Skip to content
24 is back, and this time it’s bringing it’s Dad… oops, wrong franchise.
Jack Bauer is back to save the day, yet again, in ’24’ with 12 episodes of action-packed goodness… pardon? Yes, I said “12 episodes”. What? ….Oh, I see. Well, yes, they had 24 episodes in all of the previous seasons, even though they weren’t sure if the first would be a success so it was only commissioned for 13 episodes, hence why it appears to ‘end’ at that point, but they got extended for the full run so they filled a few hours by making Teri faint. Tedious that bit, wasn’t it? Anyway, so it runs for 12 episodes, with the first few in London – where the ubiquitous Stephen Fry is the Prime Minister – and later they’ll presumably head back to the US, meaning hours will go by off-screen while they take a plane, so that since the first episode starts at 11am, so the last one will also end at 11am. Got it?
Not really? Well, tough.
In fact, I’m not sure if this should be classed as ‘Season 9’, since it follows on directly from Season 8, but it’s ‘24: Live Another Day‘ so it’s technically renamed… so is it an off-shoot of ’24’ or a continuation? After weeks and weeks of deep thought and contemplation, as well as looking it up on that internet thing, I’ve decided it is, indeed, Season 9.
The following review contains some spoilers about the episode. Typing my thoughts occured in real time.
After spending four years off the grid, the feds finally find Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) living in a squat somewhere in London. Well, with austerity the way that it is, if you’ve been out of work that long you’re not going to be living it up in a swanky apartment. He’s captured and taken to London CTU, headed up by Chief Smoothie Steve Navarro (Benjamin Bratt), which just happens to be where Chloe O’Brian (the ever-lovely Mary Lynn Rajskub) is also being held.
Neither of them are in a particularly good place – Jack because he’s made to realise that his fugitive lifestyle means he’ll never see what’s left of his family ever again, and Chloe because she’s strapped to a table being forced to talk, after being arrested on hacking charges. Or something like that. I got the impression she’d rubbed someone up the wrong way, whereas when it came to Jack – what had he done? I think his government just hate his guts, and they think he’s in town to do harm to the President anyway, despite him having a good track record for *helping* the office incumbents over the years. Well… usually.
Jack has a friend with him of random and undetermined Eastern European origin, who helps him escape after it turns out he orchestrated his own capture by the powers that be, which he did in order to rescue Chloe. When they’ve figured out what they need to do in the double-bill, she wants to act as his backup on comms, so basically, they’re “getting the band back together“.
Chloe is actually one of a group of hackers who use some massive studio flat as a squat, and can apparently pack up and leave whenever the heat gets too close for them, despite the fact that they’ve got more technical equipment to carry than a Currys superstore, including laptops with whizzy blue-backlit keys.
You can tell Chloe’s a hacker because she’s dressed up as a choppy-haired Goth. Yes, that’s all Goths do, apparently. Not that any of the others are Goths. There’s the token speccy kid, the token ginger kid and Saz from BBC3’s Some Girls. Also there is a chap called Adrian Cross (Michael Wincott), Chloe’s squat-leader, or boss or something. When Jack and Adrian first met, they had an argument in very anger-filled hushed tones. It was bizarre to say the least.
Go to page 2 for more thoughts on this episode…
One thing I noticed is that the shorter, 12-episode, format means that characters get bumped off a lot quicker than before.
Then there’s the “Dammit!” count. It was uttered three times over the two episodes – one per episode from Bauer, but both of these were beaten to the punch by snooty Navarro, who got his in first when Kate Morgan (Yvonne Strahovski) disobeyed an order not to try and chat Bauer up while he wasn’t looking. In fact, I wonder if she’s been given the surname Morgan because the last big series she was in was Dexter, where she played Mr Morgan’s psycho-squeeze Hannah McKay. That’s my theory, anyway. Sadly, despite Ms Strahovski being hotter than the sun, hear she wears a dowdy cardigan for most of the double-bill’s running time. Maybe she’ll get taken to Hawaii to run about in a bikini on the beach. Well, you never know.
Oh, and since they’re filming in London for the first part of this series, how come all the CTU staff were American? Don’t they have an equal opportunities policy that states they must hire local talent, like when the BBC relocated some of its departments up to Salford?
So, what’s the problem that Bauer wasn’t to stop? It’s actually a drone hijack that’s being put together by Derek Yates (below), in an attempt to bump off Heller. Unfortunately, for our drone-whizz, he’s bumped off by his girlfriend Simone (Emily Berrington, bottom pic), who knows he has an important and expensive device that would sell to the right bidder for a lot of money, so to say she doesn’t just stick the knife in but she twists it as well, is a 100% accurate statement, since she does it in the right-hand side of his head. And to think she seemed such a nice girl when she recently played the part of Aussie student Stacey in Outnumbered!
In fact, the actor playing Yates seemed very familiar at first, but I couldn’t place him, so before the episode finished, I looked him up. He’s an actor called Joseph Millson, and I remember him from Channel 4’s Campus, where he played smoothie lecturer Matt Beer. Unfortunately, when I looked him up, initially, and didn’t see his character listed on IMDB, I searched elsewhere… and found a ‘24‘ website which detailed the fact that he would be dead by the end of episode two. Whoops!
(Note to self: Don’t search for anyone online until the broadcast episodes have finished!)
Overall, 24 was full of its usual implausibilities but still reasonably entertaining with it, although it sagged on occasion when Jack was off-screen, eg. who cares about Boudreau’s (Tate Donovan) lovey-dovey times with wife Audrey (Kim Raver)? Yes, she’s been through a tough time and she’s Heller’s daughter, but both actors are more wooden than the cast of Eldorado!
And will former Secretary of State, now President, Heller (William Devane) make it to the London/US changeover now he’s seemingly got early onset Alzheimer’s? Well, since they’ve mentioned his condition at the top of the show, you just know things are going to go tits up for him.
24: Live Another Day is broadcast on Sky 1, Wednesdays at 9pm.
Score: 6/10
Director: Jon Cassar
Producer: Iain Smith
Screenplay: Robert Cochran and David Fury
Music: Sean Callery
Cast:
Jack Bauer: Kiefer Sutherland
Chloe O’Brian: Mary Lynn Rajskub
Kate Morgan: Yvonne Strahovski
Steve Navarro: Benjamin Bratt
Mark Boudreau: Tate Donovan
President James Heller: William Devane
Erik Ritter: Gbenga Akinnagbe
Adrian Cross: Michael Wincott
Jordan Reed: Giles Matthey
Ron Clark: Ross McCall
David Yates: Joseph Millson
Simone Al-Harazi: Emily Berrington
Chris Tanner: John Boyega
Chell: Mandeep Dhillon
Lt Lucas Miller: Nick Donald
Margot Al-Harazi: Michelle Fairley
Audrey Raines: Kim Raver
Prime Minister Alastair Davies: Stephen Fry
Belcheck: Branko Tomovic
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.
| 1 | 2 |