With his latest project Touch NOT being renewed for a third season in the 2013/2014 schedules, what was Kiefer Sutherland going to do next? Well, dammit, Chloe, what do you think???? Yes, after rumours circulated at the end of last week, it can now be confirmed that Jack Bauer is on his way back to television in a new limited series of '24'
After being shot, blown-up, poisoned, nuked and generally hhaving a decade of bad days, we last saw Jack in 2010 having saved the day (yet again) but being disavowed by the US government - allowed to head off into the sunset by the US President with a faux 'presumed dead' status allowed to continue so Bauer could regain whatever shreds of a normal life he could find. The plans at the time were to possibly segue into a big-screen outing, but after considerable time passed with problems with scheduling and format, that never transpired and Sutherland ended up on anotherFOX show, Touch in which he played the father of a silent child who seemed to be able to see the intricate interconnecting patterns of life.
The new mini-series, apparently entitled 24: Live Another Day, will be paired with new Fox show Gang Related (which stars Ramon Rodriguez and Terry O'Quinn and has a distinctly Infernal Affairs tone) and will run for TWELVE episodes and will cover a single-day crisis, though the new format will allow the show to skip certain hours in that time frame. Talking to the press earlier today, Kevin Reilly, FOX's Entertainment Chairman said that in previous years the show had had twelve 'pivotal' episodes and twelve of 'connective tissue' and the proposed format would allow the show to concentrate on the 'best parts'.
The decision to go with this new format and launch the series in May 2014, appears to be part of FOX's move to develop a whole year of new programming, rather than sticking to the traditional network format of starting seasons in Sep/Oct and running them, amid repeats, until May of the following year - leaving summer schedules clearer. This may be due to the success of the cable format which has shorter runs, out of traditional 'seasons' timings. Equally, shorter seasons also allow for viewers to stick with shows rather than forgetting in which week a show has a new episode or a repeat. 24, though critiques and reviews varied in its latter runs, was always a ratings-winner, so while suspension of disbelief might have to be engaged once more, it seems an obvious premise on which to draw in viewers during the summer.
We don't know the plot of the limited series or how many familiar faces we may see return alongside Sutherland himself, but we do know that both showrunner Howard Gordon (currently working on the gritty Homeland) and David Fury (who went on to the likes of Terra Nova and Fringe) will be returning to help oversee the latest story.
