IFC recently ran a six-part documentary series, chronicling the history of the Pythons, from their beginnings in the Oxford and Cambridge revues, through to Spamalot. It was quite a treat, not least realizing how the troupe was a semi-random collection of people, who gelled into a near-perfect whole for three sublime seasons of television, at a rare moment in television history when the opportunity to make a show like that presented itself.

Of course, as with any sketch-based comedy series, it wasn’t all good: it’s a genre that inevitably lends itself to peaks and valleys, rather than the consistency of things like Fawlty Towers or Blackadder. And, especially in the abortive fourth season, there were plenty of valleys – without John Cleese, the show was lost, and those episodes are the Python equivalent of those Eastern Bloc Tom and Jerry cartoons from the early 1960’s. But the peaks were sublime; both in the TV series and the movies, they created timeless moments of comedy which have rarely, if ever, been matched. It spans generations: my father loved Python. Myself and Chris adore Python. And our son is just as much a fan, who will recite The Four Yorkshiremen at the drop of a dead parrot.

Hence, this list of my favourite Python moments – not just from the TV, but the movies as well, which can hardly be denied their significance in comedy’s Hall of Fame. However, I have excluded stuff from The Secret Policeman’s Ball and its sequels. The hard part was restricting it to ten eleven (for reasons explained later): I could easily have doubled the number without blinking. The link for each title will open a new tab where you can view the sketch in question.

I note that my preference is clearly skewed towards the more verbal side of Python comedy, rather than the physical – I think this is because the slapsticky stuff is rather too well-worn a path, from Charlie Chaplin through to Benny Hill. Hence, sketches like Upper-class Twit of the Year, often ranked highly on other, similar lists, are not ones of which I’m particular fond. It’s in word-play and their use of the English language that the true strength of Python can be seen. They manage to be immensely smart (who else would ever base a piece on summarizing Proust?) without getting pretentious (you don’t really need to know who Proust is to appreciate the results), and that’s a lot rarer than you might imagine.

10. Black Knight (Holy Grail)
The Pythons had a love for and appreciation of OTT hyperviolence – see also Sam Peckinpah’s Salad Days. However, this scene, in which John Cleese’s Black Knight is systematically dismembered by Graham Chapman’s King Arthur, yet proclaims “It’s just a scratch” as his limbs go cartwheeling away from their body, is even more memorable. It’s the contrast between the arterial spray – something not seen in cinema at the time, outside a grindhouse screening of Shogun Assassin – and the Black Knight’s completely oblivious attitude that makes this work. Could also have been Castle Anthrax. Or the French taunting. Or the witch-finding.

9. Always Look on the Bright Side of Life (Life of Brian)
Likely my least favorite of the Python movies, it feels to me like it’s a film with only one idea, which as a result doesn’t have enough energy to drive the film for the entire running-time. However, the ending has to remain one of the all-time greatest in cinema, with the men being crucified alongside Brian, led by Eric Idle, breaking out into a cheerful song extolling the joys of optimism. It shows up in the most unlikely places. In 1993, when the Manchester bid for the 2000 Olympics was (thankfully) rejected in favour of Sydney, the crowd watching in Castlefield spontaneously burst into the song.

8. Mr Creosote (Meaning of Life)
Speaking of “spontaneously bursting”… Perhaps the Python’s deepest excursion beyond the borders of good taste was this hideous sequence, which Chris still has problems watching [she has a thing about vomit, and the sketch has it, by the literal bucket], and which grossed out Quentin Tarantino. Again, it’s the contrast that makes it work: here, between Terry Jones’ obese, obscene restaurant customer, and Cleese’s unflappably obsequious waiter, who is entirely unfazed by Creosote’s behaviour. Again, this is probably more extreme than anything else to pass the BBFC at the time.

7. Argument Clinic
“Is this the right room for an argument?”
“I’ve told you once…”
Thus starts the core of the sketch, which has Cleese duelling with Michael Palin in a pay-per-minute argument, which drifts topic from whether the initial question has answered, over to the very nature of what constitutes an argument. It’s beautifully constructed, though suffers from the frequent Pythonesque problem – they could never work out how to end their pieces, with a punchline apparently being viewed as too traditional. Here, Idle, dressed as a policeman, arrests the show for “simply ending every bleeding sketch by just having a policeman come in.”

