I hate to keep invoking 24, but Deadline plays out like a really good episode. Actually, more like the platonic ideal of 24. A perfect episode without any boring sideplots or weird lapses in logic. Also, there’s a satisfying resolution that doesn’t take six months to arrive. But it does have the sort of impossible odds and moments of surprising brutality that Jack Bauer so often delivered.
As I said, the creators manage to expertly control the pacing of the story. There are both physical and intellectual complications as the scheduled assassination approaches. The action scenes are gripping and there isn’t any wasted dialogue – if there’s a conversation, you’d better pay attention because it’s going to be important. I was completely sucked in – they managed to make Owen matter to me in the space of only a few pages and then kept me invested. The resolution is incredibly satisfying, too.
