Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Not 24 again!

Should have blogged on this sooner but I had to laugh over the weekend when I spotted that BBC1 were repeated the first (and for my money, the best) series of 24. Cloud and I had caught the first episode when over in the US just a few weeks after 9/11. We didn't know it was the start of a series: we just liked its visual style and narrative thrust. When it came over to the UK, we watched the first episode, felt a sense of deja vu, realised we had seen the first episode during our time in NYC and promptly spent the next six months glued to the screens, chasing episodes across the BBC networks (we had cable TV at the time). We bit our fingers, screamed from the edge of the sofa at the television, and generally became frantic addicts: even watching the terrestrial screenings of the repeated episodes before turning over to catch the next on cable. When the final episode was delayed to let terrestrial viewers catch up with cable/digital viewers on BBC3, we were nigh hysterical with impatience.

All this preamble is to set up my narrative: Cloud is usually pretty resolute in NOT rewatching stuff. I think he would happily settle for there being no DVD or videos in the house (well, that may be a tad of an exaggeration...). Anyway, what can be said is that he certainly isn't that fond of rewatching older stuff for the sake of it.

So when he realised, and I confirmed for him, that yes, BBC1 were reshowing the whole of season 1 of 24 late at night, I didn't think too much of him running from the room groaning.

"I know, I know," I said, "you hate to rewatch stuff..."

He muffled a reply... "too tense..."

WHAT?

Turns out the reason he was so anxious for me to switch the TV off and us not get into watching it was because he knew that if we did, we would get hooked in again and he couldn't cope with the edge of the seat ride all over again!

Ah, bless: cracks in the armour of distainful regard for rewatching old TV.

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