‘I can’t wait,’ Oliver Cheatham once sang, ‘for Saturday to begin’ – and while dedicated anal-retentive David Estes is in the office as usual, Carrie Matheson and Saul Berenson are out in the field, combining their search for terrorists with an enjoyment of the beautiful American countryside.

As befitting an episode set outside normal office hours, there’s a languorous, take-it-easy pace to The Weekend that never picks up, and while it doesn’t drag, exactly, the midsummer sleepiness means there’s no dramatic tension – even when the story finally snaps out of its picturesque indolence.

While Saul heads across the Mexican border to pick up the fugitive Aileen Morgan,  a meds-free Carrie goes on another booze cruise with Brody, taunting white supremacists – ‘Hell yeah, I love sucking Nazi dick’ – before taking the former POW up to the Matheson family woodland cabin.

However, despite the endless slugs of tequila, some more sozzled sexy time and a genuine sense that she and Brody could make a fairly good couple, Carrie is on-message with the fact that her new friend with benefits is a potential terrorist… right up until the moment she drops a clanger the size of Harrogate by namedropping Yorkshire Gold, Brody’s favourite tea – a brand she couldn’t possibly have known he favours without spying on him.

The marine pulls a gun on her, but in an episode that’s relaxed to the point of being supine, it’s not an OMG moment. Brody has no plans to kill Carrie for unmasking him as a threat to America, because he isn’t a threat to America at all. (Except, perhaps, by tearing their forests down, leaf by leaf.)

In the most laidback interrogation since Margaret Thatcher was interviewed on Saturday Superstore, Brody explains pretty much all his suspect behaviour, including the truth behind his prayer garage.

Damian Lewis is once again superb as his character tearfully explains his conversion to Islam – ‘If you’re in despair for eight years, you might turn to religion, too’ – and that Abu Nazir isn’t his Al-Qaeda mentor; he’s just someone who was friendly. ‘He was kind to me… I loved him.’

Brody isn’t just credible; he’s totally convincing. Carrie isn’t entirely persuaded at first, but she’s finally convinced when news reaches her that Saul’s trip through Tennessee truck-stops and makeshift Indiana synagogues has borne fruit: Aileen has positively identified a former US prisoner-of-war as someone who visited her house near the airport – a house that has a direct line of sight to the landing-pad where Marine One will land (a military aircraft carrying the President, call-sign fans).

However, the visitor wasn’t Brody. It was Tom Walker, the man whom Brody has just confessed to killing during their incarceration. Carrie apologises to her non-paramilitary paramour (‘Hey Carrie? Fuck you,’ an unforgiving Brody responds before driving off), but wait a minute… if Walker is alive, doesn’t this, doesn’t this mean Brody has just told a pack of outrageous fibs?

The genius of Homeland is that we genuinely don’t know who to trust. Every character that might be telling porkies – namely Brody and Berenson – has a compelling explanation for their suspicious behaviour, yet we can’t be certain.

All we know for sure is that we have to keep watching – and that if we ever go out on the piss with Carrie at the weekend, we have to keep her off the clear liquor.

Aired at 9pm on Sunday 1st April 2012 on Channel 4.

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