Can 24 work without Jack Bauer and his crew? Judging by this first spin-off, the answer is a qualified 'yes'.
Something a bit more recent today.
In 2014, the indestructible Counter Terrorist Unit agent Jack Bauer
(Kiefer Sutherland), veteran of nine world-threatening and emotionally
battering seasons, was last seen in the custody of the FSB being helicoptered
to Russia and a very uncertain – and painful – future. Despite this, apparently
there was an attempt to lure Sutherland back for an eleventh run at the role.
He declined, so the decision was taken to forge ahead without him.
Looking back over the nine seasons of 24, characters in CTU came and went, often from sudden death – it
was one of the series’ hallmarks – and the same was true of the compelling
ancillary characters who revolved around the elite unit: presidents, their
relations, assorted recurring villains and Jack’s nearest and dearest.
Conceptually, then, it was a small step from there to replace Jack himself. Would
the audience go for it? The first episode of 24: Legacy, screened directly before Super Bowl LI, drew the
largest audience in the history of the series, so the answer would seem to be, at
least initially, ‘it does’.
Since 24 started the big
sea-change in espionage fiction on TV was Homeland,
dealing seriously, cynically and messily with the political situation in
the Middle East. The new model inherits some of that political zeitgeist, with
most men in the Army Ranger unit of the new man Eric Carter (a slow-burning,
effective Corey Hawkins), responsible for executing the terrorist leader Ibrahim
bin-Khalid, assassinated despite being in a witness protection programme –
clearly, there’s (another) traitor at work in the security services. The head
of CTU when Carter did the black op was Rebecca Ingram (none cooler under
pressure Miranda Otto), now prospective First Lady, handily drawn back into the
espionage fray for dialogue between both the command structure of CTU and the
corridors of power in the Whitehouse.
The race is on to prevent the terrorists securing a list of sleeper
cells that the terrorists have killed their way through the Army Rangers to
get. That’s just one of many plot threads; there’s an attack on a school
planned by one of the students and her teacher – which, Breaking Bad style, goes spectacularly wrong – and a terrorist cell planning
something in the background. New to the mix, because of Carter’s ethnicity,
is his background in a black criminal gang before he became a soldier. It’s not
long before he’s in a siege in a police station and the intertwined plotting
spins on memorably from there.
So what of the action, one of the things that 24 always managed to do amazingly well, cinematically, on a TV
budget? The first episode concludes with an innovative sequence where Carter
hides behind a huge steel pipe and rolls it over some bad guys, going on to stab
one of them with a steel cable. Not bad, and that was the first of many
impressive sequences.
There’s the usual political tension between Capitol Hill and CTU, plus a
topical look at how soldiers were abandoned to PTSD and homelessness by the US
government; understandably, one veteran is so aggrieved he tries to blackmail
them. The shadow of Homeland is again
felt in an attempt by a rival party to blacken the reputation of an Islamic
presidential aide. She might or might not be radicalised, and of all the
running storylines, this is handled sensitively and credibly.
The foreboding, insistent incidental music, split screen visuals and the
inevitable interrogation scenes are all present and correct, and while the
real-time narrative structure may seem a little old fashioned by now, there’s
enough innovation in the formula to suggest that 24: Legacy could be the start of a new lease of life for the
franchise. And if you just want the comfort of watching good old 24 as it was, you won’t be disappointed
either. The biggest criticism, as in every season before it, is the complete
absence of humour. Come on, guys – we know people make jokes under pressure.
(See Homeland again).
As for the new man: Carter might not yet have the grizzled ennui of The
Bauer, but the new recruit’s girlfriend thinks he enjoys the adrenalized rush
of battle far too much, so it could be the beginning of a thread that memorably
unravels in his personal life. We shall see.
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