08.16 | Can't imagine this'll delay filming at all...

"I had a soda in my hand and I tripped on a cable, but I was scared to death of our wardrobe lady if I spilled any of it on me, so I didn't break my fall."

08.15 | Possible return?

Any chance that Gary Matheson the psycho dad will be back? After all, Kim shot him twice, but we didn't see him die. He'd be a great character to bring back, too. After all, he did book a flight to Mexico in episode eight, and - according to which sources you believe - it looks like the baddies in the next series will be from South America...

08.13 | Your verdict...

The official BBC2 '24' website is letting viewers vote on their best bits of the second season. There's categories like 'Favourite Character' (Jack Bauer, natch), 'Favourite Villian', 'Sexiest Female', etc. Why don't you click over to there now and have your say? And while you're at it, why not stick down 24weblog.com as your favourite '24' fan site?

Don't feel like I'm pressuring you, or anything, though.

08.13 | It's like looking at a member of the Human League

08.12 | Which '24' Character are you?

Jack Bauer
Which '24' Character are you?

08.12 | Win '24' season two on DVD

The Daily Star's website is running a competition to win one of ten copies of the '24' season two DVD box set. The question is terribly easy, but you have to register on the site to enter.

08.11 | Let's look at what you could have won...

Remember how after the penultimate episode I made some predictions about what would happen in the finale? Well, let's see how I did, eh:

President Palmer will get reinstated, otherwise the past six hours of screen time will have been for nothing. I'm sure his new lawyer friend will have a lot to do with it.

Well, duh, of course Palmer is made president again. You couldn't end the series with Prescott still in control. The worrying thing is that he managed to do the entire thing without his lawyer friend from last week. This proves something, but I'm not quite sure what. Probably that lawyers are useless, or something.

In a rather smart move, Jack disabled the sniper who was about to shoot Sherry Palmer. Then he shot down Kingsley's entire squad of bodyguards. Pretty impressive. The losing part here was that he didn't manage to down Kingsley himself - he left that up to the guy in the helicopter.

My Sainted Aunt! Kate 'n' Kim did make it to CTU. And far earlier than I expected, too. Not only that, but they managed to make it to the stadium to see Kiefer at the end. That's two car journeys without anyone being stabbed, raped, kidnapped or blown up. If I was Kim, I'd get Kate to be my chauffeur.

Well, she did try. Kiefer's impassioned pleas of 'help me get the glove compartment open' stopped her from walking away, though. And she got arrrested at the end of it all, though.

Hurrah! A full sweep! Tony and Michelle were let out. And they didn't get the chance to fuck. And with Tony being back in control of CTU, I doubt Carrie will want to stick around for a third series. Hurrah!

08.11 | Obvious point, well put...

"US planes were three minutes away from their nasty Middle Eastern targets when Jack won the day, almost exactly 24 hours after his adventure started. What were the odds of that happening?"

08.11 | "It's debatable whether President Palmer gets Christmas off"

After 24 episodes, I reckon some of us might need a holiday. Bizarrely, The Guardian has published a '24' travel guide. They advise Kim Bauer to go to the Isle of Man. Which is not quite where most people wish she'd go to...

08.11 | Your views...

So, I asked for people to let me know their thoughts on last night's season finale. Here, in a 'Pure 24' (but on the internet) style, are the UK's opinions:

Andy of Samizdata.net has no idea what he'll do on Sunday nights from now on.

Damian posts a damn fine round-up of the series, highlighting the high - and low - points.

Sarah C confuses the ladies of '24' with the girls of 'Hollyoaks'.

Joella went to a 'last episode gathering'.

Pixeldiva thinks Sherry Palmer did the right thing.

Stu from Feeling Listless reckons it ended in a scene from a seventies political thriller directed by Alan Pakula.

Saffy thinks Marie is eeeeeeeeeeeevil.

Simon wants another series of 'Pure 24'.

Bad Bloke Bob downloaded it and watched it way before the rest of us.

Gareth wants to know how much it'll cost him to buy the series on DVD.

08.11 | This is another cool site

Xandra writes a livejournal site. She's made some '24' wallpapers, featuring Jack Bauer and Michelle Dessler. Go take a look. The Kiefer Sutherland background image is pretty funky, too.

08.11 | 2.5 million! 13%! Returns next year!

"The conclusion to the second series of BBC2's cult import '24', starring Kiefer Sutherland as a renegade special agent trying to stop a nuclear war, had 2.5 million viewers at 10PM, a 13% share of the overall audience.

Despite attracting fewer column inches than the explosive first series, the Fox show has consistently attracted upwards of 2 million viewers throughout its run and will return for a third series next year."

