Enhanced Rehabilitation

“What’ll happen next? At a guess: Jack running, Jack shouting, Jack struggling to convince his busybody superiors that he knows the truth, Jack somehow phoning the president and convincing him that he knows the truth, guns, double-crosses, red herrings, Stephen Fry wobbling his jowls around like the avuncular landlord of a provincial Oxfordshire pub, half-hearted ethical questions about torture and a bittersweet ending. And me, bouncing up and down and clapping my hands with glee whenever anything happens. God, it’s great to have 24 back, isn’t it?” — It would be optimistic to say that 24 had been ejected from the TV canon, but the last four years have not been kind to its legacy. It’s a show about torture and a show that loves torture; before it came back, it seemed like it would be remembered as an entertaining series that also supplied an artistic tailwind for an endless war. But: In the first episode of the new season, the torturers are the bad guys, and Jack Bauer wants to stop them. So we can all move on.