Homeland

When U.S. Marines raid an Al Qaeda stronghold in Afghanistan, they find a scraggly-bearded POW trapped in a spider hole. “American,” he stammers. “I‘m an American.” After eight years in captivity, Sergeant Nicholas Brody returns to the United States as a hero. But CIA agent Carrie Mathison is skeptical, revealing to her mentor, Saul Berenson, that she has information that suggests Brody might be the tip of the spear of a major terrorist attack on American soil. Homeland explores issues the country is still grappling with a decade after the 9/11 attacks: national security versus civil liberties, the nature of real threats versus imagined threats, and the complexities and tangled consequences of our military actions. Combining a dense tangle of plot lines with complex characters, Homeland is a game of cat and mouse, a surprisingly compassionate psychological thriller and a Rorschach test of our post-9/11 doubts, fears and suspicions. For its tension-filled take on American life in the long wake of the war on terror, Homeland receives a Peabody award.