SERIES PREMIERE: Based on a scripted podcast from 2016 starring Catherine Keener and Oscar Isaac, this new TV series is overseen and directed by
Mr. Robot creator Sam Ismael, and stars Julia Roberts and Stephan James, with supporting parts for Bobby Cannavale, Sissy Spacek, Shea Whigham and Jeremy Allen White.
Homecoming is the name of a mysterious therapy institute for returning soldiers from Afghanistan and elsewhere, with Roberts playing a therapist and James one of her patients. But in a future timeline, Roberts, as the same character, is a waitress with no memory of her time at Homecoming, and with Whigham as an investigator trying to find out what happened there. The 10 episodes, most of them 30 minutes or less, unspool briskly, and the sense of paranoia is comparable to that in such classic Seventies as
The Parallax View and
Klute. (Oddly, so is the music.) For my full review on NPR’s
Fresh Air with Terry Gross, listen to the show today, or
visit the Fresh Air website later this afternoon. And for reviews here on TVWW, see
Ed Bark's Uncle Barky's Bytes and
David Hinckley's All Along the Watchtower.