The staff at Kiefer Sutherland Network wish Kiefer a very Happy Birthday!
Four years in hiding seem to have done Jack Bauer a world of good. In the person of Kiefer Sutherland, he still looks fighting fit, and he sounds more interesting than he has in a long time. Being on the run seems to have furrowed his voice as well as his brow; he’s more introspective than before and seems to be carrying a heavier load of guilt, though he’s rarely specific as to what he’s guilty about. The worst thing he ever did was cause the death of his wife back in 24’s first season, and he had only indirect responsibility even for that. No season since then has had so ingenious and involving a storyline; but the new one – 24: Live Another Day – is running it close.
This new series is set in London, conceivably because it’s cheaper to film in Britain than in the USA. That isn’t the only economy that’s been imposed; Jack now has only half his previous number of hours to perform his regular job of detecting an apocalyptic threat and then defusing it. This accounts for the bemusing new title; if they hadn’t dreamed it up they would have had to call the show 12. Apparently, though, the show will still cover a 24-hour time period, but certain hours will be omitted from the action. This hasn’t happened in the episodes shown so far, and I’m not certain how it will be handled when it does. Will all the characters be presumed to have taken a nap, so as to conserve their strengths for dealing with the ongoing grave international crisis? Or will the story simply wind up and then start all over again, perhaps with the revelation of a new threat behind the threat? It’s been known to happen on 24; in fact it’s been standard procedure. It seems that Jack is not going to have everything wrapped up before his bedtime. Another all-nighter beckons.
Amazon.com, Inc. today announced that as part of its licensing agreement with Twentieth Century Fox Television Distribution, Prime Instant Video is now the exclusive online-only subscription home for streaming all 192 episodes of the award-winning series 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland as heroic agent Jack Bauer.
Prime members can access all eight seasons of the groundbreaking political thriller and 24: Redemption, a TV movie based on the series, in advance of the eagerly awaited 24: Live Another Day, which will premiere on FOX on May 5. Prime Instant Video will also be the exclusive online-only subscription home for streaming 24: Live Another Day later this year. Those who are not already members of Amazon Prime can sign up at www.amazon.com/primeinstantvideo .
During its eight seasons, 24 chronicled Jack Bauer’s race against the clock to thwart political assassination attempts and multiple terror plots, with each season taking place within one 24-hour period. The series won a Golden Globe for Best Television Drama and a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series; Kiefer Sutherland also won a Golden Globe and Primetime Emmy for his performance. Sutherland, co-star Mary Lynn Rajskub (Chloe O’Brian), producer Howard Gordon (Homeland), writers Evan Katz and Many Cato and director Jon Cassar reunite for the suspenseful 12-episode event, 24: Live Another Day. Set and shot in London, the series picks up four years after we last saw Jack, who was then a fugitive from justice. Now in exile, he is nevertheless willing to risk his life and freedom to avert yet another global disaster.
“24 has been extremely popular with Amazon customers over the years,” said Brad Beale, Director of Digital Video Content Acquisition for Amazon. “Whether they are hard-core Jack Bauer fans or just discovering the series for the first time, Prime members are going to love catching up on the previous seasons of 24 as well as 24:Live Another Day.”
24: Live Another Day will bring back the groundbreaking real-time format of the original show, complete with split screens and multiple storylines. The event series, featuring an all-star cast that includes Benjamin Bratt, Yvonne Strahovski, Kim Raver, William Devane, Tate Donovan and Michelle Fairley.
Kiefer Sutherland may have tabled his mission to bring 24 to the big screen, but he’s never, ever going to give it up for good. “I stopped pushing for that,” he told me over bar snacks last week in Pasadena, where the actor had come to promote Fox’s upcoming series resurrection of relentlessly sleep-deprived federal agent Jack Bauer. “I just got so tired of saying it was going to happen because someone told me it was going to happen — and then I’d find out that they had no intention of doing it.” But as he prepared to fly to London to begin production on 24: Live Another Day, the twelve-episode season that arrives May 5, he sounded pretty bummed discussing the aborted film when Vulture brought up the subject. “It’s not like it’s my property,” Sutherland continued slowly. “I can’t go, ‘Okay, fine. You don’t want to make it? I’ll go to Universal. They’ll make it.’ It’s kind of locked where it is.” The 47-year-old actor exhaled again and looked out the window, and then he smiled. “But people come and go,” he said, “I can wait it out. It can always happen.”
While he waits patiently for naysaying movie execs to rise and fall, Sutherland will have to settle for Jack merely returning to TV after a four-year break. Not that he’s been in need of work: Since the show wrapped in 2010, Sutherland has done lots of high-profile stuff, including Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, Fox’s Touch, Broadway’s The Championship Season, and the Kit Harrington gladiator drama Pompei (out next month). But his love for his tortured and torturing alter ego runs deep. “It’s almost mystical the way he loves and understands the character,” 24 executive producer Howard Gordon told me later, confirming what Sutherland had seen as a call to action when Gordon asked if he wanted to do more counterterrorizing. Said Sutherland: “It was a five-minute conversation to end the show — Howard was exhausted, and I wasn’t doing it without him — and it was a five-minute conversation to bring it back.”
I asked Sutherland if he remembers the beginning of the show, how much smaller the stakes were then, and if it was possible to get back to something like that. During that first day, Jack was fighting bureaucracy and hiding an affair; eight seasons later, he’s tractor-flipping his enemies and breaking the necks of others between his legs. Not everyone was a fan of those final seasons where the action had been ratcheted up so high that most of it was implausible. Sutherland laughed, because he’s been working out for the past five months to avoid coming back as “Old Jack Bauer.” “As one gets older, you start to panic about these things,” he said. But to the point, he said, he does remember those early seasons quite fondly.
“Remember that episode in the first season when Jack was held up in that little construction shack because he can’t get outside? The whole episode, he’s in there. It was awesome,” he recalled. “Later on, Howard and I used to sit and drink and go, ‘I remember when it was small, man. When we were doing the drama, the stuff that made people feel.’ We’d lament over that, and by the end of it, we’d be like, ‘So, we’re gonna blow up that family, right?’ ‘Yeah. Probably. I can’t think of anything else to do.’ It made me laugh.”
“But just because we’re starting out big this time, it doesn’t mean that it can’t descend into something really intimate and heavy,” Sutherland continued. “The desire, especially this time, is to get back to that very personal first season.”