6. Spanish Inquisition
Possibly the finest running-joke in the history of running-jokes, it appeared at various points throughout one episode, when a character would proclaim “I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition.” This would trigger the arrival of Cardinal Ximenez [Palin] and his useless henchmen, who would attempt to extract confessions with the aid of a comfy chair, after getting all confused when listing the Inqusition’s weapons. The show ends with the inquisitors having to rush across town by bus, to the Dick Barton theme, only to be cut off by the closing credits. Brilliance.

5. Mad Barber/Lumberjack Song
While everyone knows the Lumberjack Song, often forgotten is the lead-in, where Palin’s homicidal barber tries to fake cutting a customer’s hair, for fear it will bring out his psychopathic tendencies (“Cut, cut, cut, blood, spurt, artery, murder, Hitchcock, Psycho…”). He eventually admits, “I didn’t want to be a barber anyway,” which leads to the song. This may be the most famous of all Python ditties, as the lyrics drift from extolling the joys of a life of woodmanship, into the pleasures of wearing women’s clothing – to the disgust of the backing chorus of Mounties.

4. Live Organ Transplants/Galaxy Song (Meaning of Life)
Meaning of Life is the most variable of the Python movies, combining moments of genius with dismal failure. This is the highlight of the film, with paramedics Chapman and Cleese arriving to take the liver of Mr. Jones (Terry Gilliam), even though the donor card says, “In the event of death.” As they respond, “No one who has ever had their liver taken out by us has survived.” His wife (Terry Jones) is asked to sign up, and is convinced to do so by Idle’s Galaxy Song. Most of the litany of astronomical facts it contains, are actually surprisingly accurate.

3. Dirty Fork
One of the few Python sketches with a true punchline – announced, in typical self-referential style with both a voice over and caption saying, “And Now… The Punchline!” Naturally, the punchline is not up to the level of the rest of the sketch, which features an escalating series of absurdity, after a restaurant diner (Chapman) complains about a dirty fork. By the end of the sketch, the restaurant manager (Idle) has committed fork seppuku, the chef (Cleese) has to be restrained from attacking the patrons with a cleaver and the waiter (Palin) is clutching a war wound in his head.

2a. The Four Yorkshiremen
I’d completed the list when I suddenly remembered this one. I refuse, absolutely, to lose the Black Knight, so have just gone ahead and inserted this in the appropriate place. On the other hand, it isn’t technically a Python sketch, since it was written for At Last The 1948 Show, with the writer-performers there including Tim Brooke-Taylor and Marty Feldman, as well as Cleese and Chapman. However, its presence in Live at the Hollywood Bowl and elsewhere has made it part of Python canon, though other enactments have included participants from Rowan Atkinson to Alan Rickman.

2. Nudge Nudge
Eric Idle plays the over-friendly stranger in the pub, who slides up to Terry Jones, enjoying a quiet, solitary half-pint, and proceeds to ask a series of questions about his wife that gradually become more and more innuendo-laden. Idle tries to appear as the man of the world, but the punchline – as in Dirty Fork, a rarity – completely shatters that illusion. It was originally written for Ronnie Barker, but was rejected. The dead-pan delivery by Jones of his responses, as he (deliberately?) refuses to see what Idle is getting at, is what really makes the sketch so memorable.

1. Dead Parrot
Not just the greatest sketch in Python history, but possibly also the greatest sketch of all tine. An it’s not just me who thinks so, as the sketch topped the IFC/Nerve list of the 50 All-Time Greatest, ahead of Who’s on First? and the entire output of Saturday Night Live. It may also be John Cleese’s finest moment, and given the sublime wonder which was Fawlty Towers, that in itself is quite an achievement: he works himself up into a frothing fury, in the face of Palin’s relentless denials that there is anything wrong with the obviously-demised avian. Has been performed in a number of ways by the pair since: for your amusement, here’s a link to one where Palin can’t stop laughing. But, for your amusement, here is the original version, in its entirety. Enjoy.

