Ivan Radford | On 17, Mar 2024

This review was originally published in March 2014 and is based on early seasons of Homeland.

 

Is he or isn’t he? That’s the simple question that kicks off Homeland, and paves the way from some brilliantly complicated drama. The CBS thriller sees Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) return from Iraq after years in captivity. America welcomes him back as a war hero, but rumours from abroad suggest he’s actually a sleeper terrorist sent back by Al-Qaeda.

Enter Carrie Mathison. Claire Danes is hugely convincing as the dubious CIA agent, even as she lurches between emotional extremes. Her many and varied facial expressions are so intense that, at one point, you could even download your own Carrie Cry Face Mask from the internet – and the more the show goes on, the more nuanced and moving the exploration of her bipolar disorder becomes.

That combination of her intense reactions and unwavering belief in Brody’s guilt drives the narrative forward; no one else may agree with her, but she’s so sure it’s true that we can’t help but agree. The only other person who believes her? Saul Berenson (Mandy “My Name Is Inigo Montoya You Killed My Father Prepare to Die” Patinkin), who completely steals the show. Why? Partly because of his failed marriage, his withering stare and his gruff outsider charm, but also because of his magnificent beard. It’s the kind of facial fuzz that would make Brian Blessed jealous. With a chin topper that majestic, he must be right too.

He is? Isn’t he?

Damian Lewis keeps the ambiguity levels high, his blank face providing an equally fascinating object to study. As Carrie installs illegal CCTV in his home, we witness his marital problems with his alienated wife (an excellent Morena Baccarin) and his difficulty in adjusting to being a father to his daughter, Dana (a subtly conflicted Morgan Saylor), and his son, Chris (Jackson Price), who has almost no lines of dialogue at all.

The ensemble cast is so good that they all feel believable – even the non-existent people like Chris. That balance between the realistic and the ridiculous quickly becomes Homeland’s signature style, its writers pushing the boundaries of logic but its characters convincing you to go along with them. The result is a blend of smarts and stupidity that creates one of the best – and most heart-stopping – TV shows of recent years.

Personal issues soon start to interfere with the professional, but never in a soap opera-like way. This is an exercise in ruthless efficiency: it all drives forwards the story. A romantic fling between Carrie and Brody fuels a gripping confrontation involving a lie detector, while Brody’s emotional attachment to his captors – including the elusive Abu Nazir – only clouds his motivations even further.

Is he or isn’t he? Everything comes back to that one question. The show’s triumph is that it manages to answer it with a nail-biting climax that carries all the tension of Argo’s final act, while still opening up even more mysteries – and further cases and operations beyond Brody that Carrie has to juggle with a mix of trauma, conviction and doubt. “Is he or isn’t he?” gives way to more important questions, such as “When can I watch the next season?”, “Will I ever grow my nails back?” and, most important of all, “Can I get a beard like Saul’s?”

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