This Is The Longest Day Of My life

My copy of the 24 DVD arrived on Wednesday at around 8:30am. I'd seen up to around 4pm before I left for the 'States and had foolishly assumed that BBC2/BBC Choice would've gotten around to finishing the series by the time I'd gotten back. The schedulers at the BBC seem to have missed that one slightly, as the season finale aired this Sunday gone.

Thanks to the net, though, we'd gotten hold of all the episodes anyway, though I'd just decided that I might as well watch the remaining episodes on TV, instead of hunched in front of a computer.

So, at 9am on Wednesday, in a fit of inspiration that I bet didn't occur to anyone else in the country at all, I started watching the 9th our of 24. 9am, at 9am. Then 10am at 10am. And so on. Until I got a bit bored, really, and ended up about an hour ahead of myself. And then two hours. By which point it all got rather silly--with adbreaks removed, skipping the credits and the "This is the longest day of my life" Jack Bauer monologue, you get each episode down to around thirty five minutes.

The ending blew. The alternate ending blew slightly more. The "preview" for season two blew so much that it was like catching a nice jet stream over the atlantic and arriving before you even left: a good five minutes of Kiefer saying "Wow! 24's amazing! We did it in realtime! Traffic lights suddenly mattered! Driving across the city suddenly mattered! (Although friends in LA incessantly commented about his ability to avoid all traffic, ever)" That's all well and good, I thought. So where, exactly, is the preview to season two? Oh, here it is: "So, what can you expect for season two? In a word: more." Well, that's nice. I always like having more, especially when it's a new season. Otherwise it's just the same first season and not any more at all, really. All this in an extra that ended with Kiefer exhorting the viewer to "go watch the DVD" at the very end, in an extra tacked on to the end of the last episode, on the last disc. Oops.

[more on 24 - Caitlin Moran in The Times, and yes, there's spoilers]

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