30 Day TV Meme - Day 08

Day 08 - A show everyone should watch


I am going to stifle my urge to preach about Masterpiece Theatre and the freaking news. I really have to mix it up and not say The West Wing, even though it might teach people something (good) about Washington. There is nothing on the air right now that I find vital. To consider the all time greats…well, it is hard to pick one show. What I would like people to appreciate is innovation. Everyone is talking about Lost right now, and that is a great example of a show that took big risks to do something different and it paid off in a big way. They fooled around with the very formula of the television drama. The show that I suggest started the trend is 24.

I’ve been griping about 24 a lot lately, as the Decline and Fall has been tragic. But that show re-imagined the way a story could be told. The way an audience might get to know and care about its characters. In its prime, I couldn’t watch a marathon session because the tension was too much too take at one time. I used to scream at the television like it was a football game.

Robert Bianco, the TV critic at USA Today said, “But there has never been a show quite like the "real-time"-driven 24 —or a character quite like the tortured, torturing Jack Bauer, a world-savior superhero beautifully layered with real-world emotions by Kiefer Sutherland. And odds are we'll never see their likes again. An idea can be endlessly copied, but it can be original only once.”

I think everyone should watch the first season of 24.