Homeland: The Complete Fourth Season

The fourth season of this well-received Showtime series represents something of a reboot following the conclusion of the first three seasons' narrative arc centering on CIA intelligence officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), a U.S. Marine long held as a prisoner of al-Qaeda, who was elected to Congress after being rescued but was suspected of being a terrorist tool. Mathison is now an agency station chief, first serving in Afghanistan and later in Pakistan, and the overall focus here is on her effort to kill or capture master terrorist Haissam Haqqani (Numan Acar). Working towards that end, she orders an air strike on his presumed location, but it miscarries terribly. Later, she recruits a young Pakistani named Aayan Ibrahim (Suraj Sharma), who is close to Haqqani, to provide information on the latter's whereabouts, but machinations within both the agency and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence bureaucracy subvert her plans. In addition to Danes, Rupert Friend returns as sometimes reckless field agent Peter Quinn, as does Mandy Patinkin as Saul Berenson, former acting director of the CIA, who is now in the private security business. Once again combining action, suspense, and character complexity, Homeland continues to be one of cable's best dramas. Compiling all 12 episodes from the 2014 fourth season, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes, character profiles, and deleted scenes. Highly recommended. (F. Swietek)