feeling listless

TV The new series of 24 began on Sunday night and the first two episodes were a treat. I won’t talk about the second for people without BBC 3, but the first offered more than one gobsmacking moment, Jack Bauer already on the edge from the off. If a line like “I’m gonna need a hacksaw…” has appeared in a movie we would be quoting it for days after the screening. Here it was lost slightly in the gratuitous information overload which spewed from the screen. It looks to be every bit as exciting and infuriating as the previous series (although luckily no one will get amnesia this time because it’s already been done). Pardon me for a moment while go slightly mad and cram in all the feelings I got after watching the first episode.

Why all the women outside CTU and the Presidential bunker blondes? What’s with all the beards? Who are all the people in said bunker and why haven’t they bothered to explain what the shady old bloke and the right hand woman actually do? What is Ensign Ro Laren doing there? And Darla from Roseanne, whose seems to playing Willow from the first season of Buffy? Where have I seen Nina’s replacement at CTU before? How worrying is it that they only know about the bomb going off on the day the bomb is going off? What’s with that wedding? Why does Kim Bauer now feel like she’d be happier in an episode of ‘Dawson’s Creek’? What happened to Stephen Hopkins on the credits? Has Kiefer Sutherland put some weight on?

The real ‘treat’ of the night was Pure24, the discussion programme which’ll be appearing after the BBC3 episode every week for the next 23 in which a bunch of people sit around in a set which stolen from Channel 4 News discussing the programme. Apart from being the pointless half hour of televisions since ‘Big Brother’s Little Brother’ it sort proved by itself why this kind of thing doesn’t happen too often. Actually it was strangely entertaining in a ‘Late Review’ kind of way. The real star of the show was Charlie “TVGoHome” Booker (who writes about 24 regularly in his ‘Screen Burn’ column for ‘The Guardian’) being an absolute star, quick off the mark and probably making his screen break; the presenter reminded me too much of Sophie “Ace!” Aldred and didn’t look like she’d watched the first series trying to be terribly excited but being no Claudia Winkleman; an invited audience of fans dwarfed my a man in a massive afro; bizarre phone call from Bob Mortimore who seemed have failed to grasp the way the programme will be shown (he seemed to think episode three will be turning up on BBC2 next week); even more weird call from a guy who decided that the now headless corpse was just tranquilised, leading to smirks from all around, WE’VE SEEN HIS HEAD!