How “Homeland” Raised the Bar for Television Drama
Showtime’s Homeland aired its breathtaking series finale last Sunday night, concluding its 8 seasons, 96 episode run. Here, I take a look inside the show’s evolution, review the series finale, and reflect on five ways in which the show made a lasting impact on the television landscape.
The Evolution of Homeland
The Emmy-winning espionage thriller Homeland premiered on October 2, 2011. For context, its premiere occurred 10 years and a few weeks after the historic events of 9/11 that in many ways serve the catalyst for the show and 16 months after the series finale of the Fox juggernaut 24, an espionage thriller that mined similar narrative territory but with a decidedly more network TV spin. Created by Howard Gordon and Alex Gansa (both of whom had worked on 24), the series was an adaptation of an Israeli series called Prisoners of War, which had premiered a year prior to great acclaim.
The show centered on CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), a brilliant, brave, and determined woman battling some internal demons, including a longstanding struggle with bipolar disorder. In the pilot episode, she became convinced that a U.S. Marine Corps…
