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Nowhere is the NY-LON divide greater than in attitudes to therapy.
In London, it's not unheard of to have an analyst but many people keep their shrink's existence a secret: I have never once heard the words, "As my therapist said to me " on the social circuit.
Yet in Manhattan, where I now live, therapy is as entrenched as the New York Yankees. Soon after I moved here, an acquaintance in her late teens, who struck me as confident and bright, told me about her therapist.
I tactfully queried her need to be in treatment. Her response? "I don't know any of my friends who aren't in therapy."
So I was initially sceptical about In Treatment, a drama that began on Sky Arts last night.
It's yet another HBO import (the cable network responsible for The Sopranos, The Wire and Mad Men). But it supplies some of the most electrifying TV drama I've ever seen.
Gabriel Byrne, delivering a performance even better than in The Usual Suspects or Defence of the Realm, plays emotionally tormented psychotherapist Paul Weston.
The show airs five nights a week until December. Weston sees the same four patients each week except on Fridays, when he discusses the implosion of his marriage with his own analyst.
In Treatment fuses the addictiveness of a soap opera with the complexities of fine West End drama.
Over time I got so drawn into Weston's interplay with Laura (who carries a torch for her shrink), Alex (a repressed navy pilot) and Jake and Amy (a warring married couple) that I began mulling over their problems in my mind as though I were a qualified therapist and these fictional characters were my real patients.
I am far from alone. New Yorkers have embraced In Treatment: Emmy and Golden Globe awards ensued. My friend Adam said he got so caught up in the show that he missed a session with his own psychoanalyst to watch it.
But therapists gave In Treatment a mixed response, with many leaping off the couch and into cyberspace to protest at Byrne's warts-and-all portrayal. Dr Jon Kogen, a clinical psychologist in New York, fumed: "It is so unrelentingly heavy, which fits Byrne's character and the therapy. But listening to it, one could easily contemplate suicide."
I doubt reaction in London will be as alarmist - but I hope it catches fire in the UK as The Wire has done.
In Treatment is a slow burner and largely consists of 43 episodes of people talking to each other in the same room, so it would never have been commissioned in the UK.
After all, it's taken more than two years for it to find a home here.
That suggests one of the reasons why American drama is superior to its British equivalent right now: UK networks lack the patience that is invested in quality TV across the pond.
Mad Men has long been a critical darling but only in its third series, currently airing in the States, have the exploits at advertising agency Sterling Cooper delivered when it comes to ratings.
In Treatment would have been a perfect fit for primetime BBC2 or BBC4. Shame on the Beeb for not snapping it up.
Presently HBO is deliberating whether to commission a third series.
In an era of economic gloom and societal uncertainty, the fate of In Treatment has been at the forefront of my mind. Proof, perhaps, that I need to start seeing a shrink.
In Treatment is on Sky Arts nightly from Monday to Friday at 10pm with a weekly omnibus on Sundays at 10pm.
