This week's "Friday Entertainment" special (Fuji TV, 9 p.m.) is a dramatization of the 131st winner of the Naoki Prize for Literature, Hideo Okura's novel "Kuchu Buranko (Flying Trapeze)."
Hiroshi Abe plays Irabu, a psychiatrist who works in his father's clinic. One day he is visited by a circus trapeze artist named Kohei, who complains that he has suddenly been overcome with acute anxiety that prevents him from sleeping and, even worse, makes him unable to jump off the platform to perform his circus routines.
Irabu has a very casual approach to his calling, and rather than offering Kohei counseling or any other form of treatment, simply gives him a vitamin shot and tells him he has nothing to worry about. Kohei, who blames his neurosis on his trapeze partner, is dissatisfied with Irabu's attitude, and then Irabu asks him if he'd let him fly on the trapeze himself.