Homeland - and the rise of female leads in TV dramas

In recent years, TV viewers have enjoyed several crime dramas with strong female leads.

Borgen, The Killing, Prime Suspect, The Closer… OK, the list starts to run a little thin here. But I’m pleased to say we can now add Homeland to the countdown, which is starting its UK airing on February 19, over on Channel 4.

Following it’s initial season in the US, Homeland has scored two Golden Globe wins – including Best Actress in a TV Series for the female lead Claire Danes, who plays CIA agent Carrie Mathison. A second season has been promised for the autumn.

Loosely based on Gideon Raff's Israeli TV series Prisoners of War, it centres on an American soldier, Sgt Nicholas Brody, (Damian Lewis) taken prisoner during the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Left for dead, Brody miraculously returns to the US after years in captivity. CIA agent Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) becomes convinced that the intelligence that led to his rescue was a set-up, and that this national hero may be connected to an Al-Qaeda plot to be carried out on American soil.

You can also throw in Carrie’s own psychological demons after her experiences working in Afghanistan, and the fact she is bipolar – a condition she keeps secret from her colleagues, fearing she would be thrown out of the CIA as unstable. What you end up with is an outwardly strong and successful female character, who is driven and respected, but who is inwardly struggling to keep her mind together.

But before you panic that this is another example of a female who is shown as weak due to illness of her lack of a relationship, please think again. I’m not going to give away any plot details, as (having just finished watching all 12 episodes) Homeland is full of many twists alongside the slow burning central narrative driver. But please take my word for it that this is another positive example of women being shown as good leaders. (Although, sure, if push comes to shove, we can find fault with some perceptions of Carrie’s character.)

As an aside, of the five shows I listed above, only one is UK-born (Prime Suspect). What does that tell us about the programming chiefs in our, excuse me, homeland TV stations? THAT is the big question.

TV Licensing statistics in the UK show that women generally watch more TV than men do, so surely it’s logical to put more women in strong, leading roles?

Yes, there are lots of fluffy, female-led shows like Gossip Girl, New Girl, 2 Broke Girls (can you spot a theme?)… but these programmes focus on women as ‘girls’ – as vulnerable, image-obsessed, fashion-focused, man-hunters whose main activities are designer shopping, obsessing over their relationship status, drinking cocktails with the ‘girls’ and coo-ing over a pair of expensive high heels, while waving a sparkle-encrusted Blackberry around. In short: vacuous. And really boring.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy – if you tell women this is how ‘real’ women are, then this may be what viewers aspire to. But TV programmers should credit female audiences with more intelligence and create more characters along the lines of Sarah Lund and Carrie Mathison – women who really are impressive, strong, intelligent role models. Women who succeed, without tottering around in high heels, faffing about with calorific mascara wands, and worrying about their weight. In short, REAL women.

In the meantime, tune in to Homeland and enjoy Claire Danes’ ability to get the job done.

Why Caitlin Moran and Grace Dent are never on panel shows... but should be

A Twitter row kicked off recently between whoever it is that mans (deliberate choice of word) the Mock the Week feed, and a number of people who are sick of the lack of women on TV panel shows.

However, it was interesting to hear Caitlin Moran and Grace Dent picking up the thread on Saturday evening at the Cheltenham Literary Festival. Their hour-long session involved the two very funny women, and a female chairperson, debating around the topic of Twitter and pop culture. The session was fantastically entertaining… and also bizarrely unusual because it was a female-only panel.

During the Q&A, a woman in the audience suggested Moran and Dent should turn this into a TV show as it was so funny, and people would love it. A whoop of agreement went up from the sold-out crowd. And of course, the woman who asked this question was right – this would make brilliant TV. However, both Moran and Dent just laughed wryly, and said they’d never be allowed to talk in such a candid way on TV… because women never are.

This led to Moran saying she turns down appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You if they ask, because she knows she will be on as the token female guest, that she will rarely be allowed to speak, and when she is allowed to speak – it will be edited out before screening in order to “save her from herself”, with the result that the only clips of her actually shown would be her politely tittering at a man’s jokes. The implication, said Moran, is that women don’t get politics and can’t understand political humour. So she doesn’t bother anymore. Dent agreed.

Jo Brand has also said she won’t go on Mock The Week anymore as she was sick of not being allowed to speak. And Brand’s not the only one to publicly complain about this. Mariella Frostrup, Victoria Wood, Rhona Cameron… these are just a handful of the intelligent and witty women to speak to the press about this problem in the past few years. But still nothing is being done. While women are not being heard on panel shows, the female audiences are turning off in droves – bored to tears by hearing the likes of Stephen Fry, Dara O’Briain and Russell Howard talk YET AGAIN about how pleased with themselves they are.

But back to Saturday, and Dent added that when she writes for some magazines and newspapers, her typically barbed style is generally toned down by the sub-editors, in what she perceives as a well-intentioned effort by the subs to “save me from myself”. Moran agreed that she sometimes experiences the same thing. When Dent wondered aloud if male writers would experience the same level of censorship in their writing, Moran quickly and loudly laughed and said “not a chance”.

But WHY are women so under-represented on TV and radio (let’s save cinema for another time)? Why?! It would be hilarious to see Moran and Dent afforded an hour-long TV show every week, where they could talk in the same articulate, intelligent and hilarious way as they did on Saturday night. If Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington can make a career out of podcasts and TV spin-offs of themselves rambling on about nothing in particular, why can’t women do the same? I dare say they’d be just as funny, but a lot less sexist and disablist than some of the unpleasant guff I’ve heard Gervais and Merchant say in their otherwise funny podcasts.

Earlier at Cheltenham, I heard Dent do a reading from her book How To Leave Twitter, and I was thrilled that she chose the section which highlights this very issue – the absence of intelligent women on TV, yet the wealth of identikit programmes with men looking like potatoes in jumpers.

Nobody seems to know what the solution is to making women more visible on panel shows, and allowing women an equal voice on TV and radio. And nobody can tell me why there is such a lack of women being given a voice – and by this, I do not mean women who are there only for what they look like, but women who actually have something interesting, amusing or relevant to say.

Women make up 52% of the population, but you wouldn’t know it by turning on your TV or radio. As a result, I rarely watch any TV these days as it seems so irrelevant to me, and so out of touch with the life that I live.

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NB: There are several blogs on this topic that give full details on the stats and history of this issue. Here are links to a few recent ones:

The F Word

Sian and Crooked Rib

Minority Thought