Homeland

Series three, episode nine
If this year’s proceedings have proved anything, it’s how desperately ‘Homeland’ needs Brody, but also how urgently it needs to get shot of him. In his absence the show has drifted: the domestic dramas (Dana, Mira) have been pretty dull, the twists ever more far-fetched and infuriating and the absence of Brody’s enigma never satisfactorily replaced, for all Mandy Patinkin’s beetle-browed brilliance.

On the other hand, the single episode in which Damian Lewis has so far featured was clunkily handled, weirdly inconsequential and treated almost as a contractual obligation. Yet Saul’s visit to Venezuela at the end of last week implied that Lewis’s exiled hero/killer was about to take centre-stage again; tonight might give this series the jumpstart it needs.