And Doctor Who did begat Torchwood…and between those two and Primeval, Saturday nights on BBC America were pretty well packed, and verily, did we praise Tivo to the heavens. While we started somewhere in the middle of the fourth season of Who – leading to a fair amount of “Well, that would probably make sense if we’d seen all the previous series” – we were lucky enough to begin Torchwood at the beginning, which certainly helped. Two series of tracking the near-immortal Captain Jack Harkness (John Barrowman) and his team followed, as they battled aliens and alien technology from their secret base, the “hub”, in the center of Cardiff [which is basically the UK version of Buffy‘s Hellmouth, where all the weird shit happens. Makes sense to me].

It took a little while for the series to find its feet and become its own master, but it got there, and in time for the five-night event which was Children of Earth, with only a couple of weeks between its broadcast in the UK and here in Arizona. Quite long enough, unfortunately, for Twitter spoilers to provide more information than I would rather have had, but such is media life in the 21st century. It’s hard to imagine anything like, say, The Sixth Sense, being so successful today – by mid-Saturday afternoon, the twist would be all over everyone’s Facebook wall. Well, those who have a Facebook, which still excludes me, I am pleased to report. If you want to ‘friend’ me, you need to do it to my face, dammit.

Anyway. Children of Earth starts with every child in the world simultaneously stopping, repeating “We are coming” for a couple of minutes, then resuming as if nothing had happened. Needless to say, this freaks out the adults, and things get worse as the incident repeats – adding first the word “back”, then “tomorrow” to the message. The Torchwood team swing into action, but it turns out that the British government know more about this than they are prepared to let on, and Torchwood’s offer of help is rudely rebuffed. And that’s “rudely” as in “we’re going to implant a bomb inside Capt. Jack, and let him blow up the hub, then terminate with extreme prejudice any survivors.” Terribly un-British, actually.

The government have received instructions from “the 456” – an entity? a group? an alien race? – on the construction of an apparatus, and are building it on the thirteenth floor of a Whitehall building. There’s also a single adult who is affected, and appears to be a survivor of a mass abduction of some kind that happened forty years ago. So, what the heck is going on? What do the 456 want? Why are Torchwood – the people best equpped to handle the crisis – apparently now targeted for execution? It makes for an effective combination of 24 and The X-Files, combining the running around and political shenanigans of the former, with the extra-terrestrial/supernatural aspects of the latter.

Holding it all together is Harkness, a man for whom the phrase, “You cannot stop Captain Jack, you can only hope to contain him,” appears to have been designed. He cannot be killed, due to an incident in a previous Doctor Who episode, which left him “a fixed point in time and space.” This kind of thing could be lethal to any tension – when death loses its sting, where’s the threat? – yet, the writers still found ways to imperil Jack, as noted above. Returning from that was an impressive feat, with our hero at one point looking more like skinless Frank out of Hellraiser. His immortality is also in contrast to the very real mortality of his team – half of which didn’t make it out of the second series and here… Well, let’s just say, I wouldn’t sell them any life insurance.

Less successful is the gay relationship between Jack and Ianto (Gareth David-Lloyd). While not a problem in itself (hello – Xena fan!), in the first episode in particular it seemed forced and self-conscious: “Look at us! We’re gay!” As in Xena, when the writing drifts from what makes the show successful – and this is an action/SF show, not a soap opera – it weakens things.  While likely inevitable, with both Barrowman and creator Russell T. Davies being cheerfully out of the closet. I tend to think that when you make entertainment for the public at large, it’s self-indulgent to put your own sexual preference, shared by perhaps 5% of the population, to the forefront. It’s notable that the series episodes not written by Davies are less inclined to take this approach.

It didn’t help that Ianto came over as, in many ways, irritating and clingy – quite the opposite of the kind of person, male or female, with whom you’d expect Jack to take up. Say what you like about the ambivalent Capt. James Hart – and Barrowman sucking face with Spike from Buffy was certainly one of the more memorable images of recent genre TV – you could see the attraction. Ianto basically makes the tea for Torchwood. It’s another echo of Xena, where the relationship between the heroine and Gabrielle was fundamentally wrong – not because the characters were the same sex, but purely because Gabrielle was a whiny little bitch. Ianto also stretched our credulity to the limit, when he somehow outruns the British army in a fully-laden bulldozer.

