With a web of intrigue, 'Homeland' is season's best new show
Cleveland.com
Friday, September 30, 2011
If evidence still is needed to prove that Showtime has closed the quality gap with pay-cable rival HBO, it can be found hanging like a high-tension wire over every suspenseful turn of "Homeland." And tension is this instantly fascinating psychological thriller's basic stock in trade.
Premiering at 10 p.m. Sunday on Showtime, "Homeland" is a post-9/11 cable drama that hits home with harrowing resonance. Delving into doubts and anxieties gnawing away at Americans for the past 10 years, it stars Emmy-winner Claire Danes ("Temple Grandin") as a CIA analyst who could use some time with a good analyst.
Danes' Carrie Mathison is the most intriguing puzzler in this intricate web of intrigue. She's brilliant, tenacious, dedicated and driven to a fault. She has plenty of faults -- deeply disturbing faults that constantly threaten to undermine her career and our view of her as a relentless champion of truth.
She's obstinate, impulsive and sometimes reckless. And she's bipolar, a condition Carrie is hiding from her superiors because it would mean immediate dismissal.
She's also the fall season's most compelling new character, and, based on the three episodes Showtime made available to critics, "Homeland" is the fall's best new series of any kind. That's not say it doesn't take a few wrong turns. Like Carrie, this cable newcomer is not without faults.
While sprinting along at a fairly brisk pace, "Homeland" does stumble over the occasional psycho-thriller cliche and drearily familiar exchange of dialogue. It also needs to put a sense of humor on the requisition list. Obvious as they are, however, these are mere missteps, and the Showtime rookie never completely loses its balance.
Danes' performance keeps us fully engaged, as does the ongoing cat-and-mouse game that emerges in these early episodes. What's gripping far outweighs the tripping.
The riveting debut episode of "Homeland" follows the rip-roaring return of Showtime's "Dexter," which begins its sixth season at 9 p.m. Sunday. It's a stunning one-two punch.
Based on the Israeli television series "Prisoners of War," "Homeland" has been expertly Americanized by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa. These two executive producers had plenty of time to experiment with high-stakes storytelling during their years crafting plots for Kiefer Sutherland's counterterrorist agent, Jack Bauer.
While covering similar counterterrorist themes as Fox's "24," "Homeland" has a far different feel and appeal. The stakes are set with an opening flashback showing Carrie racing through the streets of Baghdad. Making her way to a dilapidated prison, she reaches the cell of condemned Iraqi man.
The corrupt prison guard tells Carrie that it's only a matter of seconds before she's discovered and expelled. She pushes the prisoner for information. He hesitates. She pushes harder. Other guards arrive. Carrie is being dragged away from the cell.
She pulls away long enough to reach the small barred window in the cell door. The prisoner whispers eight chilling words in her ear: "An American prisoner of war has been turned."
Months later, America is electrified by the news that a Marine sniper, Sgt. Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), has been rescued after eight years of captivity. He is given a hero's homecoming.
Every major news outlet covers the welcome-home ceremony, which reunites Brody with his wife, Jessica (Morena Baccarin), and their two children. The period of adjustment is going to be tough for everybody on the home front. Having given up her husband for dead, Jessica has been having an affair with one of his closest friends, Capt. Mike Faber (Diego Klattenhoff).
Although the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA and the media view Brody as a sensational feel-good story, Carrie is troubled by some unsettling feelings. What if Brody is the prisoner of war who has been turned?
She wants to put him under surveillance, but her politically ambitious superior, deputy director David Estes (David Harewood), doesn't want this loose cannon anywhere near America's new hero.
Her CIA mentor, Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin), tries to help, but Carrie has been viewed as a liability ever since that unauthorized visit to an Iraqi prison.
Yes, Nicholas Brody is harboring secrets, but so are Carrie, Jessica, Mike and, you can bet, several other characters in "Homeland." We keep watching Carrie as she finds ways to keep watching Brody, and that keeps us guessing and second-guessing motives.
Is Brody part of a terrorist plot? And even if Carrie is right about him, will the ends justify the means and extremes? We grapple with these mysteries as the nuanced performances of Danes and Lewis put the considerable psychological grit into this psychological thriller.