Season 1: 24, as surely everyone knows by now, is a thriller that takes places over 24 hours, midnight to midnight, in 24 one-hour episodes. Everything takes place in real time, which means no flashbacks, no flash-forwards, no handy time-dissolves. Every strand of the plot has to be dovetailed and interlocked so things happen just when they should, in the right amount of time. Federal agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) runs around L.A. trying to stall an assassination attempt on an African American presidential candidate and rescue his wife and daughter from the clutches of the Balkan baddies. Twists, turns, revelations, and cliffhangers are tossed at us with satisfying regularity. It's not perfect: we get some hokey plot devices (instant amnesia, anybody?); the final twist makes no sense whatsoever; and as for Dennis Hopper's "Serbian" accent.... Even so, this is undeniably mold-breaking TV. Like Murder One and The Sopranos, 24 is one of those series that future TV thrillers will be measured against. --Philip Kemp
Season 2: Jack Bauer is having another one of his "very bad days" in the second season of the groundbreaking real-time thriller 24. Once again the hours are ticking by with more guaranteed cliffhangers than a convention of mountain climbers. Holed up in a Los Angeles condo and estranged from his daughter, Jack is no longer on the government payroll; unfortunately for him, this small fact doesn't seem to matter to President David Palmer and the NSA, who call him back in to the CTU and give him 24 hours to infiltrate a terrorist organization that is planning to detonate a dirty bomb in the city of angels. All Jack wants is to get his daughter out of the city, unfortunately Kim's new employer, the abusive father of the child she is nannying, has other ideas.
Season 3: There's not one cougar to be found in 24's dynamic third season, and that's good news for everyone. After Jack Bauer's daughter Kim survived hokey hazards in season 2, she's now a full-time staffer at CTU, the L.A.-based intelligence beehive that's abuzz once again--three years after the events of "Day Two"--when a vengeful terrorist threatens to release a lethal virus that could wipe out much of the country's population. Jack attempts to broker a deal for the virus involving drug kingpin Ramon Salazar, whose operation Jack successfully infiltrated at high personal cost: to maintain his cover, he got hooked on heroin. That potentially deadly triangle--drug lords, addiction, and bioterrorism on a massive scale--sets the 24-hour clock ticking in a tight, action-packed plot involving a potential traitor in CTU's midst; the return of TV's greatest villainesses in Nina Meyers and former First Lady Sherry Palmer; a troubled romance between Kim and Jack's new partner Chase; and a scandalized reelection campaign by president David Palmer, who monitors CTU as they struggle to (literally) save the day.
Season 4: The fourth season kicks off with a deadly terrorist strike resulting in the kidnapping of his new boss, the U.S. Secretary of Defense James Heller. Although a fired, ex-employee of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU), it is no surprise who is going to shift into full gear to bring the terrorists to justice. However, it doesn't take the super-agent long to discover the kidnapping of his boss is part of a much larger plan, master-minded by Habib Marvan the middle eastern terrorist cell leader the US government has been trying to track down for years. Considered by many to be the best season of the first four, 24 - Season 4 is a definite departure from the first three seasons; it's still amped up beyond anything else on TV, but compared to the previous seasons, 24 has gotten a lot smarter, and in turn, better. --Rob Bracco
Season 5: Eighteen months after faking his own death, Jack Bauer is forced to return to Los Angeles when it becomes apparent that the only four people who know he is still alive are being systemically targeted for assassination. The assassinations coincide with the signing of an anti-terrorism treaty between Russia and the U.S., leading Jack to suspect a link between the assassinations, the treaty, and a group of Russian terrorists. But as events slowly unfold it becomes apparent that the day's horrific events were originally set in motion by someone within our country's own administration – an individual with the power and resources to thwart Jack's every move.
Watch our
interview with Kiefer Sutherland and the cast, conducted at the
DVD release party for 24 - Season 5.
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