Fortunately, the rest of the script largely makes up for it. In Gwen (Eve Myles), you have perhaps the closest British TV has got to an action heroine since Joanna Lumley in The New Avengers. Flying through the air, gun in each hand…and did I mention she’s pregnant? While not a ‘classical beauty’, you can easily see why her husband is utterly-devoted to her [much as I am to Chris…]. Much credit must also go to Frobisher (Peter Capaldi), a civil servant who finds himself at the center of the storm; the decisions which he makes end up turning him into a victim, in the most bleak way imaginable.

Indeed, the show is particularly chilling in its bureaucratic plausability. When it becomes clear what the 456 want – it’s horrific, both for what they want, and the reasons why they want it – and that there’s no way out of delivering it, what results is the kind of conversation that must have happened in Nazi Germany. How do we get the Jews to the camps? How do we dispose of the bodies? Something unthinkable – not just being discussed, but reduced to its banal practicalities. The 456 may be the villains, but the politicians don’t exactly come out of this smelling like roses.

The deeper a hole a plot digs for its characters, the harder it is to climb out of it – and the hole here was bordering on the Grand Canyon-sized. The machinations required to get out did have an air of deus ex machina in their convenience – not as bad as, say, Independence Day, Signs or War of the Worlds, because there was a price which had to be paid for them, and it was not at all negligible. It may be the end of the series – the team gutted, their headquarters destroyed and their leader…well, he won’t be doing any leading for a bit, let’s just say – but if so, it’s an entirely fitting way to go out.

In the late seventies, I remember watching Quatermass on ITV, and being totally gripped, albeit as a 13-year old kid. Thirty years later, Children of Earth had almost the same impact, an impressive feat after three more decades of cynicism have gone under the bridge. It certainly ranks among the most gripping, effective short series of genre television to come out of Britain in a very long time.

Like most people of my age, Doctor Who was one of my favourite shows while I was growing up. My earliest memories of it involve Jon Pertwee, the fourth doctor, and his car Bessie, but to me, the show’s golden era followed in the wake of Tom Baker, who reigned supreme over Saturday evening television in the late seventies and early eighties. [If you want to get specific, the peak was probably Season 17 in 1979-80, with Douglas Adams acting as script editor and Lalla Ward as Romana – the latter being an early schoolboy crush of mine, I vaguely recall]. Interest faded slowly thereafter, though I have some fond memories of Sylvester McCoy, the last before the series went on hiatus at the very end of the eighties.

While I watched the 1996 attempt to relaunch the series, starring Paul McGann, I was supremely underwhelmed, and so didn’t pay any attention to the revival of Doctor Who when it came back to the Beeb in March 2005. Some things are best left to be remembered solely through the rose-tinted glasses of childhood nostalgia, where the bravely limited – and that’s being kind – effects are not such a distraction. Yes, I’m looking at you, Blake’s 7. However, over the festive season, BBC America scheduled a marathon of all the Christmas specials; by chance I stumbled onto the 2007 Voyage of the Damned. I didn’t realize at the time that, when originally screened in Britain, the episode was the second most-watched program of the year, and gave the show its highest ratings in almost thirty years. Having nothing much better to do, I simply gave it a chance, not expecting much at all.

For once, I was wrong and popular culture was resoundingly right. The episode took the standard disaster movie – most obviously, The Poseidon Adventure – and twisted the clichés into strengths, located in a futureverse with imagination oozing from ever scene. The writing and performances were both superb, even Kylie Minogue managing to be more convincing than irritating, and the justly-maligned effects from the original show were gone, in favour of high-quality CGI. The body-count was surprisingly high, but what really mattered were that these were deaths that you cared about, even of characters we’d never seen before. Death is something rarely shown with such harshness on American TV (except as a desperate ratings ploy), but the poignancy of the final moments, where the Doctor thinks he can save someone, only to have the hope snatched away… Okay, I’m hooked. Can the regular series live up to this?

