OK, it’s been enough time into the new TV season for me to declare a winner for my favorite new show: Showtime’s Homeland – by a significant margin. It’s been excellent up to tonight’s episode, but this one (the 7th episode) was spectacular. The show features gutsy and fearless writing and a flat out stellar cast. All of the lead cast members should be up for Emmy’s next spring.

When it comes to espionage shows, there are different levels of realities taken. It’s a genre I rather like, and I have enjoyed shows from all of those levels of reality. You’ve got pure flights of goofball fun, like the excellent Chuck on NBC or the lesser but under appreciated Chaos on CBS. Then there are shows that are all about the pacing and action, and no series has ever typified that sub-genre more than Fox’s stalwart series 24.  Well, Homeland’s creators/writers Howard Gordon & Alex Gansa were big pieces of running and writing 24, which was still significantly fictional in most regards, and over the years found itself having to push that reality harder and harder to sustain itself.

Once that was over, I figure they must have wanted to make the jump and just embrace a raw, more reality grounded variation. It kind of resets some of the ideas of 24 back to the drawing board, and comes at it from a far more grey area that is far more grounded in reality. It is, quite frankly, believable. It’s based on an Israeli show, but I get the impression that it’s a pretty loose association.

And it’s populated by characters that feature layers upon layers upon layers. It’s surely material that would have had the cast members clamoring to be part of it. It ended up attracting an awesome set of performers. The two female leads were what got me initially anticipating the show. I’ve been a huge fan of Claire Danes since My So Called Life. And she’s at the top of her game here. I’ll be disappointed if she’s not at least nominated for a best actress Emmy for this series. The other female lead is Morena Baccarin. Yeah, it never hurts to have a Firefly cast member on a show. It’s guaranteed talent and excellent results. Baccarin doesn’t fail to deliver. She found a fantastic show to land on after V was cancelled. Then you’ve got Mandy Patinkin doing SUCH a great job with a character that were this a movie would have been played by Brian Cox. At times, it’s almost as though he’s channeling Brian Cox (so much so that when he first appeared in the pilot episode, I almost thought it WAS Cox, what with all the facial hair). And rounding out the lead cast is Damian Lewis, who had previously been fantastic in Band Of Brothers. He gets what is probably the most challenging role of the bunch. He has to walk a very fine line to keep the character both empathetic and believable for the audience.

This series likes to push its lack of broadcast network censors, since it airs on Showtime. If you’re easily offended, this might not be the show for you. If not, you’d be hard pressed to find a better show. If you are expecting lots of action, like you’d get with 24, this also might not be quite your style. But if you hang in there up to tonight’s episode, I think you won’t be disappointed.