Let’s face it, you’ve heard the phrase ‘a new kind of television’ enough times to make you go numb in the buttocks. Every two-bit wanna’be Seinfeld pilot gets styled that way, too often to cover up a lack of talent with the siren song of novelty.
But you’d be mistaken to be dubious about 24. This show in its first season was about as new as television can get.
Packed into a format of take-on-day-an-hour-at-a-time, skillfully weaving parallel story lines into one coherent, bracing whole, Kiefer Sutherland as Jack Bauer and his long-suffering, occasionally corrupt colleagues at CTU pretty much reached out and grabbed us by the throat.
Four seasons into the deal, one wonders how much more is left of a narrative with the structural limitations its writers have built into it. Yet Season One was not about ‘how long’ but about ‘what if’.
And, to abuse a phrase, did it ever!
Who could have guessed that the ubiquitous ‘Nina’ would turn out to be not only the mole inside CTU but also a relentlessly disciplined Queen of Evil?
That revelation doesn’t go down until the final episode of a stunning first season.
Buy 24, Season One. Trust no one. Watch your back.
Canter Bridge 
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