Here comes 'Homeland' - and more

The second series of the spy drama 'Homeland' begins tonight on RTÉ 2, but this is just one in a rising tide of excellent US programmes dominating our airwaves, writes PATRICK FREYNE

Homeland

Homeland is a sort of remake of an Israeli show Hatufim (Prisoners of War) about returned army hostages who may or may not have converted to Islam. The American version is a rollercoaster of post-9/11 paranoia made by the writers who brought us 24 (US foreign policy as suggested by 24 – “punch people in the face”). In contrast, the early episodes of Homeland were a triumph of unreliable narration and doubt, with schizophrenic CIA agent Carrie Matheson (Claire Danes) convinced that damaged former POW Nicholas Brody (Damien Lewis) was actually a brainwashed al-Qaeda operative. For most the whole first season, the writers successfully kept us in the dark about the truth. Then, just when it seemed they were running out of steam, the programme concluded with a devastating performance from Danes as a woman in crisis. Brilliant.

Season 2 starts tonight on RTÉ 2

Treme

From David Simon, the man who created The Wire, Treme is a music-infused look at life in post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. An ensemble of actors playing musicians, lawyers, writers, DJs and general layabouts wander the physical and political aftermath of the floods, taking in performances from real New Orleans musicians along the way. Simon’s programmes seem shapeless initially, but always work cumulatively and, over the course of a season, things start to make heartbreaking sense. A love letter to American resilience and a hate later to the erosion of the American dream, the third season has just begun airing in the US.

The third series airs in the New Year on Sky Atlantic

Girls

A surprisingly believable dramedy about four privileged white-girls living in New York. The first episode contains sly nods to its antecedents, namely film-maker of the haute-bourgeoisie Whit Stillman (it features a cameo from Stillman-stalwart Chris Eigeman) and Sex in the City (one character in Girls is obsessed with the show). The show generally focuses on Hannah Horvath (played by creator Lena Dunham), a spoiled wannabe writer who makes bad career choices, has bad sex and bumbles from one instance of squalid social embarrassment to the next. The results? Refreshingly candid and funny.

Debuts on Sky Atlantic on October 22nd

Game of Thrones

This bloody fantasy yarn, featuring fangy undead people, giant wolves and baby dragons, is surprisingly compelling despite being based on a series of turgid books. Perhaps this convoluted/epic saga of warring political dynasties on the island of Westeros has a particular fascination for Irish people – when they hear of Starks, Targaryens and Lannisters instantly think of Haugheys, Lenihans and Healy-Raes. Or it could be something to do with all the breasts.

Game of Thrones features perhaps more gratuitous sex scenes than any show in television history. Indeed, I believe “Look! Breasts!” was the working title.

Series Three will air on Sky Atlantic in Spring 2013

Louie

Louis CK is one of the most incisive stand-up comedians in America. Louie, his second attempt at an eponymous show, features him alternating ennui-infused stand-up routines with set-pieces set in a very subjectively-rendered, grotesque New York. Darker, less cosy and less tarnished by celebrity cameos than Curb Your Enthusiasm, Louie muses on sex, parenthood and how everything we love must die. In one episode, he takes a duckling to Afghanistan. It’s very funny.

Released on DVD

The Good Wife

I slated this when it first came out. I bemoaned how the tale of Alicia Florrick (Julianna Margulies), the publically betrayed and disgraced wife of an unfaithful, possibly-corrupt district attorney, had to be shoehorned into a legal-drama-of-the-week format (Florrick is also a lawyer). Well, what I saw as a weakness is actually its greatest strength.

The Good Wife has, over three series, become one of the most neatly plotted and morally complex shows on television. Seriously. In showing Alicia Florrick balancing life as a lawyer with political wifery, it presents us with some of the most ethically compromised characters on television, and almost casually interrogates US politics, the legal system and institutional racism, classism and sexism.

On DVD and UPC on Demand. The fourth series is returning to RTÉ 2 and More 4 soon

Mad Men

At the outset of the fifth series of Mad Men, the programme about desperately unhappy but well-tailored ad-agency employees in 1960s New York, I felt its finest moments were in the past. Its internalised psychodramas were resolved. Ad-hunk Don Draper was no longer mysterious. (His secret? He likes ladies and booze.) The fourth series had felt like a period soap opera akin to ITV’s Heartbeat. Well, I may have spoken too soon.

