I don’t quite know why, but I’m really pleased that the House of Lords chucked out Tessa Jowell’s super-casino last night.
In the meantime, am I the only person who thinks that the new Ministry of Justice sounds like a cross between something you’d find in 1984 and Judge Dredd?
I found myself not watching a great deal of the woeful Andorra v England (it may have ended 3-0 to England, but it was 0-0 at halftime), and more of Northern Ireland v Sweden last night, with a touch of Italy v Scotland. But by the times the second halves were underway, I wound up watching more of The Apprentice than anything. I know that it’s all in the edit, but these people really don’t come anywhere near being “16 of Britain’s brightest business prospects.”
Rumour has it that they’re not going to concentrate quite so much on sales tasks this series, since effectively it can just boil down to who can sell the best to consumers. Andy was voted off, but we were given plenty of opportunity to dislike both Tre and Jadine. Tre’s probably not bad, but he’s a touch arrogant (actually – they all are) and seems to get into hostilities a bit too easily. Meanwhile Jadine’s just mad. Thirty-eight minutes into the programme last night, the follwing happened (in the words of Anna Pickard’s minute by minute Media Guardian blog with Anna Pickard):
9.38: Oh for the Love of GOD! I’ve experienced Television hell, please kill me now. Hang on.
At 38 minutes in, we experienced quite the most excruciating moment of television I think I’ve ever seen. Eclipse, in a last ditch attempt to sell coffee have walked into an office (an office opposite our humble own, I note), and offered ten ‘birthday’ coffees to one poor soon-to-be-overcaffinated Woman.
In addition to the coffee, they thrust a ‘special birthday song’ upon her. This is improvised by Jadine, with ‘ooohs’ and dancing accompaniment by two embarrassed thugs, and actually made me want to crawl into the back of the sofa, throw up my dinner and just stay there in the horrible horrible warmth until this livng hell goes away.
I don’t know if that’s a firing offence, but SURELY there’s some kind of health and safety proceedure being breached there.
It was hideous. I turned back to the football unable to watch.
Finally – there’s 24. Isn’t it absolutely abysmal this year? They’re just retreading the same ground over and over again. The episode I saw this week even ended up with exactly the same storyline that was used two or three years ago (I forget which, and quite honestly, can’t even be bothered to look it up). I can “buy” unlikely and so-on, but it’s just sheer tiredness of the writing. They need to hire new writers pronto, and next year they should lose any presidential aspect to the storyline – much as I despise politicians, they can’t all be corrupt. CTU leaks like a sieve, and if I hear one more character use the hackneyed phrase “within the hour” I’ll… I’ll… well… I don’t know what I’ll do.
The series has descended into a hunt for one man after another, the next always having some hidden ultimate superior, and so the hunt continues. The writers completely ignore things that happened in previous episodes, and they’ve completely forgone any pretence at all of how long it takes to travel from a to b around the Los Angeles area.
The real problem is that the terrorists seem to be moving and acting quickly for no discernable reason at all. The bad guy still has a couple of nukes with Jack Bauer et al thwarting him for the most part so far. In reality, he’d lie low for several weeks/months and regroup. What’s the rush? He’s got a suitcase nuke and can use it anytime he likes!
24 has always been an essentially fun action series not to be taken too seriously. But you have to believe in the story and characters to some degree for it to work. Frankly, I really don’t care any longer.