’24’ On Fox Sets Return Date, Jack Bauer Kills Again On May 5


24 on Fox, one of that network’s biggest — and most controversial — hits, returns to TV screens after a four-year hiatus with a limited series to be titled Live Another Day, according to E! Online which reported the network’s announcement Monday.

The series returns the now 46-year-old actor Kiefer Sutherland to his iconic role of Jack Bauer, the ruthless but tormented counter-terrorism agent who will stop at nothing to protect the United States from a variety of exotic security threats — but whose personal life is a constant mess while his psychological state is perpetually on the borderline of total breakdown.

It is no real surprise that Jack Bauer became an emotional mess. Though he seems to be at his core a fundamentally decent and moral human being, by a count compiled by the Wiki 24 web site, Jack Bauer killed 268 people on screen during the series’ eight-season run.

Because each season took place over exactly one 24-hour day, that means that Sutherland’s secret agent character killed an average of 33.5 people per day, or 1.4 human beings per hour in the course of the series.

Starting on May 5, with the return of 24 on Fox Network, he will certainly add to that total. Whether he is able to get his average up remains to be seen.

But one thing no one can question about Jack is his devotion to his country. However, that devotion is rarely reciprocated and in 24 on Fox, Bauer frequently finds himself on the wrong side of the very authorities whose interests he single-mindedly serves.

In fact, at the end of the original eight-season run of 24, in May of 2010, Jack Bauer went on the run as a fugitive from both American and Russian justice. And that reportedly is how he begins the new series.

24 on Fox resumes with Jack in London, England, where he is “not quite Osama bin Laden but a fugitive of high order,” one of the Live Another Day producers, Manny Coto, revealed to USA Today. “When he resurfaces, we will learn he has a mission, whether it’s good or bad we don’t know, but they’re hunting him.”

He reconnects with his former clandestine collaborator at the fictional intelligence agency known as CTU, which stands for Counter Terrorism Unit. That would be Chloe O’Brian, played by 42-year-old comedian and actress Mary Lynn Rajskub who will reprise her role for the new series.

Chloe’s position has changed in the previous four years as well. She has “turned against the government, (she’s) more a radical (Edward) Snowden-type character,” Coto explained. With drone strikes also factoring into the plot, 24 on Fox will once again take a “ripped from today’s headlines” approach to its byzantine storyline.

Each original series consisted of 24, one-hour episodes, the gimmick being that the show followed Jack Bauer in “real time” through an entire 24-hour day. While producers promise another 24-hour storyline, this time they’ll have only 12 hour-long episodes to cram it all in.

Presumably, then, the “real time” format will need to be abandoned, or at least fudged even more than the original series — in which Jack appeared able to drive the entire length of Los Angeles in a matter of a few minutes.

Producers have explained that the 12-episode version of the new 24 on Fox will still depict events in “real time,” but episodes will not be continuous and will often have jumps of a few hours in the simulated “day” between them.

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