Homeland - Telly Talk

Several moons ago Damian Lewis made his name playing Major Dick Winters in the TV series Band of Brothers.

Major Winters was a truly remarkable man. As commander of 'Easy' Company of the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, his war experiences saw him parachuting into Normandy hours ahead of the D Day landings, helping to liberate a death camp at Dachau, and drinking Hitler's champagne in the Eagle's Nest at Berchtesgaden.

But it changed him. Back home he led a very quiet life with his family until his death last year. I recall reading an interview in which he remembered going deer hunting one day and being unable to pull the trigger. He'd seen enough killing.

That wasn't an issue for Sergeant Nicholas Brody in last night's instalment of Homeland. A deer kept wandering into his back garden and eating the flowers, so Brody made sure it left his property in a body bag – or whatever it is you do with a deer after you've shot it to death.

It can't be a coincidence that Brody is also played by Damian Lewis. It's clever casting because you think of Dick Winters, the genuine hero, every time he puts on his US Army uniform. But if war changed Major Winters, four weeks into Homeland we're still not sure how it has changed Sergeant Brody.

He has spent the past eight years as an Al-Qaeda hostage, and the scars of his ordeal are written all over his body.

Intelligence agent Carrie Mathison has been reading the story every time he steps out of the shower, thanks to a number of secret cameras she had hidden around the family home. She's convinced that, far from being a hero, he's been turned by his former captors and is now a sleeper agent planning a terror attack on US soil.

Ah, but it's not as straightforward as that, because Carrie has mental health problems and is taking anti-psychotic drugs. Brody is undoubtedly struggling to readjust to life back home, but a terrorist? That could all be a figment of her paranoid imagination.

Had Homeland been made by the same bunch who came up with 24 we'd know Brody's intentions for definite by now. Jack Bauer would have taken out the whole neighbourhood with a helicopter and a rocket launcher and got the truth of Brody with torture methods that even Al-Qaeda would consider a bit extreme.

Bauer would probably make him chop off his wife's arms and beat his own children to death with them.

But the brilliance of Homeland is that just when you think you know where it's going, the story goes in a completely different direction.

Last night Brody agreed to his wife's demand that he seek help. He told her he was going to a support group for war veterans. I half expected him to meet a contact to pick up bomb parts, but instead he went inside to the meeting.

And so did Carrie Mathison. She just couldn't leave it alone, and the scene where the two met – with a hint of flirting between them – came completely out of left field.

What will happen next week? The Lord alone knows. And I bet even He was surprised.

Andrew Owen