Short answer: yes. Albeit with the caveat that this is based only on what we’ve seen, which is most of Season Four. Led by Russell T Davies and Steven Moffat, the creators have crafted a marvellous body of work, which takes the strengths of the original show, but doesn’t attempt to slavishly ape it, acknowledging that television and culture have both changed radically since the previous incarnation. Gone are the multi-part episodes with cliffhangers at the end of each segment, replaced by stories which generally stand alone, though with occasional over-riding arcs. There are occasionally ones which spread over two parts, but the flexibility this offers, in contrast to the previously-fixed format, allows the writers more scope. I would pit the two-part “Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead” up against any SF feature film of the past decade, and it would stand up well.

At the core is David Tennant, who is absolutely pitch-perfect, capturing the essential humanity of the Doctor and his absolute alien-ness, both of which are required for the role. Striking the balance is hard [even Tom Baker probably leaned towards the latter], but Tennant does it with effortless ease. You can see why his assistants would follow him, literally, to the ends of the universe, and his benign nature, along with his vastly superior intellect, are never in doubt. It’s a beguiling combination. The companions are a good deal less passive than they used to be too – I seem to recall them spending a lot of time being rescued in the original series, but the new breed are generally competent, self-reliant and smart. Let’s face it, if the show can turn the previously-irritating Catherine Tate into a sympathetic and likable character as Donna Noble, they’re clearly doing something right.

Yet neither Doctor nor companions are mandatory. Consecutive episodes in the fourth season had first one, then the other, all but removed – first, the Doctor went on a solo sightseeing expedition, which went horribly wrong after a presence possessed one of his fellow passengers. then Donna was diverted into an alternate universe, where she turned left instead of right at a junction, and never met the Doctor. That way led to disaster befalling the entire universe, for reasons which became clear in the season finale. It helps that backing up the main characters are just about every famous British actor you can think of, from Felicity Kendall through to Sir Derek Jacobi. I was particularly pleased to see Bernard Cribbins [once I got past the ‘Is he still alive?’ reaction], as I remember him playing an assistant to Peter Cushing in one of the two movies made in the sixties, more than 40 years previously. It’s another way in which the show is aware of its history, without being a slave to it.

However, I have to admit that some of the monsters and adversaries no longer have quite the chill which they created in my childhood. When I heard the phrase, “Ex-TER-min-ate!”, for the first time in forever, I immediately flashed back to a seven-year old kid, peering out from behind a cushion at the TV. I had to explain to Chris the sheer impact of the creatures on my fragile young psyche. However, it’s fair to say that they did not quite live up to my fevered rememberings, and Chris was notably unimpressed, describing them as being more like irritated vacuum-cleaners than anything. I can hardly argue with this as an assessment, despite the upgrades which meant that their plans to conquer the universe would no longer be defeated – as depicted in a famous cartoon – by a flight of stairs. While it’s hard to imagine Doctor Who without them, this is probably one aspect of the show that would perhaps have been best left concealed in the midsts of time. [The image, right, of former companion Katy Manning, suggests I wasn’t the only one for whom Daleks hold no terror…]

All told though, the finale of the series more than lived up to expectations – you have to admire an arch-villain whose plan involves not just the destruction of Earth, or even the entire universe, but also of all parallel universes as well. Think big, that’s what I always say. It’s probably not giving away much to say that the plan was eventually foiled, though with enough of a twist on it to prove largely satisfactory. We’re not just looking forward to season five, we’re already seriously contemplatin splashing out for the first three series on DVD. Though a dark cloud on the horizon is the departure of Tennant as the Doctor after the filming of four specials this season: it’s hard to imagine anyone else taking over the role. However, if the writing remains as consistently excellent as we’ve seen, then we’re confident the series will continue going from strength to strength. I certainly wouldn’t bet against the show enjoying its 50th anniversary, in 2013.

