FOLLOW THAT CAB.(The Talk of the Town)

In 1996, after two seasons, HBO's "Taxicab Confessions," the mother of all reality television, was run out of New York City by a pettifogging official from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Since then, the show's special taxi, which has no divider between the front and back seats and is outfitted with invisible cameras, has been prowling the clean streets of Las Vegas.

As an American totem, the taxi has always belonged more to the bustle of New York than to the anomie of Las Vegas. In its tenth year, which debuts on February 5th, "Taxicab Confessions" returns to the gritty hubbub of the New York night. The homecoming was carefully orchestrated by HBO's president of documentaries, Sheila Nevins, who saw an opportunity in the election of Michael Bloomberg as mayor, in 2001. Soon after Bloomberg's new commissioner of Film, Theatre, and Broadcasting, Katherine Oliver, came on board, in 2002, Nevins messengered over the Emmy she'd won in 1995 for "Taxicab Confessions." "I don't know you, you don't know me," Nevins wrote in an accompanying note. "But I'd like to win another of these and bring the show back to New York." Oliver sent back the Emmy, but she took up the challenge, which she says was "a no-brainer," adding that she had no trouble persuading the Mayor to welcome the show back. "He was thrilled to support it: it's about job creation and about capturing the New York experience."

Nevins is a handsome, nervy woman with frosty hair. She earned an M.F.A. in directing from the Yale School of Drama, and she created "Taxicab Confessions" after watching a tame pilot about people getting in and out of taxis during the day. "To me, the city gets hot and sticky and electric when the lights ...