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So I’ve become a regular viewer of 24. Aside from a few episodes, I didn’t watch any of the previous seasons. But this time round I can’t seem to turn away. It’s not so much a train wreck as a direct trip to the morgue. Initially I simply couldn’t believe how amazingly racist it was, but just at the point when I’d told myself that I couldn’t in good conscience watch this horrible shite it started putting itself through amazing contortions to prove that it really wasn’t racist after all. Which of course isn’t true, but makes for oddly compelling viewing. I can’t remember when I last saw something as heavy handed as the ‘good Arabs’ that Jack Bauer encountered running a gun store in the ghetto. But surely their pledge to fight and, if needs be, die by his side completely negates the first third of the series. Yes, it looked like anyone of Middle Eastern origin was part of a suburban terrorist cell, but that was just a device to set the plot up for the warm embrace of ethno-religious diversity that is the rest of the season.

24’s larger message for the War On Terror is a mixed one. On the one hand, contrary to all our experience, the nation’s counter-terrorism professionals are clearly operating in a comfortingly futuristic technological utopia. It’s as if they could find and catch anyone. And have completely accurate information about the weapons capabilities of foreign governments. But that must mean… Oh, never mind. And of course there’s the wider role of the show in the cultural normalization of casual torture.

Perhaps as far-reaching is the ability of 24 to make even the most vaguely competent spy thriller look magnificent. I watched The Bourne Supremacy last night which, in comparison, seemed, well, masterful. Which of course it wasn’t. But how the hell am I supposed to tell any more?

Posted by B. W. Ventril in Reviews