One of the most impressive things about Homeland is the way it treats viewers like adults. It doesn’t talk down and rarely gets sucked into anything as demeaning as the spoon-feeding of information.

‘Lynne Reed was killed three weeks ago,’ Carrie remarks in passing during this week’s episode, and it’s a perfect example of using dialogue as exposition. However, David Estes introducing Elizabeth Gaines by saying, ‘The Vice President didn’t send his chief political operative here to thank me for delivering Brody,’ is a bit more ham-fisted. He might as well have said: ‘NEW CHARACTER BEING IDENTIFIED HERE.’

Thankfully, the show is mostly clever enough to avoid careering over these speed-bumps. It trusts our intelligence implicitly, knowing the connections we’re going to make without any big neon arrows pointing to them.

During the scene where the cameras are being removed from the Brody bunch’s house (brilliantly soundtracked by the hymns the unsuspecting family are singing in church) Carrie goes into the Garage of Solitude on the hunt for something – anything – that might implicate Brody in naughtiness and finds his prayer mat.

Crucially, she discards it as nothing more than a piece of rolled-up carpet – which is what it is, but not all of what it is – and heads off, none the wiser. She’s missed an important clue, but there’s no fanfare. The understated nature of this tiny moment is like a shared nod between friends: we know what’s going on; we don’t need to say it aloud.

This understanding between programme and viewer is one of a number of qualities Homeland shares with The Walking Dead. The most noticeable – beyond the obvious comparison of English actors taking the lead roles and showing off authentic American accents with aplomb – is the everyday emotional drama at its core.

International terrorism and sleeper cells in Middle America, like post-apocalyptic zombie horror in the Deep South, are given an approachable layer of realism by sharing the bill with a fraught love triangle, and all the associated consequences of saying: ‘Hey, wife-of-my-best-friend-who-we’re-sure-is-dead, let’s get it on and I’ll be a new dad to your kids. We can – oh, look who it is…’

The difference, of course, is that it’s the back-from-the-dead husband, rather than the unhappily jilted mate, who has gone completely batshit crazy; and although it’s not as central to the story as the torrid relationship between Rick, Lori and Shane down in Georgia, this added dimension gives even more depth to a show that’s already as compelling to us as Brody towelling down his privates on parade was to Carrie.

This week’s big Homeland question: Who’s the mole in the CIA? Someone (with a squeaky and presumably disguised voice) knew that Carrie and her awestruck agent chum Danny Galvez were covertly pursuing Raqim Faisel and gave a coded warning to Mrs F to direct her hubby away from their worryingly-close-to-the-airport new house.

This week’s not-so-big Homeland question: Why doesn’t Carrie close the drapes over her patio doors? Anyone looking in – such as an army sergeant who can swing between shoot-a-buck psycho and charming help-group coffee drinker in a matter of seconds – would immediately spot her Hot Wall of Brodyography. Pull the curtains!

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 11th March 2012 on Channel 4.

> Buy the Season 1 boxset on Amazon.

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