There are so many shows about terrorists, the CIA and plots to blow the shit out of things that you kind of have to wonder what TV would actually do without that fatal day when the planes flew into the Twin Towers. It would be easy to make the mistake of lumping the new thriller Homeland into this worn out “post-9/11” genre that permeates our screens. It bears all the hallmarks. But think this is just another copy of a middling NCIS spin-off at your peril.
Terrorists, the CIA and bomb scares do drive the plot lines in Homeland, but it’s the character’s flaws and their complex personal relationships that creep up to make this the best show of the year and, just maybe, the most engaging series ever. Homeland doesn’t just tantalise you with what’s going to happen, but also why it’s going to. This is a remarkable feat in a genre where motivations are given little thought. It’s not unlike The Silence of the Lambs, a perfect psychological thriller where the encounters between Hannibal Lector and Clarice Starling are the the most engaging scenes in the film. In Homeland Danes, like Starling, plays a strong willed government agent whose obsession with solving a mystery consumes her. Claire Danes is like Gwyneth Paltrow with balls. She just doesn’t give a fuck, and she’ll probably win Best Actress for the role at the Golden Globes this week. In fact, the show itself will probs take out the Best Drama category. It’s an A-Grade mystery, a familial drama and character study all at once.
Recommended to me by my cousin over the holidays, Homeland filled in the gaping hole left when I finished Friday Night Lights. How good it is to have a show that you love, to know that there are episodes in the vault waiting for you to watch at the end of the day. Fast-paced Homeland has nothing in common with the slow burning FNL, except that they’re both deeply layered, emotionally engaging and flat-out brilliant.
It looks like it’s slim pickings on TV this year, so watch Homeland. It could potentially put you on edge about another impending attack, but then you see ads for Excess Baggage, the new weight-loss reality show starring Kevin Federline and Ajay Rochester, and you realise the terrorists are irrelevant. We’re already fucked.