Comments
Mike L: Only *thinking* of getting the first three series on DVD? Rush! Rush to your nearest stockist! I say that as a confirmed hater of old style Who, but the revival has been magnificent. The first series really converted me, it was respectful to the old show but happy to modernise at the expense of the fanboys. Best episodes:

• Dalek – Series 1.
• The Empty Child/The Doctor Dances – Series 1
• The Girl in the Fireplace – Series 2
• Human Nature/Family of Blood – Series 3.
• Blink – Series 3

Most of those are Steven Moffat episodes, which bodes well for the future of the show. I think Eccleston was easily the match for Tennant – without spoiling things too much, there was a deep inner sadness to the Series 1 doctor and by the time you get to “Dalek”, you know why. Although Eccleston is a Serious Actor, he played it perfectly especially considering the pressure they were under bringing it back. He teams up perfectly with… ah, that would be spoiling the fun.

That series and series 2 really show off the Doctor/Rose relationship – plus the fact that Billie Piper is actually a decent actress rather than a teen pop flash in the pan.

We spent most of the week emptying TV off the Tivo – hence the lack of movie reviews on the site this week. We don’t watch much television, generally. Well, actually we do, but in terms of series we actively follow, rather than randomly pausing on while channel-surfing, there aren’t that many. [A fondness for Discovery Channel’s Destroyed in Seconds – a title presumably used because “Shit Getting Blown Up” was deemed inappropriate – hardly counts] Here are the five shows which were put on permanent record as far as our Tivo was concerned in 2008.

5. The Unit. I am not quite sure how we managed to miss the first three series, but then, we managed to ignore 24 on its initial screening. Life’s too short to watch everything, I guess. It was the realization that David Mamet was the creator which finally lured, first Chris and then me, in: while somewhat variable in the quality of the individual episodes, it has a good enough hit-rate to keep us interested. It’s centered on a special forces group under Col. Ryan (Robert Patric), which engage on covert missions of counter-terrorism, etc. around the world, with all knowledge officially disavowed.

This bears some resemblance to 24, not least the presence of President Palmer (Dennis Haysbert) as the sergeant-major in charge of one of the squads. While some of the stories are rather silly [the one about escorting an Afghani bride to her wedding was not the writers’ finest hour], when they get a good topic, they can generate a degree of tension rarely seen on television. It does an admirable job of generally avoiding stereotypes for ‘the enemy,’ even if there is little or no doubt who the good guys are. If you’re looking for hidden depths, this is probably not the show, yet as straightforward action-adventure in a post-9/11 world, it’s well put-together and executed.

4. Life on Mars. I never saw any of the British version, so I can’t say whether the American remake is better, worse or basically the same. On its own merits, however, it works very nicely, though it did take a couple of episodes for me to warm to the show. Cop Sam Tyler (Jason O’Mara) is in an accident, and wakens to find himself apparently back in 1973 – he’s still a policeman, but it’s a very different world under his new boss, played by Harvey Keitel, in an interesting echo of his Bad Lieutenant role. Tyler has the chance to revisit his own childhood, and address some unresolved issues from his past, but is he really alive in the 70’s or is it all just some kind of hallucination?

Initially, this seemed not much more than an exercise in unabashed 70’s nostalgia, with a soundtrack apparently designed to sell CDs as much as anything. However, Tyler is an endearing character, and it’s easy to see why he behaves the way he does – he loyally refuses to deny the future, causing his colleagues to regard him as eccentric, at best. It’s an interesting study in how much our society has changed over 35 years, in almost every way, and one suspects this holds true for Britain, just as much as America.

3. Fringe. JJ Abrams has a somewhat spotty track record: Alias used to be a favorite, before imploding spectacularly in the last couple of seasons, and we never got into Lost at all. However, with Fringe, he seems to have returned to form, with a nicely-layered tale of conspiracy, which owes more than a little to early X Files. FBI agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) is assigned to a special group investigating a series of unexplained events, apparently connected in what’s called “The Pattern.” This brings her into contact with mad scientist Dr. Walter Bishop (John Noble) – and I mean ‘mad’ literally, since he has to get bailed out of the mental hospital by his son. There’s also a mega-corporation, Massive Dynamic, who may be responsible for The Pattern, and certainly know more than they’re admitting.

