TV Pick: Should we give ‘Homeland’ another chance?

When Homeland’s first season aired, something clicked. In fact, several things clicked simultaneously. A show with a dynamic female lead. An expertly-layered narrative with a pulsating sense of voyeurism. An invigorating, if bitter, pill to swallow – what if the bad guy was the US former marine and American hero, a man who is supposed to be our antagonist?

Homeland was smeared with blends of light and shade – a refreshing antidote to 24, which worked hard to establish the good in the good guys and the decomposing evil core of everyone else. Instead, Homeland let us into the hearts and minds of people who were driven to do morally complex things without asking us to be sympathetic.

Homeland is based on an Israeli TV series called Prisoners of War, which was about two Israeli men who returned from Lebanon after being held captive for 17 years. The first season explored how they adjusted to society after their capture, ending with the bombshell that the third man in their party, thought to be dead, was alive and well.

Homeland is actually quite different, of course. It’s about Nicholas Brody, a prisoner of war returning to the US after eight years being held captive abroad, and Carrie Matheson, the sharp, driven CIA agent who is determined to prove he’s a sleeper agent. It’s a complex game of cat-and-mouse slathered in layers of deceit and observation that gets stickier still when Carrie’s plan to lead Brody on sexually spirals out of control.

So what went wrong? Well, a lot of things really. Season One was gripping but it still hinged on a central conceit – was Brody a terrorist, or not? With that answered (yes, he was, and he was planning on blowing himself up, actually), Homeland began painting itself in a corner.

Season Two, as a result, turned into a slightly frantic scramble to the finish line and the show became breathless and exasperated. As well as the story veering into hyperbolic territory, the show continued the idea that Carrie and Brody’s romance was the fundamental drive behind the drama, when it really, really wasn’t.

So then Season Three came up, and to be honest that’s when I gave up. Homeland had changed. It wasn’t a clever, tightly-scripted drama any more – but a noisy, flailing thing didn’t know what story it was trying to tell.

Season Four, which starts on Channel 4 tonight (October 12), looks set to try and remedy that. With Brody now out the picture, the show can stop being haunted by one of its strongest (and, as the show went on, least useful) characters and start to figure out how it tells new stories. Look at the way True Detective is running new, vastly different stories orbiting the same universe. In an ideal world Homeland would have strived to do a similar thing. Can this new season steer the show into the right direction? Well, I hope so.

Homeland begins tonight at 9pm on Channel 4. You can follow Chris Mandle on Twitter @chris_mandle.