by Brooks Riley

What happens when an Israeli prisoner of war comes home after 17 years in a Lebanese prison? He gets interned by his own people to find out if he’s been ‘turned’ during all those years with the enemy. What happens when a US prisoner of war comes home after 8 years in captivity? He becomes a congressman! Only in America.

The difference between these two destinies illustrates perfectly what is so right about Hatufim (Prisoners of War), the magnificent Israeli TV series, and what is so wrong about Homeland, the strident, glossy, walnut-decorated US remake which Der Spiegel has described as “hysterical CIA agents in a hysterical country,”

I can’t blame Gideon Raff, creator, writer and director of Hatufim for selling his idea to Hollywood, but I have to wonder what he was thinking as co-scriptwriter of Homeland‘s pilot episode. His own Hatufim is a riveting piece of television verité which unfolds in an atmosphere of quiet, desperate ongoing disambiguation. Its characters are far removed from the cookie-cutter casting principles of Hollywood TV, its walking wounded and their eclectic circle of friends and family all persevering without benefit of make-up or break-down, their voices rarely raised in anger, horror or outrage. As a drama, it seethes below the surface, the fear and uncertainty discernible and deeply discomforting. I can’t wait to see the second season.

Homeland, on the other hand, can’t seem to rise above a worn-out, predictable post-9/11 scenario. To add some spice, it features bi-polar disorder as a gimmick, and mania as a vehicle for facial contortions and histrionics. Watching Claire Danes as Carrie saving the nation, you can almost hear the director say, ‘C’mon Claire, give me a grimace!’ What John Lahr (in a New Yorker puff piece) called her ‘volcanic performances’ and others, her ‘tsunami of emotion’, come across as Mt. Aetna in a teacup, in-your-face close-ups of wide eyes and twitches to make sure Carrie’s pathology gets across to the viewer.

I had seen Claire Danes only once, in Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet, where she gave a fine performance. To give her the benefit of the doubt, her performance in Homeland may have had more to do with directorial overkill than a deficit of talent.

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