In the US: Mondays, 8/7c, Fox In the UK: Tuesdays, 9pm, Fox UK. Starts February 14th
When 24 first aired, it was a revolutionary series in many ways. The conceit that the show played out in real-time over a full 24-hour day in 24, one-hour episodes was original to say the least and took serialised storytelling to the logical limit. It also featured convention-breaking direction, rescuing split-screen shots from their 70s cemetery.
More importantly, it was notionally a Conservative TV show. Airing just a few weeks after 9/11, 24 could have horribly misjudged the public mood. But a daring tale of how honourable family man Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), a former special forces soldier turned counter-terrorist agent, was able to fight back against the terrorists and win proved to be the tonic the American people needed at the time and was immensely popular. True, his tendency towards extreme ruthlessness and even torture, which creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochrane had piloted even more extremely on La Femme Nikita, caused liberal apoplexy now it was on network TV, but it was something the audience didn’t really care about.
The show changed with the times. It adapted to the Obama years’ move away from waterboarding et al and was even able to fudge the shift of network TV away from 24-episode runs of shows to 12/13-episode runs through the simple use of a 12-hour delayed epilogue. However, its tendency to shock viewers by killing off much-loved cast members at regular intervals grew predictable and ultimately led to there being no much-loved cast members left except Kiefer Sutherland several seasons before the end.
Which must have posed a bit of a quandary for the producers when they were planning a new season of 24, because Kiefer – he no want to do 24 no more. He doing Designated Survivor. He happy to produce but he no happy to act.
Hence 24: Legacy, which copies format and general attitude and has some links to the original, but absolutely no Jack Bauer. Instead, we have Eric Carter (The Walking Dead‘s Corey Hawkins), a retired US army ranger, whose unit killed a terrorist leader. Despite his having a new job and new identity, the terrorists have found him and the rest of his unit, and want them all dead – although not before whichever one of them has a very important McGuffin reveals where it is.
Hawkins has to find out what it is, where it is and evade and stop the terrorists, with only the help of Mirando Otto – the former Counter Terrorist Unit chief and potential next First Lady to potential President Jimmy Smits. Because being 24 there’s a mole. Shocker, hey?
Indeed, despite the entirely new cast, the new show revisits many of the original’s traits. There’s snarking between computer technicians (including the cousin of one of 24‘s most famous techies). There’s also all manner of insane – and insanely stupid – twists and ideas, such as Carter asking a violent gang member who hates him to look after his wife.
One new innovation that builds on the previous show is that rather than having Middle Eastern terrorists in the even numbered seasons, European terrorists in odd-numbered seasons, there are both Middle Eastern and European terrorists to deal with this time round. Yes, everyone – double bubble!
Problem here is that the European terrorists are from Chechnya, so are inevitably going to be Muslims, just like their Middle Eastern counterparts. The question is, coming as it does on the heels of President Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, has 24: Legacy guessed the Zeitgeist with its Islamophobia as accurately as 24 did with its first season, or is it marching out of step with its potentially horrified viewers?
Time will have to tell on that one, I guess. But purely on a kinetic level, the show does at least manage to maintain the levels of adrenaline that its predecessor did, giving us action scenes aplenty shot by directors who know what they’re doing. Eric Carter is no Jack Bauer, but even Jack Bauer wasn’t really Jack Bauer until season two, and character development was never 24‘s strong point – all that really mattered was what Bauer was prepared to do and why. It’s actually surprisingly easy to slot someone completely different into the same role and for everything to still carry on exactly the same as before.
24: Legacy‘s plot is outright bobbins, with so many holes in it you could use it as a string vest. Characters are thinly drawn and exist only to perform specific plot functions. Its understanding of technology is laughable. Its unpredicatability is predictable. Its attitudes are borderline racist or maybe even just flat out racist.
CBS’s policy of iterating TV shows – taking existing TV shows then making minor changes to them until it perfects their formulae – isn’t without success. After all, Intelligencemay have sucked but CBS’s next iteration of it, Limitless, was actually jolly good.
However, I have to question the thinking behind not only commissioning Superior Donuts but airing it just before its antecedent, 2 Broke Girls. Does America really need not just one but two baking goods-based, multi-camera sitcoms featuring a diverse, blue-collar cast as they try to make money in a tough market? On a Monday night?
Yet here we are with Superior Donuts. How curious.
So has this iteration improved on the previous generation? Not hugely, since it lacks Kat Dennings for one thing. But Superior Donuts is at least funnier and less racist, and has more interesting things to say about millennials, the older generation and business than 2 Broke Girls does.
Here, we have old hand Judd Hirsch (Taxi, Numb3rs, Forever, Dear John (USA)) playing Arthur, the gruff owner of a small Chicago doughnut shop having to deal with the fact his neighbourhood is gentrifying and he doesn’t know how to change with the times. Then along comes millennial Jermaine Fowler looking for work. He understands the way of the Twitter and the Instagram and the Yelp, and he also has a few innovations in mind for doughnuts. Soon, a beautiful cross-generational, cross-racial working partnership is born.
With Superior Donuts, CBS has taken a leaf from CBC Canada’s book in order to get to grips with diversity, copying its Kim’s Conveniencemove by adapting a play, although not one quite as beloved as Kim’s Convenience was. Indeed, some of the dialogue still reeks of both the original play and the theatre itself, with a reference to Jean-Michel Basquiat in the first episode, no less.