08.10 | Calling all readers and writers...

Just one favour: if anyone ends up (or, damn, is planning to make a posting to their own weblog or site tonight about the '24' finale, email me with the URL and I'll shove up a link to it on 24weblog.com after the show.

08.10 | '24' in 24 sentences

Previously on '24'...

A whole load of everything has already happened in the past 23 episodes. For anyone who hasn't been paying attention, here is where I attempt to round-up the entire series by using only one sentence per hour:

There's a bomb in Los Angeles. Jack Bauer cuts a man's head off with a hacksaw. Kim Bauer hides a small child behind some boxes. George Mason gets infected with some deadly green gas. The CTU office gets blown up by Jack. A helicopter carrying the ambassador of 'a middle eastern country' crashes. Jack interogates Nina Myers, the woman who killed his wife. A policeman finds the body of the small child's mother in the back of Kim Bauer's stolen car. Jack and Nina's plane crashes. Obvious stereotype Reza Naiyeer sells out Bob Warner as the baddie, who then turns out to be a secret CIA agent. Bob's daughter Marie turns out to be the real baddie and kills Reza. President Palmer tortures a member of his own staff. Jack Bauer tortures a man who he thinks knows where the bomb is. Kim Bauer gets trapped in a fall-out shelter with a scary survivalist dude. George Mason faints, coughs a bit and leaves the CTU office. Jack Bauer puts the nuclear bomb on a plane to fly it into the desert - George gets on board and takes over at the last minute.

Syed Ali, the guy Jack tortured, gets assassinated and the shooter asks Jack to bring him Kate Warner, Bob's other daughter and Marie's sister. Jack gets trailed to the meeting point - but by a goodie, phew - and he, Kate Warner and the assassin - Johnathan Wallace - come under fire. Jack finds the important microchip with the evidence on it. Jack is tortured to the brink of death. Some rednecks steal the microchip and Jack chases them to Kate Warner's house. President Palmer loses a vote of confidence and Vice President Prescott takes over. Jack finds the programmer who engineered the evidence on Wallace's microchip - only Palmer's evil ex-wife has got to the guy first. The programmer dies, and Jack and the President's ex-wife race off to get the bad guys...

I pity any new viewers tuning in tonight and trying to keep up with the plot.

UPDATE: The Sun has also published it's own round-up of the entire second series.

08.10 | Episode twenty four, 7AM - 8AM

The following takes place between 7AM and 8AM...

So Jack Bauer and Sherry Palmer escape relatively unscathed from some of the worst driving ever. There was me thinking that Jack was having a heart attack at the end of last week's show, and he turns out to be fine. The car crash was all just a plot device leading up to a series-defining moment. The bit where the ruthless, inventive, versatile - and just plain lucky - government agent gets trapped in a car by a jammed seatbelt. I swear I thought I was hearing things when Kiefer came out with that bit of dialogue. A jammed seatbelt? What is he, five years old? Could he not have slipped out of it? Unscrewed the 'clunk-click' bit? Cut throught the belt with a trust pocketknife? Burnt through it with a lighter? No, he got stuck in it like a whining baby.

Because I love the show, I will just presume that they'd meant for the car to be on the verge of blowing up, or something, that they'd run out of special effects budget, and that the writers had to come up with a replacement scene pretty sharpish.

But a jammed seatbelt?!?!??!? If only he'd held on to that hacksaw for the past 23 hours...

After a whole three hours of being a baddie, Mike Novick turns back to a goodie again. He makes the connection between Peter Kingsley and rogue Coral Snake commander Jonathan Wallace, who, apparently, had been speaking on the phone. Mike gives Ryan Chappelle a bollocking and puts the wheels in motion for the strikes in the middle east to be called off. And, after all those hours of searching for the microchips and audio files, all it took was a phone conversation to prove the conspiracy? Max, the head German baddie, will rue the day he ever asked for itemised billing.

By the way, at this point in the storyline, Peter Kingsley is still looking for Peter Hewitt. Despite him sending a search party to his apartment, and the fact that Jack left his dead body on the roof of the adjacent building, Kingsley is still under the impression that the geek is alive. When Mrs Palmer confronts him towards the end, he still thinks that he'll get Hewitt. Is he the stupidest baddie ever, or what? Maybe the search party thought 'fuck it, it's too early, we'll just go back to bed'.

I didn't understand the scene with Bob and Marie Warner. I mean, why? It was nice to see where Bob's been for the past ten hours or so, but it was a completely pointless addition to the plot. Was Marie's threat to Kate meant to act as some kind of cliff-hanger to the next series? Will she escape her Hannibal Lecter-like cell and come after her family, biting on their necks like she's some kind of brainwashed vampire? Is this Second Wave's Plan B? I hope not.

