Despite what I thought was a good showing in the regional heat, I didn’t make it to the final of the Independent‘s sudoku championship – the eventual winner was 27-year-old Becky Hewitt, last year’s winner Edward Billig having erred in the semi-final. (Reassuringly, the runner-up was a 16-year-old – we were disappointed by the lack of a teenage prodigy last year.)

My own number puzzling is on hiatus as I’ve stopped buying a newspaper in order to concentrate on reading books during my daily commute.

The competitive streak is still there, though, so I have a couple of auditions for TV shows in August. It’s been a few year’s since I was last on a quiz show so hopefully I’ll do well enough to get another go. Fingers crossed.

Nearly two years ago, I watched the third series of 24 in 24 hours. I’ve not seen any since and, thanks to a colleague, find myself in possession of the series 4 box set. I couldn’t resist the temptation to watch the whole thing today.

I don’t fancy staying up all night, so I’m aiming to watch in 17-18 hours, just over the actual length of the series – despite being in real time, they have to allow for ad breaks and recaps.

Two episodes in and there’s been a clumsy infodump; a CTU PowerPoint display full of nonsense apparently designed to impress the viewers while presumably baffling those in the meeting; the dreadful line “Looks like someone’s trying to corrupt the internet”; a first twist you could spot a mile off; and about 11 deaths, averaging 6.5 5.5 an hour.

It takes itself terribly seriously but in some ways is as much hammy hokum as Sunset Beach. Great 🙂

Update: Halfway through and the confirmed death count is around 58 (just under 5 an episode) but potentially much higher if you include character not seen on screen. Only one episode with no killings – this is not a quiet show. Several significant twists, and one big “Yay!” moment.

Update II: Finished around 2.30am last night. Worth watching with plenty of exciting bits, although, as always, some scenes stretch the suspension of disbelief and there were a few too many moments of frustration where you could see a twist coming and wished the characters would notice. There were the obligatory 24 ingredients: a token English actor; a CTU mole (rerun of Day 1); constitutional politicking (rerun of Day 2); some family plots you just didn’t care about (rerun of anything with Kim Bauer in); product placement (and I mean you, Cisco Systems); computer screens showing impressive nonsense; and characters from previous series prised into the plot.

There was one funny line in the 24 episodes and, like the series as a whole, I suspect it wasn’t supposed to be funny. There is one more “Yay!” moment before the end.

The folks at CTU are declared the best agents there are, and yet the organisation continues to display dysfunction that would put The Office to shame, and every field agent other than Jack Bauer is rubbish.

An actor turns up who’s been in The West Wing (RIP) and Lost, the other two American shows I watch. There’s a lot of crossover between The West Wing and 24 (not least Jim Robinson from Neighbours who was a Cabinet member in both), but Evan Handler is the first actor I’ve spotted in all three. (Mid-update update: Look! Jim Robinson from Neighbours is in Lost too! Hurrah!)

Favourite line: “I was inappropriately blunt, wasn’t I?”

Most similar Doctor Who story: The Mind of Evil.

Final death count: around 106 characters shown on screen, with at least several hundred others referred to.

Verdict: Good. If the first three were your sort of thing, you’ll enjoy Day 4.

A colleague emails with this link. Apparently it’s to do with some sort of headbutting incident during a recent small sporting event in Germany.

Last week’s story about Aaron Kosminski piqued my interest and so at the weekend I watched Jack the Ripper, a three hour long 1980s TV adaptation of the story, starring Michael Caine. While taking care in places to feature lots of detail from the time, for the sake of drama it also takes some significant liberties with the truth and, like most dramatisations, has to identify a culprit (whose identity was somewhat given away by the order in which the cast was billed). Caine does well enough, but it can’t be said his protrayal of Frederick Abberline is any more realistic than Johnny Depp’s.

The biggest problem with this adaptation, though, is that it’s badly made. The music is repetitive, the script is lazy, and the acting is, in too many cases, plain rubbish. Jonathan Moore has to be singled out for particular criticism because his journalist character, Benjamin Bates, appears regularly throughout the film, undermining every scene in which he is present. Thumbs down.

Last night I watched What Ever Happened To Baby Jane? Despite having seen a French & Saunders spoof, I knew relatively little about the film. It was a little lengthy but entertaining, mostly for Bette Davis’s stomping around like a washed up old drag queen. Some plot elements were frustrating (Joan Crawford’s character seems, for no good reason, unable to shout to her neighbour for help) but it’s certainly worth a look.