Check out this promo for Janeane Garofalo on "24."

Hello, cruel world: TV takes torture to new scream level

by Douglas Durden

Richmond, VA Times-Dispatch Staff Writer

March 4, 2007 

On a recent episode of Fox's "24," a terrorist plunged an electric drill into a man's shoulder to coerce him to cooperate.

The week before, the hero of the show tortured his own brother to get information.

Fox's "24" isn't the only TV series taking torture to new heights this season.

In HBO's "Rome," a series set two milleniums earlier, a female character was flayed almost to death on the orders of another woman. When that didn't achieve the desired results, the command was given to c cut off her face.

it's a cruel world out there, especially on some of TV's most high-profile shows.

"24.," starring Kieffer Sutherland as jack Bauer, a busy counterterrorism agent, has always courted controversy, both for its violence and ethnic profiling.

With its real-time format, it's also a show that thrives on fast-paced storytelling and frequent jolts -- with a need to up the ante each season.

Gary Edgerton, a communication professor at Old Dominion University, calls this the HBO after-effect.

Ever since the debut of "The Sopranos" in 1999, the premium cable channel has set the gold standard for TV drama, says Edgerton, chairman of ODU's Department of Communication and Theatre Arts.

"You had a number of shows on other networks that took on the flavor and style of HBO in one way or another... The bar was really raised not only in terms of graphic violence, but also in the dealing with sexuality and language.