A 24 prequel would be a step too far for a show that has been stretched to the limits and broken. Can someone do the honourable thing and put it out of its misery?
Tunnel vision: Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer in 24. Photograph: Fox
First, a disclaimer. I love 24. I have always loved 24. Honest to God, I truly believe that 24 will be remembered as one of the most important television programmes in the history of the medium. Look around now, at this landscape full of colossally expensive series that brim with big-name movie stars. It’s all thanks to 24. I believe in 24. I love 24.
That said, they should absolutely not make any more 24. Absolutely not. Never, ever, ever. CTU, ticking clocks, the entire concept of a soft perimeter; all of it should be parcelled up with packing tape and kicked into an active volcano. I say this with nothing but affection.
But, guess what: there is probably going to be more 24. Creators Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran are reportedly in talks with Fox to make a 24 prequel series. If everything goes to plan, there will soon be a brand new, open-ended story about how a young Jack Bauer became the clench-jawed super-patriotic pro-torture superhero we all know and love.
Forget the fact that it might conceivably work. Forget the fact that 24 has hinted at Bauer’s past enough times to root the series in believability. Forget the fact that there’s something immediately irresistible about a show where an idealistic special ops soldier attempts to put the corrupt legacy of his wealthy family behind him by winning the Purple Heart in the ravages of the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. Forget all of that, because it just shouldn’t happen.
Corey Hawkins in 24: Legacy Photograph: Ray Mickshaw/FOX
It shouldn’t happen because every new series of 24 weakens what was once a near-perfect show. At this point, 24 has been a skidding caravan for 11 years, with every new series an overcompensatory course-correction that only further destabilises it. Series six went too big, exploding nuclear bombs all over the shop, so series seven countered it by being a dour meditation on the consequences of enhanced interrogation. Series eight attempted to bring the show back in line with our expectations, but didn’t go far enough. And then series nine – Jack Goes to London – overdid it again by going absolutely turbo-powered hell for leather batshit tonto.
At first, last year’s 24: Legacy reboot – starring Corey Hawkins as the new lead – seemed like the series we had all been waiting for, but it didn’t take long for it to feel rote. 24 knew the buttons it had to hit, but it hit them with such dull-eyed precision that you ended up not caring about any of the new characters. At least Jack Bauer was reasonably complex, vacillating between regretful soul-sickness and outright sadism. Hawkins’ Eric Carter couldn’t even manage that; he was a dumb cypher, a Lazy Susan of by-the-numbers violence.
24 has shown time and time again that it will flub every new chance it gets. It’s an astonishingly difficult programme to make – writers have compared production to laying down track for a train already in motion – and it will never recapture the stomach-churning surprise of the series one finale. So why bother?
It doesn’t help that the prequel idea might have been pulled out of thin air. Just three months ago, Kiefer Sutherland was touting the idea of transforming 24 into a courtroom anthology series about a hard-bitten female prosecutor. To switch from that to this in a matter of weeks feels desperate, as if the creators are casting around hopelessly just to get something on television again.
If this was a fully thought-through idea, conceived over a number of years to be the equal of the original 24, then this might all make sense. But it isn’t, so it doesn’t. Please don’t make any more 24. Please. I want you to preserve series one to series five in amber, then I want you to destroy the rest and quarantine the entire franchise for good. I love you 24, but please, let’s just die now.
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