This kind of thing is better suited for a TV series than a movie, where everything has to be wrapped up in two hours. The authors can dole out information more slowly, keeping the paranoia bubbling. Of course, this can’t be sustained forever: eventually, they have to resolve things – that’s where Chris Carter went wrong in The X-Files, and he’s never really recovered. Fringe is no different, but if anyone can pull it off, Abrams probably can. We’ll cross that when we come to it, and in the meantime, just enjoy the show [while looking over our shoulders] and Dr. Bishop’s endearing line in comments: after two decades in the loony-bin, he’s fascinated by the most everyday things, and has little sense of the social niceties. Here’s a typical example: “Oh! I just got an erection… Don’t worry, it’s got nothing to do with your state of undress. I simply need to urinate.”

2. Primeval. Ah, BBC America, how do we love thee. Well, actually, the bulk of the programming appear to involve interior decoration, antiques or Monty Python re-runs [not that there’s anything wrong with the last mentioned, of course], but occasionally there’s a gem, such as this Stargate-like show, in which portals open up, allowing creatures from other times to enter the modern world. Curiously – and presumably due to budgetary restrictions – these only ever seem to appear around the Home Counties of England, but such artifice aside, you can hardly do anything but love a show in which an ancient elephant rampages its way up and down a motorway. Gives new meaning to the phrase “mammoth traffic jam”, I guess…

The idea is broad enough to give an almost infinite range of possibilities, with the animals covering a range from the cute [a flying lizard called Rex, and a flock of dodos] through to the seriously nasty, perhaps most memorably a predator from the future, though the carnivorous worms that appeared in a tower-block also merit consideration there. The creator has compared the show to The A-Team – a curious parallel, yet one I can see, based on the disparate backgrounds of the characters. We particularly love Sir James Lester (Ben Miller) who may be the most sarcastic git on television.

1. Dexter. I read the book on which the series was based a little while back; it’s radically different, with Dexter being a much colder and distant character. I don’t think they could really do the show that way, and the lovable guy we see here perhaps makes things even more subversive. He’s charming, witty, personable… and just happens to have this overwhelming need to kill people occasionally, though has successfully channeled this so that he only kills those who have slipped through the nets of justice. Michael C. Hall is perfect in the title role – I can’t imagine anyone else playing Dexter – and the raft of supporting characters behind them help craft the most unmissable show of the year.

The second season did veer off into some questionable territory, but its third year has returned to full strength. There’s an intriguing premise of a partner in crime for Dexter – and it’s the Assistant DA Miguel Prado (Jimmy Smits), whose brother Dexter killed, albeit in self-defense. While Dexter operates strictly under his self-imposed code, only targeting those where evidence of their crimes is impeccable, Prado doesn’t have the necessary restraint, and is much more volatile, inevitably transforming him gradually from an ally into a threat. The last episode of the series is on Sunday night, and as Showtime have already contracted for the fourth and fifth seasons, it looks like we’ll be following this for some time to come.

Dir: John Cassar
Star: Kiefer Sutherland, Cherry Jones, Colm Feore, Robert Carlyle

Ah, Jack Bauer; how much we have missed you. If it seems like a long time since the last episode, that’s because it has been: due to the writer’s strike, this inter-series special premiered almost eighteen months to the day after Season Six ended with Jack recovering the nukes and preventing war with Russia. Just an average day for our favourite counter-terrorist. Unfortunately, even he was able to do nothing about the writers’ strike, which began in October 2007. Although eight episodes of the seventh series were already in the can, the producers opted to postpone the show. Redemption was chosen to bridge the gap; an early draft of the story for Season Seven had Bauer in Africa, getting caught up in things there, Black Hawk Down style, but the costs of filming an entire 24-episode season there proved prohibitive.

The idea was transformed into Redemption; a two-hour special which explains what happened after the end of the previous series, and sets up the new one, introducing us to a number of new characters. In a significant diversion, Jack (Sutherland) is no longer part of CTU: he has been travelling the work, but seems to have found some measure of peace working at a school in the fictional country of Sangala, alongside another veteran, Carl Benton (Carlyle). However, peace is temporary, as a military coup led by General Juma (Tony Todd) threatens to turn the pupils into unwilling soldiers.

