In Showtime’s new conspiracy thriller “Homeland,” Claire Danes plays a CIA agent who picks up some of her best ideas while in bars trying to pick up men. Damian Lewis is a Marine who returns from years of enemy imprisonment and torture looking like he walked out of Club Fed. Mandy Patinkin looks like Richard Kimble in “The Fugitive,” pre-shave.
“Homeland” is a spare and oftentimes bleak drama about strange, lonely people who prove to be unlikely central players in a plot to attack the United States. So far it sounds like what might happen if a Sundance director made “24,” but it’s actually one of the best new shows of the season, thanks to grade-A performances by its three stars. (The pilot episode is online for free viewing at sho.com, so you can judge for yourself.)“Homeland” may not win any Emmys, but it’s a notch better than almost anything debuting this fall on free TV. That is becoming a habit for Showtime, which just keeps closing the gap with HBO in subscribers and high-quality shows.Howard Gordon was the co-creator of “24” and saw it through eight seasons that eventually tried even the most ardent fan’s patience. (How many constitutional crises and emergency presidents can even a fake USA handle?) When it was good, though, “24” was very good, and its dialogues over the war on terror were better than anything you could hear on the Sunday yak shows.“We were even involved with the debate on torture for a while there,” Gordon said at the TV critics’ fall previews in L.A. “We got painted with a right-wing brush, but really our staff was completely split along ideological lines, and we tried to reflect that in the stories.”Gordon promises that “Homeland,” despite treading on “24’s” turf, will be different — much different. Nicholas Brody, the returning patriot played by Lewis, will be the opposite of “24’s” Jack Bauer. And the country’s fate won’t hang in the balance at the end of every episode.“We’re mostly dealing with the human drama of a returning hero and a CIA agent who suspects him of having been turned,” Gordon said. That suspicion appears to be confirmed in a dreamlike flashback in the first episode, where Brody seems to rat on another prisoner in exchange for leniency. I hope that scene proves to be a red herring. It would be disappointing if Gordon and the show’s other creators, Alex Gansa (another “24” alum) and Gideon Raff, made a robotic Manchurian candidate out of Lewis, a Brit who has already been underused in a leading American role (on NBC’s “Life”). On the other hand, Carrie Mathison, the spook played by Danes, is a fully developed character. She might be reason enough to keep tuning in. Mathison is obviously devoted to keeping the homeland secure, but it’s hard when you’re as insecure as she is. Pill-popping and Mr. Goodbar-seeking, she is a warrior who’ll do anything to advance her cause and/or career, including a classic out of Cleopatra’s playbook — snuggling up to her older male superiors (like the one played by Patinkin). For me, at least, the show turns on two things: the relationship between Mathison and Brody, which is pushed forward in a brief but electrifying encounter in the pilot; and the way Brody is portrayed by the fictional news media, which is entrusted with the task of carrying the heroic narrative that Mathison, presumably, wants to undo. Portrayals of the press on TV dramas are notoriously off-key, which always puzzles me — it’s not like you need to hunt around for good source material. It’s always on, 24/7, and it’s always the same.Can House save ‘House’?“You were a pretty big deal: What went wrong?” Those are words of dialogue from Monday’s eighth-season premiere of “House,” spoken by a prison doctor to inmate Gregory House, M.D. But those same words could have been uttered by any longtime viewer of TV’s squirreliest drama, which has redone itself more times than a Real Housewife while driving away formerly adoring critics and viewers alike. There were all the cast members leaving, then coming back, the game-show competition, the unsuccessful attempts to replace Jennifer Morrison (Olivia Wilde, Amber Tamblyn) and, most disastrously, last season’s pointless if inevitable romance between House and Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein, who later left rather than accept a salary cut) and its absurd denouement, which has landed House in prison as Season 8 opens. So why do people keep giving “House” the time of day? House, of course. Hugh Laurie continues to bring power and self-destructive intensity to the show’s soul center. Compared to the boxes his writers have put him in, jail looks easy. In jail, at least, they’ve given him a lot of scenery to chew. Monday’s season premiere combines the savage social portrait of “Oz” with a psychological study of House’s character, or what remains of it, after all these years. As long as you don’t ask too many pesky questions like, “Seriously, why is House in a creepy New Jersey prison?” it may be one of the best (and last, I predict) rides this wobbly star vehicle gives its fans before the wheels come off completely.Read more Aaron Barnhart
Posted on Sat, Oct. 01, 2011 10:15 PM
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Showtime’s spy thriller ‘Homeland’ is off to a promising start
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To reach Aaron Barnhart, call 816-234-4790 or send email to aaron@tvbarn.com. Read more from Aaron on Twitter, TVBarn.com.
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