Dotted around the shop is a diverse group. We have two cops (Married with Children‘sKatey Sagal and Third Watch‘s Darien Sills-Evans), a slightly evil Iraqi refugee-turned-real estate developer and dry cleaner (Maz Jobrani), and unemployed factory worker David Koechner (Anchorman). There’s also a blonde rich girl (again, this is airing just before 2 Broke Girls – do they think no one’s going to notice?), played by Anna “daughter of Mikhail” Baryshnikov, who has to endure the eternal rich liberal pain of not being able to experience proper oppression herself.
There is a tragi-comic quality to all the characters, from Sagal’s slight corruption through Jobrani’s memories of growing up in Iraq (“When I was young, they dropped mustard gas on my village and it burned my oesophagus… Now, if I lick a battery, it will kill me.”) to Koechner’s desperation to do any job, whether that’s toileting dogs or donating blood and semen. Jobrani is constantly trying to get Hirsch to sell him the doughnut shop, and with Hirsch a widower and slow to adapt to changing times, it’s a constant possibility.
The show also plays with race. A lot. It just about gets away with it in a way that 2 Broke Girls really doesn’t, since it plays less on stereotypes and more on societal rules. It also helps that Jobrani is the main instigator and foil for the humour – is it okay for Jobrani to call Fowler “the black guy” if he also calls Hirsch “the Jew” and worries that if he gets angry he’ll “sound a bit terroristy”?
All of which makes Superior Donuts seem a lot better than it is. Remember, this is a show that devotes half of its second episode to a quest for the WiFi password in Jobrani’s shop so that Sills-Evans can watch Doctor Who on his phone – sample dialogue: “Do you want to watch Doctor Who? Season 24 is the best.” “No, but after you’ve watched it, I’ll tell you what a vagina looks like.”
Still, it’s a notable improvement on its predecessor, will probably both appeal and educate the pensioners who watch it, and has more heart than the average CBS sitcom for sure. But a show that thinks season 24 of Doctor Who is the best? I’m out.
It’s “What have you been watching?”, my chance to tell you what movies and TV I’ve been watching recently and your chance to recommend anything you’ve been watching.
I’ve been having to fix stupid email servers for most of the day, so you’ve been cheated out of a review of the first episode of 24: Legacy, I’m afraid. Sorry about that, but as episode two is airing tonight, it seems more appropriate to do a review of them both tomorrow.
Last week, I reviewed the first episodes of Riverdale (US: The CW; UK: Netflix) and Powerless (US: NBC), and coming later in the week are reviews of not just 24: Legacy but the first episodes of two other new US shows, Superior Donuts and Training Day, maybe Legion as well, and an Australian show that starts on Thursday – Newton’s Law. Guess what that’s about. No, nothing to do with changes in momentum or the like.
After the jump, a look at the latest episodes of Canada’s Cardinal, the UK’sFortitude and the US’s DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, The Flash, Lucifer, The Magicians, Man Seeking Woman, Riverdale and Timeless. But I did watch the first episode of another show:
Detroiters (US: Comedy Central) A couple of Detroit-based lads starting out in advertising hussle the best way they can to get work, particularly from the local car manufacturers. Trouble is, they’re a bit under-motivated.
Despite being on Comedy Central, Detroiters does start off surprisingly smartly with a nice camaraderie between the two leads. The fact it was set somewhere other than the coasts or Chicago was also a plus pointing. I was thinking this could be at least the new How To Make It In America but with a few jokes.
Then they spent what felt like about five minutes throwing things at a glass door to see if it would break and I realised I was in Comedy Central stoner territory yet again.
Next!
And if you were wondering why I didn’t have much to say for myself on Wednesday, it’s because I was at… the theatre!
Amadeus (National Theatre, London) Peter Schaffer’s play about 18th century Italian composer Salieri’s claim to have murdered Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the classics of modern theatre. No mere historical retelling, it gives us a man inspired by God to do great works but upon discovering that He has instead chosen to give musical genius to the foul-mouthed man-child Mozart, dedicates himself to the undoing of both God and His instrument.
The last time I saw it staged was at the Old Vic with David Suchet over a decade ago, so I was intrigued to see what they did with it this time. Ladies and gentlemen – it’s a comedy and not a very subtle one at that. Copious ham from both leads – Lucian Msamati as Salieri and Adam Gillen as Mozart – mean the play loses considerable depth in terms of the characters and it’s hard to feel sympathy for either of them. With a few exceptions, the supporting cast do little to ameliorate the problem, either.
That aside, it’s a very fine production, far more musical than I’ve seen before, with an orchestra and singers on stage and as much a part of the performance as the actors. A few minor acts of pretension (the Viennese having mobile phones) can’t distract from the quality of the direction in the rest of the performance.
But it’s a pale shadow – how could it be otherwise? – of 1984’s Amadeus, which is comfortably in my all-time Top 3 movies, so really, you should watch that as soon as possible if you haven’t already. Although not the Director’s Cut: to misquote Inspector Morse‘s classic Masonic Mysteries episode, “I won’t have it in the house.”
