After the tumultuous, yet meandering third season and the shock ending to the fourth season, Homeland viewers might be forgiven for thinking the show unable to maintain that same momentum; maybe so far as expecting an inevitable downward slide in quality that most good shows experience in their life-times…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yBHxsTnIXg
Instead, Homeland has managed to renew itself yet again with hybrid vigor, shifting the action 2 years into the future and placing Carrie (Claire Danes) in the role of private security contractor rather than CIA agent. The usual cast of cloak-and-dagger CIA suits and cut-throats looms large in the periphery though, headed up as ever by Saul Berenson (Inigo Montoya), with his increasingly shadowy assassin Quinn (Hitman: Agent 47‘s Rupert Friend) operating in Europe now.
Yes, the threats to national security posed by the harboring of terrorist leaders and complicity of supposed rogue nations and allies alike in the last 2 seasons have given way to the more prescient issues of the collapse of Syria; the rise of ISIL; with even the terrible consequences of Charlie Hedbo shooting no doubt playing across viewers minds during the opening cyber-prank. This shifting of the action to the European and Syrian sphere already seems a huge plus, even with all the set-up and exposition ladled upon us in this first episode: the threat, though seemingly nebulous and tangential, is ever present and we’re dumped into the same world of foreboding and rising tension that Homeland is renowned for, but with the game now significantly changed.
The addition of Australian actress Miranda Otto (Lord of the Rings) to the regular cast as chief of the CIA’s Berlin office bodes well, and hopefully her character lasts longer and ends less ignominiously than Corey Stoll‘s did last season. Carrie seems stable and happy at the outset, but no doubt as the situation(s) escalate and pressures mount, we’ll have a return of the bi-polar secret agent provocatrix we all know and love.
This is a solid start to what has always been an exceptional and reliable television hour. If you’ve ever been on the fence about this show, or have never seen it, the fifth season premiere provides the perfect jump-on point; with the ongoing Brody drama of the previous seasons seemingly completely in the rear-view now, and the focus back on national security, drama, brinkmanship, and spy shit in general. It’s fucking cool; that’s what it is.
Homeland airs on Showtime every Sunday at 9/8c.