Do not read this review if you haven’t seen the first series of Homeland.
Because I’m a lazy bastard I have recently taken to farming out my TV criticism responsibilities to Twitter. The other day, for example, I Tweeted the vexed question: ‘Should I get Homeland series one box set — or is it meh?’
‘Meh’, by the way — for those of you unfamiliar with modern yoofspeak — is the current fashionable term for ‘bland’, ‘so-so’, ‘so what?’, ‘neither here nor there’, ‘can’t be bothered’. Well, I say ‘fashionable’, though in fact it has been around since at least 1992 when Lisa first deployed it on an episode of The Simpsons.
The replies ranged from ones telling me that it was gripping, compulsive and essential viewing, to ones telling me it was irritatingly PC, a bit plodding and really not worth the effort. Which left me in a quandary till some kind soul Tweeted: ‘I’ll spare you the bother. Damian Lewis is al-Qa’eda.’
I think that’s what is known as a ‘spoiler’. Most of the first Homeland series, after all, revolved around the question of whether or not US Marine Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) had been turned by the enemy during his six long years in captivity. Had I watched it, I’m pretty sure I would have guessed straight away. Lewis has given Brody a particularly unattractive kind of American accent — not a nice trustworthy one like he had when he played Major Winters in Band of Brothers but an evil, traitor-ish one.
Anyway, Homeland is back for a second season. The last one ended with Brody on the verge of pressing a detonator button only to be distracted at the last minute, thus saving the lives of hundreds of people and also handily paving the way for a brand-new series. This time he’s a Congressman who has been asked — because he’s so trustworthy and unshifty, obviously — to act as a presidential candidate’s running mate. Imagine that: an al-Qa’eda cleanskin as vice-president of the USA!
Luckily, there’s Carrie Mathison. Mathison (Claire Danes) is the rogue agent who suspected Brody was a bad ’un all along but could never quite persuade her colleagues to believe her and has now been further damaged by electro-shock therapy which will enable the scriptwriters to have her variously remember stuff or not remember stuff according to the needs of the plot.
Besides being resourceful and capable, Mathison is hot. Just like Brody’s wife is hot. And the journalist-cum-al-Qa’eda-spy Roya Hammad is hot. And Mathison’s female handler in Beirut is hot. Basically, you don’t get to be female and in Homeland unless you’re a sexy lady in a gang nam style. Which is definitely not a criticism.
What I must criticise, though, is its insidious PC values, which are everywhere these days. I noticed them again — brief digression — when I was driving along listening to Radio 4 the other day, as you do when you live in the country and you spend bloody ages in your car. On came a drama about Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of giving away all those military secrets to Wikileaks.
Naturally the play took his side because — so we were asked to believe — he was incredibly principled and not some damaged, attention-seeking weirdo or bitter loser or anything like that. In one emotive scene, Manning was granted martyrly status as a ruthless officer stripped him of his possessions — his clothes, his book, nay, even his very glasses, supposedly for his own safety.
I was thinking, ‘Hang on a second. No doubt Manning has indeed been given a very grim time by the military — as the military tends to do when it suspects you’ve betrayed your own. But why, O BBC, does it always have to be the alleged traitor you idealise and idolise? What about all the ordinary, loyal, brave kids whose
lives were jeopardised by those leaks? When, BBC, are you ever going to stick up for our side?’
Mind you, mainstream American TV is nearly as bad. Take the scene in Homeland where Brody’s daughter gets into a heated debate about Islam with her classmates. The kids who think America has every right to take pre-emptive action against Islamist threats are clearly meant to be the bad guys: they’re gung-ho, spoilt, militaristic, sneery, privileged white kids who — darn it — don’t even know that Iranians aren’t Arabs. Yeah, why can’t we all learn to turn the other cheek next time they hijack one of our airliners and fly it into an office building. It’s not like we don’t deserve it, right?
Then again, this being America, Homeland is not quite as hopelessly surrender-monkey as it would be had the BBC made it. The scenes where Brody’s wife, horrified to discover he’s a secret Muslim, chucks his Koran on the floor — and then Brody goes into the garden to bury it because it has been defiled. Those scenes were not calculated to make the US viewer go, ‘Ah! How lovely! A man of true piety.’ They were expressly designed to send a shudder down middle America’s spine.
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