Homeland in the Media

[Cranberry]

https://www.primetimer.com/features/6-reasons-to-stick-with-homelands-through-one-more-season

[scrb]

Hulu appears to have gotten the streaming rights to Prisoners of War recently.

This Israeli series ran for 2 seasons from 2010 to 2012 and was the inspiration for Homeland.

 

I've created a thread in Other Dramas for it.

 

[Roseanna]

The Finnish daily Helsingin Sanomat wrote in the beginning of Homeland's (in Finnish Isänmaan puolesta = For Fatherland) last season: 

https://www.hs.fi/kulttuuri/art-2000006444349.html

Quote

 

The main character Carrie Mathison in many ways exceptional, and the character's bipolarity is the functional engine of the entire series. The ideal balance for saving the world would be to maintain a certain level of mania. If she slips in either direction, she will lose her ability to work. Medicines can take edge, mania creates paranoia.

Only in the right frame of mind she recognizes what is in the interests of Western democracy and who is threatening it.

Carrie's character is a depiction of the state of the world that goes into human physicality. People have been driven to the brink of paranoia and are suffering from guilt, even though we are still able to perform normally, better than Carrie.

 

Quote

An unlikely relationship develops between Brody and Mathison, whose tensions are followed for the first three seasons. It ends with a scene that is one of the harshest and most brutal in the history of television.

Actors Claire Danes and Brody cast Damian Lewis to face the senseless situation where the human mind and body are being tested on the edge.

Their relationship is Carrie's first romance in the series, which doesn't follow any of the usual patterns in the drama. Carrie and Brody drift on the playing field of world politics, threatening their lives and mental health, while the chiefs make their decisions in their secure fortresses.

Until the bombs start exploding there too.

For the second season, the next man comes into the picture: Peter Quinn, a CIA worker who is "the guy who kills the bad guys." First he acts in the background, faithfully and assuredly.

Once again, a relationship is beginning to develop, which is very exceptional in serial drama. It goes on over the seasons, with quite a bit of sex but even more unfullilled love. Quinn is constantly on the verge of death, but always comes alive until he finishes his quest in Season Six. Actor Rupert Friend brilliantly carries Quinn's psychological arc from beginning to end.

 

Quote

Carrie's burden of guilt increases the whole time. She has only two supports left: her professional father figure, Saul, and her sister, Maggie, who fights on her own to keep Carrie in a mental state - and usually looses.

Quote

Claire Danes' ten-year career as Carrie is unparalleled. His ways of tensioning her body and vocal cords as panic approaches, childlike crying and despair, fierce walking, mania and depression, attempts to live normally, desire to do right and only right.

 

Quote

With Homeland now nearing its end, the picture remains of a confused world where many things are in the same mess as at the beginning, but for many Americans, the concept of the "homeland" may now be something else.

 

 

[aghst]

What interesting timing that Homeland ends as the world faces a greater crisis than any imagined in Homeland's 8-season run.

Homeland touched often on the threat of Islamic terrorism, first infiltrating the US with a turned US soldier.  That led to a bombing at CIA headquarters.

I don't recall if there was ever a nuclear plot in Homeland.  Certainly for years, the fears were terrorists getting access to nuclear materials, either from the Eastern Bloc or elsewhere and setting off a dirty bomb in the West.

Then in the last couple of seasons, you have a plot to set off a chemical weapons attack, which Carrie foiled but it led to Quinn being impaired and eventually his demise.

Now imagine if that was a bio weapon plot, with a pathogen which can be carried by unsuspecting carriers, because of a 1-2 week incubation period during which time it covertly makes carriers very infectious, like covid.

Any of the villains in Homeland could have opted instead to try to launch a bio weapons attack.

Homeland ended before the pandemic became foremost on the mind of billions of people worldwide.  No doubt other movies and shows will create stories around the pandemic threat, including deliberate use for political or military uses.

Or maybe they will do a Homeland movie in a couple of years.

Or the way things are going, a reboot, like they're doing with Dexter.  Thrown enough money at Claire and we may get it.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Critics' Choice Award nomination!

BEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES - Claire Danes

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Directors Guild of America nomination!

Drama Series: Lesli Linka Glatter - Homeland, “Prisoners of War”

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Directors Guild of America award!

Drama Series: Lesli Linka Glatter - Homeland, “Prisoners of War”

[aghst]

So in an effort to regain some former glory, Showtime, now part of Paramount +, announced spinoffs based on Dexter and Billions.

But they're also kind of bringing Homeland back.

They signed George Clooney, not to star in but produce an espionage show called The Department.

I don't know if it's explicitly adapted from the French series Le Bureau or just a blatant imitation of it.

Like Carrie Mathison, Guillame Debailly is an agent who takes his job too seriously, decided to carry the burden of saving his country alone.  Le Bureau is much more engrossing throughout its run, compared to Homeland which started fast and just was hanging on at the end.

So Homeland was adapted from an Israeli series.

The Department will be adapted (or unofficially copied) from a French series.