Great Charlie Brooker article on 24

Utopia Parkway

Brooker is a big fan of 24 so this piece made me laugh.

Charlie Brooker
Saturday January 27, 2007
The Guardian


Sigh. So I started last week's column by pointing out how much things change between my Tuesday morning deadline and the printed copy appearing on Saturday morning, and wouldn't you know it, "things" changed so much, it's probably safe to assume that by the time you read this, Celebrity Big Brother will have been ripped off air for inciting a full-blown race war with Jupiter.In the unlikely event it hasn't, I'd still recommend tuning into this week's double-helping of 24 (Sun, 9pm, Sky One) instead, since it'll doubtless provide happier viewing, even though it's one of the most relentlessly unpleasant things I've ever seen.

Let's be frank here: 24 has lost its mind. The hinges were always loose, but this sixth series is something else. It opened last week with Jack mute, scarred and bearded following months of torture in a secret Chinese prison. The man could scarcely walk. Two hours later he was cheerfully high-kicking a suicide bomber out the back of a train.
Nuts. But somehow it all seemed, to use a bit of internet parlance, a bit "meh". Jack's dealt with worse threats, right? Wrong. By the end of this week's two-hour televisual brain rape, you'll have trouble sleeping.

Aghast at the sheer swivel-eyed horror of the new episodes, several US commentators have condemned the show as a work of Neo-Con propaganda that promotes torture as a viable tool in the war against terrorism. It's hard to disagree. When 24 first began, Jack used torture as a shocking last resort, dabbling only occasionally, like an ex-smoker treating himself to a cigar on his birthday. These days, if Jack needs a piss, he'll torture anyone who might be able to tell him where the nearest bog is. Every other scene seems to run like this:

Jack (twisting screwdriver into waiter's tear duct): "First on the left, or first on the right? TELL ME WHERE THE JOHN IS!"

Waiter: "AUUGHHH left! It's on the left!"

Jack: "About time" (nonchalantly shears waiter's face off with glass shard and nips off for a piss).

So far, so brutal. But the show has developed another, almost more disturbing signature move: the desperate "against-my-will-kill" performed by an average Joe.

In season five, a grisly plot twist saw a young, quivering naval engineer being forced by circumstance to slit a terrorist's throat while Jack whispered gruff encouragement over the phone. This time round, a blameless civilian dad is coerced into battering a man to death with his bare hands. At this rate, by season seven, there'll be a convoluted storyline in which a weeping professor of ethics MUST bite the heads off 10 babies IN THE NEXT TWO MINUTES or MILLIONS UPON MILLIONS WILL DIE.

Speaking of death, gleefully right-wing co-creator Joel Surnow calls the season six terrorist threat "smaller and more real" than before. He's wrong on both counts. Instead, it seems to consist of endless Space Invader waves of sharp-suited suicide bombers, overseen by a furious Middle East maniac who closely resembles a bald Dean Gaffney (which goes some way to explaining his fury).

Jack, meanwhile, has teamed up with a preposterous buddy-movie version of Osama Bin Laden; a ruthless jihadist leader who's suddenly decided to broker a peace deal - largely, it seems, so he and Jack can enjoy absurd getting-to-know-you banter as they drive from one bloodbath to the next.

Final absurdity: David Palmer's younger brother Wayne is now president of the US. He's about 28- years-old, sports a shaved head and a goatee, and looks like he's just stepped off the set of an upmarket R&B video. His inauguration must've been awesome.

In short, 24 has become a spiralling, undisciplined caricature of itself: The Naked Gun with blood-curdling paranoia in place of jokes. This is no longer a knockabout drama serial. It's mad crypto fascist horror. You can still laugh at it, of course. But only just.

Kel Varnsen

Utopia Parkway wrote:

Brooker is a big fan of 24

I'm unconvinced.

Haven't a Clue

Can't argue with a lot he says. But I think the fans now accept these absurdities which have now made Bauer a cult hero of sorts. Look at that sticky with all the Jack Bauer facts for proof...

lukin

I don't know if he was actually criticising the show or praising it but the article certainly made me laugh.