24 returns for Jack Bauer's fourth long day

24 returns to our screens on January 30th. I'm not sure I can cope with the fourth series. The first was inventive and a 'must-watch'. The second was OK, but the deceptions of the President's family and the daft scrapes Jack's daughter got into were already grating on me. The third series was OK as a thriller in its own terms but the '24 hour' concept was becoming stretched and the re-emergence of Nina Myers was a bit too much. (This was bad enough in the second series). Jack's behaviour gets weirder as well.

I guess I will tune in to watch it initially, but whether I will stay with it this time I'm not sure. Like a lot of these series from the States there is a fairly detailed episode guide on the Fox website so it is always possible to skip and catch up later (HBO is quite good at these for its drama series too, like the one for The Wire, which started recently on FX289.)

I will certainly not be signing up for the 'mobisodes' of 24 that the Guardian tells us are available on mobile phones for Vodafone 3G subscribers. We can expect to see more of this kind of content being developed for mobiles in future, as I pointed out in my debate in the Assembly on digital media last October.