Fox

“Keeping the country safe is big business now. It’s getting bigger.”

Much of this sixth season of Homeland is spent exploring the notion that the CIA’s cloak-and-dagger activities in the Middle East might have outlived their usefulness and a new course of action is required. But considering that Showtime’s previously white-hot spy drama — a Best Drama series Emmy winner for its stellar first season — is six seasons in and a lot less buzzy these days, it’s hard not to extend that central question to the show itself: Is Homeland obsolete? Well judging by this twisty and thrilling collection of episodes, the answer is a resounding, “No!”
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This is quite a step up for the History Channel folks. They’ve certainly produced a great number of historical dramatizations and documentaries, but nothing they’ve ever done before compares with this series. We used to review a ton of their stuff here for years, so you know I’ve liked a lot of the things they’ve done. But Vikings puts them in a totally new stratosphere. This is historical drama that you’ve only seen before in the likes of Rome or The Tudors. Of course, there’s a very good reason for that. Michael Hirst created the series and is the creative force behind it. He served the same positions on The Tudors. That puts expectations here very high, and the show has met or exceeded them all.
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“Freedom has a price. I died 7 years ago. Left behind a brother, a wife, a son, but the dead talk if you listen. They’re there with you. Reaching out. Trying to tell us something. Because not all deaths are the same. Some are real. Some are a story. Question is: do you believe the story? Was the man who died who you thought he was? The dead talk. If you listen…”

The same can be said for dead series. Fox has been riding a wave of series revivals that have brought shows back from the dead in a limited-run event series format, and it has actually been doing well for the network
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