Homeland

It took a while for Homeland (Channel 4) to realise its true calling as a showcase for TV’s greatest surrogate father-daughter relationship, but it finished the series, after eight seasons and 96 episodes, with that pairing very much at its heart.Homeland Season 1-8 Download.

The final episode was titled Prisoners of War, a homage to the Israeli series on which it was based, and a reference to the endless cycle of strike and counterstrike, confidence and betrayal, in which the intelligence officer Carrie (Claire Danes) and her long-time mentor, Saul (Mandy Patinkin), are trapped.It’s been quite a journey. Many viewers didn’t get beyond the divisive season-one finale and more still left after the departure of Damian Lewis when Carrie’s lover/nemesis Sgt Nicholas Brody died at the end of season three. More fool them. They missed the show’s transformation into a fortune teller, eerily predicting contemporary news. Troll farms, Islamist attacks on European capitals, fake news, Russian electoral interference and a US president-elect at war with the intelligence services – all were covered. No other show has had a better handle on world events.

Season eight began with Saul brokering a historic peace in Afghanistan. But when a helicopter carrying the presidents of the US and Afghanistan crashed due to mechanical failure, the belligerent new Taliban leader falsely claimed credit, implicating Pakistan, and bringing the countries to the brink of a nuclear conflict. It may have been prescient, but Homeland was never a documentary.With the new US president deferring to his hawkish foreign policy adviser, Carrie knows that only the flight recorder, in the possession of the Russians, will exonerate Pakistan and avoid nuclear armageddon. However, the Russians want something in return – the name of the spy Saul has been running at the heart of their intelligence machine for the past 20 years. Killing Saul will work fine, too, as he will have set up a failsafe procedure to pass on his most precious asset to his most trusted colleague – Carrie, who will be happy to give the asset up.