8. Homeland
This year I reviewed the latest season of Homeland for this very site, and if I’m honest, I found it to be a slog towards the end. In my opinion the shocking finale reinvigorated the show, taking it back to the dizzying heights of the epic first season, but for much of the season before that I just wasn’t that interested.
In terms of my “favourite” shows this would be pretty damn low on the list, but I appreciate the ambition and scope the season strove for. Towards the end, the threads that had been deliberately spun out in disparate directions were gradually shorn away without much explanation until it drew focus back to all that truly mattered – the relationship between Carrie, Saul, and Brody. That’s the heart of this show, and all its ever been about. Every effective storyline, every key moment, involves at least one of those three people. Quite how the next season will function, given the loss of one of these three characters, is hard to say.
The show has been a big success on both sides of the pond, however, drawing in big audiences wherever it shows. It has the benefit of cultural zeitgeist attached to it, dealing as it does with international terrorism, the machinations of secret governments, and CIA spying – all hot potatoes that are covered in the news everyday. Dynamic and captivating performances from Damien Lewis, Claire Danes and Mandy Patankin as Nicholas Brody, Carrie Mathison and Saul Berenson respectively make it easy to get hooked on the show, and its refusal to shy away from moments of extreme violence, and extreme tension, mean that most episodes contain at least one sequence that gets your pulse racing to dangerous levels.
Brody barely featured in the first half of this year’s run, being on the run for the Langley bombing at the end of last season. We eventually found him holed up in a squat in the carcass of an abandoned Venezuelan skyscraper (of all places), but throughout Season 3 we followed his journey back to the US, then into Iran, where things went from bad to worse. It was exciting in the end but the show lost its way in places, following rabbit holes that ultimately led to nowhere – Dana, Mira – thankfully jettisoning these as the show reached its stunning denouement. It was the only way the season could finish, but where does the show go from here?