Review: 24 series 3
Jack Bauer's adventures come to DVD.
24 hours. Not one joke. 24 series 3 sees the show at its grittiest, darkest, and also most haughty.
24 works so much better on DVD than TV - especially this year. Not only can you stay up all night, boggling as the plot becomes ever more complex - but you can also skip through the torture scenes and the Mexicans.
The DVD is nicely put-together, but suffers from the same problem as previous releases - the menus spoil you as to either Who is Coming Back or Who is Going To Die.
The special features are fascinating, with documentaries taking you behind a couple of really important sequences (and show director Jon Cassar being very angry indeed). The commentaries are so-so (Being mostly: "Oh her - oh, she's very good, don't you think? We were so lucky to get her...").
The deleted scenes are fascinating, giving an amazing insight into how a character was almost entirely removed, and showing Michelle playing key scenes in a very different way. Unfortunately, due to an error on the disc, one episode's "deleted scene" is actually from a later episode, thus neatly telling you which character is going to die from plague. Cheers.
But what of the actual show? Without spoiling anyone, here is a brief guide to this year of the show from Lee Binding:
You will:
- cheer when some medical results come through!
- cheer when the camera pans around to Kim when they couldn't get someone from CTU San Francisco in time!
- cheer when they reveal the other buyer!
- cheer when Schemey Mrs Palmer takes the law into her own manicured hands!
- cheer at Chloe, the new assistant, who has no tact.
- cheer when you suddenly find the New-Boy attractive!
- cheer when you discover that Tony Almeda can still get fatter over the period of a day even more than last year!
- cheer at Kim's special mission wig.
However, you will:
- boo at how long it takes to get going.
- boo at the Salazars. They are booooorrrr-ing. And cliched.
- boo at the sheer amount of torture there is this year.
- boo as Kim doesn't get to do much. Or nothing much that puts her in danger every five minutes. Which is a shame.
- wince at the ending.
- weep at the feeble death of A Big Villain.
- vow never to date Kim Bauer.
24 Series 3 is out on DVD from August 9th
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