24: Season One (2002) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The show itself is of course magnificent for the most part. Innovative, exciting and very well acted. A landmark in modern TV drama, despite a brief drop -off in quality in some of the late afternoon episodes. The DVD picture quality is wonderfully sharp, and the sound is nicely crisp.
Important to note if you are buying this package having not seen the show before (having heard about it from others but too late to join in watching it on TV) that there are spoilers all over the presentation. the enclosed booklet includes short summaries of every episode and not much else, so don't look at it until you've seen the whole show. Similarly the menus feature clips from the show which is nice to watch if you aren't worried about information being given away, as the clips on the menu for each disc tend to reveal major plot points.
Also, the DVD extras are actually pretty poor. The alternative ending is dull and obviously only shot to keep the true ending secret. The teaser for season 2 comprises only Kiefer Sutherland talking in very vague terms about the general concept of 24, with no real information about the second series.
Worst of all is the fact that the footage on the discs is only the footage that was originally broadcast IN THE US. In the UK the broadcast footage included an extra couple of minutes for each of the episodes 7pm - 12pm. This footage contained scenes that was cut from the US broadcast for adverts, whereas in the UK 24 was shown on the BBC where there are no adverts.
These scenes ranged from nice additions to important points: one cut scene had a major impact on the crucial events in the final episode and another even greatly improved the climactic battle between Jack and the bad guys.
Fox haven't included this footage on the DVD versions in either the UK or the US, meaning that us poor Brits have scenes that we miss and this has led to calls for a recall and replacement with the full footage. For the US viewer, this is actually worse, in that you are never going to see these great scenes. There are no running time issues on DVD, unlike on TV, so why not let those fans willing to pay for the box set have bonus footage integrated into their box sets?
Bizarrely, this doesn't affect the VHS British release of 24, only the DVD, so if you want those extra scenes you'll need a PAL compatible TV and VCR.
Why not drop Fox an email congratulating them on making such a great show and asking for them to include the full footage as was broadcast on the BBC?

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Twenty-four hours of a counter-terrorist agent's attempt to prevent the assassination of a presidential candidate.Genre: TelevisionRating: NRRelease Date: 17-SEP-2002Media Type: DVD

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24: Seasons 1-5 (2001) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Prior to receiving this as a Christmas gift, I had never watched 24. All I can say is that I am now hooked. The show is simply riveting and I do not see how a person could wait from one week to the next to watch it on regular TV. A DVD is the perfect platform for watching this show. To me, it is reminiscent of a combination of James Bond movies (sans gadgetry) and Tom Clancy books/movies. It is non-stop action. An episode can be watched in around 41 minutes.

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Season 1: 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes. Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time.Federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) runs around L.A. trying to stall an assassination attempt on an African American presidential candidate and rescue his wife and daughter from the clutches of the Balkan baddies. Twists, turns, revelations, and cliffhangers are tossed at us with satisfying regularity. It's not perfect: we get some hokey plot devices (instant amnesia, anybody?); the final twist makes no sense whatsoever; and as for Dennis Hopper's "Serbian" accent....Even so, this is undeniably mold-breaking TV.Like Murder One and The Sopranos, 24 is one of those series that future TV thrillers will be measured against. --Philip Kemp

Season 2: Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second season of the groundbreaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA, who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organization that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas.
Season 3: There's not one cougar to be found in 24's dynamic third season, and that's good news for everyone. After Jack Bauer's daughter Kimsurvived hokey hazards in season 2, she's now a full-time staffer at CTU, the L.A.-based intelligence beehive that's abuzz once again--three years after the events of "Day Two"--when a vengeful terrorist threatens to release a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country's population. Jack attempts to broker a deal for the virus involving drug kingpin Ramon Salazar, whose operation Jack successfully infiltrated at high personal cost: to maintain his cover, he got hooked on heroin. That potentially deadly triangle--drug lords, addiction, and bioterrorism on a massive scale--sets the 24-hour clock ticking in a tight, action-packed plot involving a potential traitor in CTU's midst; the return of TV's greatest villainesses in Nina Meyers and former First Lady Sherry Palmer; a troubled romance between Kim and Jack's new partner Chase; and a scandalized reelection campaign by president David Palmer, who monitors CTU as they struggle to (literally) save the day.

Season 4: The fourth season kicks off with a deadly terrorist strike resulting in the kidnapping of his new boss, the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Heller. Although a fired, ex-employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), it is no surprise who is going to shift into full gear to bring the terrorists to justice. However, it doesn't take the super-agent long to discover the kidnapping of his boss is part of a much larger plan, master-minded by Habib Marvan the middle eastern terrorist cell leader the US government has been trying to track down for years. Considered by many to be the best season of the first four, 24 - Season 4 is a definite departure from the first three seasons; it's still amped up beyond anything else on TV, but compared to the previous seasons, 24 has gotten a lot smarter, and in turn, better. --Rob Bracco
Season 5: Eighteen months after faking his own death, Jack Bauer is forced to return to Los Angeles when it becomes apparent that the only four people who know he is still alive are being systemically targeted for assassination. The assassinations coincide with the signing of an anti-terrorism treaty between Russia and the U.S., leading Jack to suspect a link between the assassinations, the treaty, and a group of Russian terrorists. But as events slowly unfold it becomes apparent that the day's horrific events were originally set in motion by someone within our country's own administration – an individual with the power and resources to thwart Jack's every move.

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