There’s just one snag though: there’ll be no Jack Bauer. The hugely popular and thrilling TV series 24 ran from 2001 until 2010 with 8 seasons. It then returned in 2014 with a 12 episode mini-series: 24: Live Another Day. All throughout its run as the longest-running espionage drama ever, its protagonist, Jack Bauer, was the man that held the show together like glue. He was dearly loved by fans and when 24‘s impressive run ended, fans were saying goodbye as much to Bauer as they were to the series.
To hear now that 24 is being revived without him is like when Spooks started again without Rupert Penry-Jones: just wrong and plain awful. However, CEO and Chairman of Fox, Dana Walden, has attempted to explain the Jack Bauer-sized hole in the resurrected drama: “It’s a new CTU [Counter-Terrorism Unit], a new cast of characters. It’s a completely different story in terms of the special ops groups that we’re focusing on. It’s a very contemporary feeling story about the potential to activate new sleeper cells in the United States and radicalising Americans. It’s a whole new story“.
Walden then went on to state that the new series would be celebratory of what had come before but would ultimately be its own thing: “There are nods in the pilot to prior CTU agents, there are a couple of photos that will feel reminiscent of the original, but no ongoing [return] characters“. Replacing Bauer will be a new female lead who carries herself differently to Bauer, but with just as much assurance, and is a character that has been branded as a “very prominently-featured lead“.
These seem like the right things to say but you can never be sure of something until you watch it. The renewed series of 24 will be known as 24: Legacy; as of yet, there is no date on which to expect the new series.
#Peace.Love.24
