Homeland and Heartland

By ROB PATTERSON

I do enjoy it when great TV series get even better as they progress season after season. Two of my current favorites have done a fine job of that.

I’ve given quite good words in this space to Showtime’s “Homeland.” It’s gone many places global, political and conceptual in its now eight seasons. It has masterfully wrestled with major issues of the times we live in and traveled dramatically and philosophically down unexpected and provocative vectors. Lead thespians Claire Danes and Mandy Patankin deepen their characters and interactive bonds with each season.

And in season eight, its final, nearly a decade after its 2011 bow, the big guns fired more deadly than ever. It soared up into the pantheon alongside such TV greatness as “The Wire” and “The Sopranos.” A show for the ages yet from and within our age.

I strive to avoid being a spoiler, but the twists, turns and surprises in Season Eight will have your head spinning. It’s a dramatically ambitious storyline that takes huge chances and makes them work.

You likely know what I will say: You must see this show, it’s a delicious binge. I have little doubt I shall begin to rewatch “Homeland” in the not too distant future. Yep, it’s that good.

Netflix’s “Ozark” is only into its third season yet hitting homers with each episode. Jason Bateman’s adult blossoming that began with “Arrested Development” bursts open as under-the-table financier Marty Byrde here. Laura Linney then (pardon the tern) trumps him as his wife. They are joined by Emmy winner Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore, the baddest-ass, potty-mouthed redneck genius ever.

The show plays “heartland” to the international landscape of “Homeland,” showing us how real people live in the center of America. And in its third season it catches a potent dramatic wave that it surfs atop with skill.

Among the joys of “Ozark” is how it evokes laughs and horrified gasps as its plots thicken. The show is on a serious roll toward at least my own personal TV Hall of Fame. And likely that of my many fellow critics.

I nudged one of my housemates onto “Ozark” not long before I started writing this. By now, he may have binged past me into season three. It’s that addictive.

This is what I crave from today’s great TV shows: Plots with imagination and surprises abounding. Erasure of that line that has been drawn forever between TV and movie actors. And the longform episodic storytelling that only an ongoing serious show can provide.

TV is informing this great era of entertainment now, at least as much as cinema, maybe even more so. Long and deep may its best series run.

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Rob Patterson is a music and entertainment writer in Austin, Texas. Email orca@prismnet.com.

From The Progressive Populist, October 15, 2020

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