Great American TV is better than almost any other pop-media in the world. Especially when it eats its own tail, ingesting old formats and formalae only to be born again a more formidable story-snake.
Example: “Smallville”
2 parts “Dawson’s”, 3 parts “X-Files”, 5 parts “Superman”.Example: “Alias”
3 parts “mission: Impossible”, 3 parts Tarantinoesque Banterfest, 2 parts “Felicity”, 2 parts Bond-franchise-but-by-Bruckheimer.
“24” started last night here in Britain. Not particularly orginal in content, but formally it’s incredible.
Hyperlayered and frantic from the off, it’s going to become a regular fixture for me – and it’s on a Sunday night, which our colonnial cousins have long-known is the best night to put good TV on. Over here, we’ve only had Antiques Roadshow and Heartbeat to round off our weekends with a whimper.
Hopefully the BBC will wise-up and not fool-around with the scheduling as they are prone to do.
Or even better, someone over here will start making smart, incredible TV again.
Petafloptimism 
24: making the split screen fashionable again.
Most impressive thing — that it works so well. I’m amazed that there’s anyone left who knows how to do it.
Sad pernickety guy’s irritant — that without the ad breaks the perfection of the timings (as seen in the first 9:09) falls apart. Couldn’t they have done a director’s cut? “18” doesn’t have quite the same appeal.
Still, I shall be glued to the screen — and I even watched Heartbeat occasionally. (There was a good reason, honestly. Once upon a time)
I’m in a weird position: I watched ’24’ for the first time in the US, joined half-way through, and got hooked. The real-time conceit makes the cuts to ad breaks believable, to provide transitions and build tension. As American commentators have said, it’s also one of the first shows to acknowledge the failures of modern technology: there’s still a few HollywoodOS clichés, but mobiles lose their signal, net connections drop off, there’s no instant decryption. It’s a glorious embrace of what television does best.
So, it’s fun to see the first ‘hours’ (this hour has 45 minutes) in the UK, especially because we get the HDTV widescreen version that most poor suckers in the US can’t receive. (The conversion to 625-line PAL does create a few odd moiré line effects, but I’m not complaining.)
And I don’t want a directors’ cut: I want a blank screen. Or at least a decent cut-to-black, cut-from-black.
As American commentators have said, itâs also one of the first shows to acknowledge the failures of modern technology: thereâs still a few HollywoodOS clich�s, but mobiles l