Patriot

• Like its spies, Patriot is a master of the Trojan horse: using benign appearances to sneak in some really subversive shit. In this case, its Tom Clancy exterior smuggles in a Coen-esque quality, following characters that aim high and are brought low by hilariously underwhelming forces, like their own well-intentioned stupidity.

• Patriot, which launched last week on Amazon, is one of those exciting and wholly new genres, as if Homeland or 24 had stumbled into Fargo, and might succeed as did Breaking Bad for Netflix, and The Sopranos for HBO. Cleverly written, never speaking down to fat brains, Steve Conrad’s 10-part creation features Michael Dorman as an undercover US agent who can’t help revealing his every outrage in a delightfully whimsical folk-song, performed in public.

• What I find myself loving about Patriot is its lack of resemblance to anything else I’ve seen, in tone at least. Writer/director Steve Conrad takes a Homeland-y set-up involving the US’s attempts to curtail Iran’s growing nuclear capability in 2012, and twirls it into a hyperreal fable spun from the PTSD-addled brain of a strange, unknowable man. And it looks so incredibly beautiful. And it’s really funny.

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