Ryan Chappelle then offers his full support to Jack in his quest to bring Kingsley to justice. They come up with the ingenious idea of using some audio software to record Sherry and Kingsley's conversation and sending the results over to Prescott in the White House. However, we still have no idea why Novick, Chappelle and Prescott are prepared to listen to Bauer's evidence now when they wouldn't previously. I think it's because the writers have to spin this out for 24 episodes. Maybe it's because Prescott nipped off during one of the ad breaks and sold his oil stocks, I dunno.

And anyone who wonders where CTU got a sample of Peter Kingsley's voice from - remember that Alex Hewitt had recorded his phone conversations with the guy and we heard some of it last week when Jack was trying to find a recording of Hewitt's voice.

By now, Jack's staggering about all over the shop with his oncoming heart attack. Like I said when Palmer was torturing Roger Stanton, he needs to borrow Homer Simpson's defibulator - 'it just pays for itself'.

Kingsley searches Sherry for a wire - a good job that Jack gave her a wireless wire, then. All this technology, eh? It's literally a life-saver. Kingsley eventually gets suspicious of Sherry's stalling and a gun fight ensues. Thankfully, Jack takes out Kingsley's sniper and grabs his big gun. Sherry runs off - forgetting about the stabbing she received last week, supposedly. And Jack, forgetting about his oncoming heart attack - gets all Matrix on our ass and kicks down a Kingsley minion with some cool karate moves whilst running up a wall. No, seriously.

It's all set for an OK Coral-style shoot-out between Jack and Kingsley. Unfortunately, Jack's out of bullets so a guy on a helicopter offs Kingsley. Meanwhile, the White House are still listening to all this. Prescott calls off the bombers. Prescott then resigns - hurrah! - along with half the cabinet, but because Palmer's such a nice guy, he refuses to accept the resignations.

So, it's done. The story's over, and all the characters can go back to their normal lives - kinda. Chappelle and Tony have a little bitch-fight; Tony acts like a dunce and forgets to snog Michelle whilst he thanking her for her hard work; Jack gets wheeled off on a stretcher whilst Kim has a little cry (and we all thought she'd got tough since she's been going around shooting people); Sherry is carted off in handcuffs; President Palmer calls a press conference.

Oops.

Wrong move, President Dave.

What follows makes much more sense to those of you who saw the first season. Those early birds amongst you who watched the very first episode of '24' will remember a character called Mandy who blew up a passenger jet plane. Well, this woman who gives Palmer the anti-Midas touch is the very same Mandy. We'd all thought she'd disappeared mid-way through the first series. Turns out that she works for the same baddies that Kingsley, Johnathan Wallace and Syed Ali all worked for.

After reaching his limo, Palmer looks down at his right hand. The flesh on it has been eaten away. He gasps for breath and falls to the ground. The crowd panics as the Secret Service aim their guns at a non-existent assassin. The camera zooms out and concentrates on a helpless Palmer. For the final time we see the clock count down and, instead of the usual digital bleeping, we hear Palmer's fading heart beat...

Well, fuck me. Wasn't expecting that.

08.09 | Run, Kim, Run!

"Kim, the danger-prone teenage daughter of Counter Terrorism Unit special agent Jack Bauer, fits a certain niche in these frantic times. Without meaning to, she has come to represent the vapidity and naive innocence of a Britney Nation caught up in something deadly serious, with only her wits and the occasional visibility of her nipples to save her."

08.08 | Kiefer inks new deal

"TV Guide is reporting that '24' star Kiefer Sutherland had a tattoo permanently inked into his arm - because his alter-ego, Jack Bauer, will sport a tattoo on the show this season as part of an undercover operation."

08.08 | Hollywood's in screen battle with the BBC

"Warner Bros, Universal and 20th Century Fox have called in their lawyers to sort out a dispute that has arisen from the BBC's decision to broadcast its channels unencrypted: the studios are concerned that their films can now be picked up in countries around Europe in which the corporation does not own the relevant rights."

08.07 | I'm speechless

Bloody Hell.

08.06 | From Hollywood outsider to television's most timely secret agent...

"When you are watching the show and there are 15 minutes left, then 10 minutes, then five, it creates a level of anxiety for the viewer that, for some reason, is pleasurable," says Kiefer. Violence, he happily acknowledges, also ratchets up the tension. "I do think that [violence] adds to the desperation of the moment. It creates a visceral reaction from an audience that I think is very important for the show."

08.05 | So... after '24' this week?

