Showtime's political thriller "Homeland" season 5 will be back on small screens with an explosive premiere at 9pm on Sunday, 4 October, which will be live streamed here.

Episode 1, titled "Separation Anxiety", will revolve around the relationship between Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), Peter Quinn (Rupert Friend) and Saul Berenson (Mandy Patinkin).

While the viewers are eagerly waiting for updates on their favourite characters, the creators have fanned their curiosity with trailers and promotional photos of the first episode.

The official synopsis of premiere episode reads: "The game has changed for Carrie Mathison. Out of the CIA and living in Berlin, Carrie is trying to start a new life but realizes now she's the one with a target on her back. As the danger intensifies, and without Saul and Quinn to rely on, one thing becomes clear: she's never been at greater risk or with more to lose."

Here are some of the early reviews on "Separation Anxiety" that have briefly described as to what to expect in the first episode of "Homeland" season 5:

The Hollywood Reporter

Homeland has always been Carrie Mathison's show, sometimes to its detriment for some viewers, and that feels even more true this season, both her past and present. We've occasionally been asked to take for granted that what the good Carrie did as a spook outweighed the bad she did both professionally and personally, but season five may be the long-awaited moment at which Carrie's choices are called to account.

Entertainment Weekly

At first, it seems that Homeland is moving in an interesting direction, away from the tired oedipal drama of Carrie and Saul, away from the relentless existentialism of random-stranger-killer Quinn, toward a tangled international conflict that's narratively more rich and more of-the-moment. But the second that Carrie yields to her first fit of mania in years, pasting newspaper clippings all over her house and searching for connections between them it's déjà vu all over again.

Deadline

With Season 5 of the multiple-Emmy-winning series' lens entirely set in Germany, historic and intrigue-drenched Berlin is itself a character in the show. In many ways, this is a quite thoughtful season of the Alex Gansa- and Howard Gordon-created Homeland that both dissects American's strategy — or seemingly lack thereof — against the self-declared Islamic State.