With more twists and turns than a day trip to Alton Towers, Homeland”s first season managed to draw its audience in and build massive tension throughout its run. Challenging the viewer with a range of moral ambiguities, the show played with expectations and consistently delivered a heady mix of both jaw-dropping and racy moments.
> Buy the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.
To celebrate Homeland‘s debut on DVD next month, here are our ten favourite moments from Season 1…
1. Physiological torture (Episode 5: Blind Spot)
As viewers, we all became complicit in the forcing of information from Brody’s former guard and torturer. After failing to acquiesce to Saul’s reasonable questioning, the prisoner was subjected to bursts of flashing lights, thrash metal and pounding air con until he finally gives up an email address.
2. Dana interrupts her father during prayer (Episode 12: Marine One)
Having concealed it from his family since his return, and with Vice President Walden’s announcement only days away, Dana discovered Brody’s conversion to Islam as she walks in on him mid-prayer.
3. “You were my friend!” (Episode 6: The Good Soldier)
After the memorial service for Walker and a tense gathering of his former colleagues, Brody finally erupts with violence and delivers a beating to his best friend. As others look on, it was clear that Mike and Jessica’s relationship was an open secret to everyone but him.
4. On the back seat (Episode 6: The Good Soldier)
In less than glamorous circumstances, the show’s two leads make a stab at dealing with some of that unresolved sexual tension. Hot and heavy, and blurring the distinction between hunter and hunted, you just knew this drunken, rough coupling was going to make things so much more complicated.
5. Yorkshire Gold (Episode 7: The Weekend)
Carrie’s inadvertent admission that she knows what brand of tea Brody favours, and thus that he’s been under surveillance, killed their budding relationship stone dead. In desperation, and with Brody desperate to prove he is still a patriot, she spins the situation into an inquisition.
6. The briefcase bomb (Episode 10: Representative Brody)
The CIA endeavour to trap Walker, the rogue sniper, blackmailing his contact Al-Zahrani to set up a meeting. Walker responds with deadly force, using a homeless lookalike to deliver a briefcase bomb to his meeting in the park and catching Carrie in the blast.
7. Carrie is fired (Episode 11: The Vest)
With Carrie too close for comfort, Brody reels her in and stitches her up by branding her a stalker, spinning a version of the truth to Estes. The result leaves her in the deepest trouble, as she has a wall full of classified CIA documents and appears totally manic.
8. Beating the polygraph (Episode 6: The Good Soldier)
Less than fresh from their physical encounter, Brody proves both everything and nothing to Carrie as he lies about cheating on his wife and goes undetected. With her plan in disarray, she’s back to square one and we’re left wondering what else he has lied about.
9. Walker is alive (Episode 7: The Weekend)
At the end of Carrie’s interrogation, the call from Saul giving the revelation that Walker is alive threw everything into utter confusion again. Despite us seeing Brody first beat and bury his comrade in flashback, then more recently give and emotional tribute to him at a memorial. This rug pulling moment made us wonder if Brody could even trust his own memories.
10. In the bunker (Episode 12: Marine One)
With extreme close-ups on Damian Lewis as he stood in the bunker, on the verge of a breakdown with the internal conflict all over is face, this was the pinnacle of intensity. The suicide vest failed to go off once, but he’s managed to repair it. Sweat pouring but ready to detonate; there is just the small matter of a call from his teenage daughter to deal with…
> Buy the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.
Watch the Season 2 preview…
What was your favourite moment in Season 1? Let us know below…