There's an hour-long 'Pure 24' special on BBC3 next Sunday (August 10th) at 10:45PM after the final episode.

I've got a good feeling that Kiefer Sutherland will be on it. He won't be in the studio (since they're shooting '24' season three at the moment), but he is the only major member of the cast not to have done a phone-in interview with the show. I'm sure he can spare a few minutes out of his busy schedule to speak to Tamzin Sylvester.

Fingers crossed, anyway. If you can, get yourself in front of a digital telly. Or get a mate to tape it, whatever.

08.04 | "My head feels wet"

"With only one episode to go before a Third World War, they headed off to trap the dastardly Kingsley.

Sadly, on the way Jack had a recurrence of the heart problems he had when he was tortured. The car ploughed across the freeway, through a fence and into the LA storm drain.

He really is careless."

08.04 | Episode twenty three, 6AM - 7AM

Everything's coming together nicely now. It's like the last week of the Tour de France, the last ten games of the Premier league, or that last hour before leaving work on a Friday afternoon. Time's passing quickly, but it's also going far too slowly.

First things first. Tony Almeida straight-out lies to his superior over at Division about the whereabouts of Ryan Chapelle. We all know Tony drugged the guy - so can Tony be trusted? If he gets back in charge of CTU, his bosses might as well just ignore everything he says. It's all lies. "Are you helping Jack Bauer?" "No" "Well, that means you are, then". Even Michelle shouldn't trust him. "Wanna go out for dinner and a movie" "Yeah, I'll met you at the cinema at seven" "Well, I'll see you at the restaurant at six, instead, you lying toerag". Still, I think we can trust him not to turn out to be 'the mole'. Not that there'll be one. After all, this time last season the CTU turncoat had been revealed. It was Nina Myers, and how shocked were we?

Ooh, I practically had a heart attack when that was revealed. This year, it was left to Jack to have the heart attack - and I must say, Nina turning into a baddie was a far better plot line. With Nina, you could trace it all through to the early episodes. You could probably do the same this series. If you go back to the first episode, back at 8AM, you can probably see Jack wiping the last of huge fry-up breakfast out of his beard. I reckon it was the bacon that done it.

That's not the worst thing. I still can't believe that CTU, the leading terrorism crime-fighting centre in Los Angeles, only has two interrogation rooms. And knowing that, why didn't Tony and Michelle drug Chappelle in a store room somewhere? Maybe George Mason took the keys with him when he left.

Alex Hewitt dies. Which, considering all of Jack's other witnesses and interviewees have died, was surprising. You'd have thought he could keep one of them alive. Let me guess, he'll manage to protect Mrs Palmer all through the next hour. Despite however many people - President Palmer, Lynne Kresge, Mike Novick, Peter Kingsley, 'Max', Alex Hewitt - want her dead, I'm sure she'll make it to the end.

I'm not so sure about Jack, though. The last shot of '6AM - 7AM' leaves Jack and Sherry Palmer crashing their SUV down into the same LA storm drain as used in the chase scene in Terminator II. See how Sherry's bad driving saw them career through a shopping trolley? I reckon that their van is written off, and she'll have to race against time to push Jack to the hospital in it. Let's hope that it doesn't have a wobblely wheel - it'll take her the best part of an hour, and she'll never get her pound coin back.

For those of you poo-pooing the whole episode for being based around Alex Hewitt's amazing computer programme that records voices and makes them say things they never said - see Vocaloid. It's similar software that does all that high-tech shit you thought wasn't possible - and it'll let you do it on your home PC. Which begs the question - why did Hewitt bother to programme his own custom version? And why the fuck didn't Jack and Michelle just look up the manual on the internet, or something?

Predictions for next week?

President Palmer will get reinstated, otherwise the past six hours of screen time will have been for nothing. I'm sure his new lawyer friend will have a lot to do with it.

Jack will shoot lots of people. He'll get his hands on Peter Kingsley, thus making President Palmer totally indebited to him for a second time.

Kate Warner and Kim Bauer will end up at CTU, successfully navigating Kim's first car journey without being kidnapped, shot at, mugged or held ransome for by those annoying people who hang around at traffic lights and junctions offering to wipe the windscreen or trying to sell you flowers.

Sherry Palmer gets what she deserves. Face it, the recorded conversation that Jack overheard on Alex Hewitt's computer dumps her right in the thick of it. Sherry's a clever woman - does she doublecross Jack just to keep her name out of trouble?

Finally, someone will let Tony and Michelle out of the holding room before they have enough time to get down and dirty. Hopefully he won't grew his beard back before the next series, too. And Carrie will disappear forever, because she's shit.