a creative trajectory that did not exist for Israeli writers and directors before the BeTipul precedent.
The therapist's office on HOT3 in 2005 turned out to be the most consequential set in the history of Israeli scripted television. The format that emerged from it changed how Israeli content moves through the global market and continues to define the export model two decades later.
