24: First Season DVD

I'd heard and seen some interesting things about the Fox TV series 24. I'd tried to watch it once somewhere during the first season, but was totally lost. If you haven't watched it yet, don't poke around too long on the FOX site or you'll find out things that you don't want to know as I accidently did with one of the characters.

The six DVDs each carry four hours of the show, each hour taking just over 40 minutes to play. The commercial transitions are pretty interesting to watch and after a while I noticed that they were samplings from the 4:20 (about that on average) time gaps that we missed in 'real time'.

One Victor Field on IMDB put it well:

As befits a series created by former writers for "Miami Vice" and "La Femme Nikita," the plotting isn't watertight, and this show - even more than most - defies casual dipping in and out - but it's put together with such conviction that you're just dragged along for each hour. I should point out that in Britain BBC2 screens it without commercials, so each episode runs in a 45-minute slot; which is not to say that it hurts the suspense.

This show is highly adicting even if there is a period there where it seems to struggle forward for a bit. By then you're already 18 hours in and you just want to see how it ends. Given how quickly things change, you can't just skip ahead lest you become lost. It picks up again during the last disk (hours 20 through 23) and finishes quite strongly.

What an amazing accomplishment for everyone involved with the show.

I told someone not too long after I watched it that it was a bit like digital crack (or similar silliness).

My reason for finally posting this about two months after I wrote it? I bought season two of course. Now I just need to wait until the next time the rest of the family goes away somewhere and football is over. There goes a weekend.