It might have been the post-roast coma but, during last night's Homeland, the first episode of season three, I found myself infallibly distracted by the honeyed perfection of Carrie Mathison's hair. There she was, getting herself into all sorts of mischief in the Supreme Court following the bomb blast that killed most of her CIA contemporaries at the close of last season, but all I could do was internally dissect the unbridled brilliance of her crisp, blonde long-bob. 

It is literally the colour of spun gold. It's like she's spent a decade washing with John Frieda Go Blonder shampoo and conditioner, then holidayed every summer on a Miami beach and then drank little pipettes of actual liquid sunshine. It's non-descript cut is neat, flattering but unshowy and her parting, slightly over to one side, is professional-looking yet subtly feminine and endearing. On paper, it's really not that noteworthy, but on screen somehow it enlivens; light bounces off it like the car bonnet of a silver Chrysler. 

"The more erratic Danes' character becomes, the more perfect her hair looks"

Quite poignantly, the fastidiousness of her Mr Happy hair is completely at odds with the unravelling of Clare Danes' character. Carrie Mathison's hair is equally as symbolic in terms of her identity and sense of self. At the beginning of season two, Mathison goes undercover as a brunette and is able to traverse a hunt for Brody with the skill of a, no mania. The more erratic Danes' character becomes (she is bipolar and off her meds), the more perfect her hair looks. It refuses to shake out of place, knot or thatch. At her level of mania I'd have had five little dread locks and chip-pan roots. Yet, it remains all happy and yellow and satiny. It's child-hair, it makes you want to look after her.  

Of course, Homeland is a serious TV show, Mathison's plight a gravely vital one so my hair-fascination is not to detract from Danes' superlative performance. For Danes it seems, hair is a hugely formative part of character construction, or at least, it seems to have cropped up time and time again in her work. In 1994, I sat, still in my school uniform, glued to the tiny terrestrial television in our kitchen every Wednesday evening to watch My So Called Life. In episode one, as Angela Chase, Clare Danes' dyed her ash-blonde hair a zinging Melissa auf der Maur sort of red. It signified a shift in her; a cataclysmic, coming of age moment, tantamount to a first heartbreak (which was to come later). Thousands of us, watching intently, all dyed our hair with her. 

Perhaps now, 19 years later, we'll dye it all over again with Carrie Mathison.