In the fifth season, Mad Men found its mojo again by focusing on a wider range of characters and by allowing its characteristically detached style to become a bit more ethereal and otherworldly. An upcoming episode features an intoxicating triptych of subplots featuring a marijuana smoking Peggie Olsen, an LSD dropping Roger Sterling, and recently remarried Don Draper coming down from his love-buzz. Mad Men has still got it.

Currently airing on RTÉ 2 on Fridays

The Walking Dead

A bunch of humans led by Egg from This Life (Andrew Lincoln) fight to survive in the aftermath of a zombiepocalypse. The plot sometimes degenerates into soapy melodrama. Thankfully this is usually interrupted by a violent zombie attack.

Series 3 will return to RTÉ and FXUK soon

Breaking Bad

For years, you couldn’t have a conversation without someone proclaiming The Wire to be “the best thing on television”. More recently, Breaking Bad has replaced The Wire in this sentence. In creator Vince Gilligan’s words, Breaking Bad is “the story of Mr Chips becoming Scarface”.

It begins as shy, timid chemistry teacher Walter White (Bryan Cranston) is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer. Like many people in this situation, he responds by making and selling crystal meth and building an illicit narcotics empire.

A dark, intelligent tale of moral erosion, Mr White feels almost irredeemable by series five and any hope for redemption lies with melancholy sidekick Jesse (Aaron Paul, who was originally meant to be killed off in season one). There’s never been anything quite like it.

TG4 is currently airing series three on Thursday nights

Coming sometime? New American television

Vegas (NBC)

In this show, set in the 1960s, Denis Quaid plays a down-home Las Vegas rancher turned sheriff trying to curb the criminal ambition of casino owner Michael Chiklis. It’s cowboys versus gangsters. I suspect Quaid and Chiklis will grow to have bromantic feelings for one another. It also stars Irish actor Jason O’Mara.

Elementary (CBS)

Despite an excellent UK Sherlock Holmes series, CBS is launching its own version. It features Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock, and Lucy Liu, with her cold, dead eyes and monotone voice, as Watson. There will be, no doubt, “sexy results” to their odd couple pairing. Expect the words “Elementary my dear Watson!” to be uttered ironically.

Revolution (NBC)

This is a cosy catastrophe tale of a post-electricity America in which glossy teens in surprisingly well-cut leather jackets fire arrows at one another and foggily recall the internet. As post-apocalyptic dramas go, it’s no Threads (a terrifying nuclear-war themed telefilm from 1984) and it’s produced by JJ Abrams, the man behind Lost, which means it might quickly devolve into a confusing, plotless mess (much like society does in Threads).

The New Normal (NBC)

Thanks to Modern Family, there’s a lot of life left in the old-fashioned family sitcom. Here, Glee creator Ryan Murphy brings us one about a gay couple and the surrogate carrying their baby, the surrogate’s eccentric eight-year-old daughter, and the surrogate’s homophobic grandmother.

The Mob Doctor (Fox)

Crime dramas are popular. Hospital melodramas are popular. Fox combine both in this tale of a morally compromised SexyDoctor™ who owes a mobster a favour. Oh no! Will she be asked to help him move house or walk his dog?

No, she’ll be asked to pull screwdrivers out of gangster skulls and kill people. Such is life, I suppose.

Here comes Honey Boo Boo (TLC)

Reality-television producers like to exploit hatred of the poor in a quirky manner. This is the story of a preteen pageant queen and her “wacky” real-life working-class family.

The producers probably think that they’re hilariously documenting a society in freefall. Focusing the camera back on the original pitch meeting at the TLC network would be the more accurate reflection of a civilisation in decline.

2012's cancelled curiosities

Awake

Joining a long list of great shows cancelled after one season (Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life) Awake is, on paper, another high-concept sci-fi. Jason Isaacs stars as a policeman who, after a car accident, ends up dividing his time between two worlds. In one he wakes to find his wife dead and his son living, in the other he wakes to find the reverse. In each reality, he also has partners, shrinks and cases to solve. A potentially ridiculous scenario, Awake was in fact a gripping and moving study of grief.

Currently airing on Sky Atlantic

Luck

Dustin Hoffman-vehicle Luck was an intriguing saga about the mobsters, trainers, jockeys and gamblers who gathered at an LA race-track. It came from the brain of David Milch, writer of the excellent television western Deadwood, who specialises in Shakespearian dialogue and oblique plots.

Low audience figures and a bad track record with animal safety (several horses died during production) led to its cancellation, but it was a fascinating and original bit of television.

Was aired on Sky Atlantic