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Homeland Season 4 to be Shot in Cape Town
Award-winning suspense series set to make the Mother City its new home(land)
Committed local Homeland fans – particularly those who weren’t too disheartened by the show’s somewhat inconsistent third season – will be thrilled to know that the fourth instalment of this multiple Emmy-winning sensation is set to be filmed on Cape Town’s shores from mid-June to November 2014. Season four will see a fundamental shift in the series’ plot, with the protagonist, CIA Operations Officer Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) moving back to the Middle East (apparently the Mother City makes a convincing Western Asia) to take up the rather dangerous position of station chief and continue her frenzied fight against terrorism.
We only hope that the cast realise that they’ll be arriving in mid-winter, and as we all know, the weather in Cape Town during this spell can be about as unpredictable as the show’s storyline. On that note, we’re sure there are a few things about the conspiracy thriller that you as fans don’t realise yourselves, and so, we’ve picked out seven little fun facts that you might not know about Homeland, even if you can recount every line and odd Houdini-like escape.
SEVEN FUN FACTS ABOUT HOMELAND (SPOILER ALERT- if you haven't finished season three, we suggest you avoid number 7)
1. This is not the first time the show will be filmed in Africa. The last two episodes of season three were, in fact, filmed way up north in Morocco. Hopefully the crew will be as keen on melktert and curry as they might have been on mosaics and couscous.
2. An entire novel, titled Homeland: Carrie’s Run, has been penned in conjunction with the show’s writing team about lead Carrie Mathison’s earlier life prior to the events in the series. This might be a good time to get your hands on the book, so that if you bump into Claire Danes outside of the One&Only while she’s here, you’ll be well positioned to grill her on her own character.
3. The TV show is actually based on the Israeli series Hatufim, which examines the efforts of prisoners of war to reintegrate into normal life after returning home from captivity (read: Nicholas Brody).
4. Claire Danes doesn’t give a hoot about the scathing memes that make fun of her ‘ugly crying face’ in Homeland – apparently looking beautiful on screen is not something she aspires to anyway. All we can say is, Claire, you’re going to have to work a little harder to make those tears look legit in a city as happiness inducing as Cape Town.
5. The show is quite far from home when it comes to representing the truth about intelligence work. While the series has won numerous awards for its dramatic and captivating plot, former CIA staff members argue that it wouldn’t win one for accuracy (for instance, apparently, someone like Carrie would be more likely to end up working in the agency’s mail room than at the head of its counter-terrorism unit). But then again, good viewing has never been about facts.
6. Damian Lewis was offered the role of Brody without even trying. The producers of the series were so impressed by what they’d seen of his previous work that they didn’t even ask him to audition. Could there be such hope for any of our struggling South African actors now that the show’s coming here?
7. The shocking death of a key character was a long time coming. Apparently, the Homeland writers were eager to kill Brody off much earlier on in the show, but the public’s positive response to his love affair with Carrie Mathison put a spanner in the works, and they opted to keep him around a little longer. Clearly, the general fervour around their chemistry came to something of an end, and so did his lifespan on the show.
Though no premiere date for season four has been confirmed as yet, fans of the show can expect it to start airing in America around the end of October or early November 2014.
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More into movies than TV series? Have a look at our overview of cinemas in Cape Town to find out where you can catch the latest flicks.
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