Senator Palmer – a black president? Why not – he grows so much in the day. And his dilemma (how to balance the search for power with family truths) is the mirror image of Jack being torn between job and family. That’s why Teri’s discovered pregnancy (interruption) is so potent and so…16 Music One criticism. 24 never really establishes a unique music of its own – like “Runaway” in Michael Mann’s classic Crime Story, another serial. Suggestion: the perfect serial music for 24 would be Philip Glass’s rolling chord progressions, so inevitable, so subtle.17.

Credit where it’s due: Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran created 24, and with more than a dozen different writers and directors, they maintained its line, its tone and its audacity Moral: TV is the art of the producer.18. Let it be said that, by chance alone, the show’s view of the US security agencies coincided fruitfully with the slowly emergent understanding that the events of 11 September might have been identified and averted. So what does it mean that they weren’t? That the people in charge are inept, or brilliant? We live in a world where even the good news is bad, if you shift the light in which you see it. And when you see 24 with the ads, why, it’s easier to understand why someone might think of undermining the US.19. No one really gets tired – this is a new version of the American dream Don’t die: keep awake.20 A second series? Fox has said yes. And it really will be 24 again – in that the action will all take place in the course of a single day Who returns? Who survives the first series?21.

Episode 24 has a killing scene – done from the point of view of a dead-eyed CCTV camera – that is one of the great shots in film. When the killer gazes up at the camera it’s as if those eyes have seen the back wall of our soul.22 I suspect the second series will be a dud You can’t repeat great new stories.23. But what 24 hasn’t tried, or dared yet, is something those other LA stories do – I mean Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia. In those films, the multitude of stories seem to reach to the horizon No false tidiness keeps them all in place or harmony. It is up to us to realise that story is infinite and only made aware of fellowship by some plague of frogs. 24 could cut away even more – to the disparate, disconsolate traces of life in LA, to people voting for or against David Palmer, and being bored and vacant while sitting next to the frenzy of Jack Bauer.24.

For 24’s real subject is the continuum, and the curious contrast between lives that feel so empty they can’t muster the hope to think, and those that can’t find enough minutes in 24 hours to breathe.The final episode of ‘24′ is at 10pm on Sunday on BBC2 and BBC Choice. There are lies, damned lies and A-level statistics. Perhaps the word “lies” is too strong but the figures for this year’s A-level results are at first sight misleading

There are lies, damned lies and A-level statistics. What we are witnessing is a fundamental change in the examination system, with A-levels becoming the preserve of brighter students, and those who before would have struggled to pass in a subject dropping it and opting for an extra AS-level.A 47,500 cut in the number of entries for A-level this year means that the number of young people who passed the exam is only the same as last year, despite the rise in the percentage pass rate from 89.8 per cent to 94.3 per cent.Much of the fall in entries can be explained by students switching to another AS-level after dropping subjects they had failed to shine in when taking the new exam. The number of AS-level entries went up by just over 20,000 this year.John Milner, convenor of the Joint Council for General Qualifications, the body that represents all exam boards, said the system of A/AS-level gave teachers an opportunity “to drive out failure in the system” by persuading pupils unlikely to obtain an A-level pass to seek other qualifications, an extra AS-level or a new vocational qualification.John Guy, principal of Farnborough sixth-Form College, said A-levels still represented a “high stakes” exam. “What is happening is that at the end of the first year when they have taken their AS-levels they are looking at their choices and deciding what is right for them. There are many universities who will accept youngsters with good AS-levels and there are others who will want significant numbers of A-level passes to meet their requirements.