two ambiguous, damaged characters who were on a collision course with each other. That was the heart of Homeland , that's where we started, the story we wanted to tell was the collision of these two people and, in a way, I think you're right, they do have an idea of America in common but they do find themselves on different sides of how to go about protecting that idea.'' Coming 10 years after 24 with its superhero protagonist Jack Bauer, on which Gansa and co-writer and co-executive producer Howard Gordon worked, Homeland delves deeply into the grey areas that surround the US's response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. ''The torture issues, the harsh interrogation techniques, if you can't torture somebody but you can fly over their village and kill them with a drone strike; there's a moral question at work there. These are the issues being debated in the hall of power in the US right now and the show wants to pose those questions in the most provocative ways it can,'' Gansa says. He is very forthcoming when asked to critically reappraise the complicated storylines. The relationship between terrorists Aileen (Marin Ireland) and Faisel (Omid Abtahi), he says, wasn't as meaningful as he'd hoped but was worthwhile for the episode where Saul and Aileen drive back to Washington and, unlike anything Bauer would have done, he ''breaks her through kindness, in a way''. He also wishes he could tell more of the backstory of Brody