It’s up to Bauer and Benton to get the kids to the American embassy, through the fighting, so they can be sent to asylum in the States. Meanwhile, in the US, a new President, Senator Allison Taylor (Jones), has been elected and is about to be inaugurated. The choice of a woman is interesting; 24 had a fictional black president, David Palmer, six years before the nation elected one, so this must give Hilary Clinton hope for 2016 or thereabouts, even though she seems to be a Republican [assuming the one she replaces President Daniels was a Democrat, as he assumed power after Wayne Palmer – David’s brother, who became President too – was incapacitated by a bomb-blast in Season Six]. Barack Obama, however, will be hoping life is not imitating art, since both black Presidents in the show have met untimely fates.

A friend of her son stumbles across evidence implicating Jonas Hodges (Jon Voight) in the coup, though this thread is clearly designed for much greater exploration in Season Seven. Similarly, more of a scene-setter than anything else, is the angle that Bauer is now wanted for questioning before a Congressional committee, to answer accusations of torture and other un-American activities. He initially has no intention of complying with such a request, but as ever in 24, things have a nasty habit of changing in a flash. I don’t think it’s giving away much to say that Season Seven will find him back on American soil, not entirely at liberty, though I doubt that situation will remain the case for long.

Perhaps as significant as what was in Redemption, was what not in it, most obviously, CTU. This may have been something of a reaction to the sixth series, where it seemed that the writers couldn’t come up with any new threads for the agency [frankly, it seems they ran out of ideas for the show entirely, after the suitcase nukes were recovered, around hour 16] and the department has been disbanded. Fortunately, not all the characters were written out, with abrasive tech goddess Chloe O’Brien (Mary Lynn Rajskub), among the most memorable of the program’s subsidiary characters, still taking part in Season Seven.

So, is Redemption any good? Yes, with some qualifiers: being a reboot of the franchise as much as it is a continuation, it takes quite some time to get going, having to establish an entirely new set of characters and situations: Bauer and outgoing President Daniels (Powers Boothe) are almost the only person you’ve seen before [unless you count Todd, since he played a cop in Series Three!]. It’s almost forty minutes before Jack Bauer kills anyone, f’heavens sake – given the tally was about fifty, one way or another, in Season Six. Normal service is, however, swiftly resumed as he takes out a number of insurgents as they attack the school; while eventually, even Jacks has to succumb to being out-numbered, this is merely a pause in activities, before Bauer takes someone out with the back of his knee. That’s how hardcore a man he is. Chuck Norris wears Jack Bauer pyjamas, as the saying goes.

From there, the film continues in the style to which we have become accustomed; in real time, with cutting between Bauer and the other characters, to cover moments when nothing much is happening. Obviously, in two hours, there isn’t the same scope for plot complexity as in a normal series, and the sequences in the United States are almost irrelevant, little more than place setting for things to come. Their purpose mostly seems to be to allow for some rather heavy-handed product-placement on behalf of sponsoring companies such as Cisco, Nextel and Hyundai – a little harder to do in the African bush, where Jack is stuck, without the ability to reposition satellites or call in backup at a moment’s notice.

Still, that makes for a lean, stripped-down Bauer, who admirably demonstrates that his own resources are more than up to the task. These scenes play somewhere between The Wild Geese and Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, as the hero has to guide his young charges through unfriendly countryside, enemy forces, bureaucratic obstruction and land-mines. [Fortunately, there are no mountain lions to be seen… 🙂 Sorry, inside fan joke] The UN certainly doesn’t come out of this looking very effective: their official is, at best a coward, prompting Jack to taunt him as the soldiers approach the school, “Why don’t you go hide in the shelter with the rest of the children?” He doesn’t get much more impressive from there: meanwhile, the program featured an advert in which Kiefer Sutherland urges you to stop malaria, and the DVD has a documentary on the plight of child soldiers. Hmm. I’m prepared to bet the UN have done more in these areas than CTU ever did.

Mixed messages aside, it might not count as the best 24 ever, but it is still an improvement on 90% of the television out there, and whetted our appetite nicely for the long-delayed Season Seven, finally scheduled to start on January 11. With both Bond and Batman having benefited from a reboot of their franchise, a third B seems intent on joining them. “It’s been a while… It’s worth the wait,” proclaims the trailer below. Having been following Jack’s adventures since all the way back in Series One, let’s hope so. I’ll bring the popcorn.