Tomorrow, Jack Bauer will return to our screens in 24: Live Another Day. He’s spent four years doing what he does best (which is pretending to be dead) and now he’s inevitably turned up again, this time in London. I have to admit, I’m fairly excited.

I was a little young for it when Season 1 of 24 aired in 2001, so to make up for it, I’ve gone back with the help of a special time-portal called ‘Netflix’, to catch up with where it all started. It’s been quite fun.

For those who don’t know, 24 was a crime action thriller series that traded on the format (gimmick?) that “events occur in real time”. One season of 24 covered a 24 hour period, with 24 hour-long episodes. Hence the clever title. It was set in the fictional intelligence agency CTU (Counter Terrorism Unit) and involved a lot of conspiracy, computers and car driving. It ran for 8 seasons from 2001 to 2010, with a short hiatus around 2008. I use the past tense, because 24: Live Another Day will not follow this format, but will have 12 episodes, with the occasional jump forward in time. Fair enough, if you ask me. 192 hours of television seems like a lot of work. If you can tell your story in 12, you probably should.

This was one of my main issues with 24. It felt like there were a lot of sections that were padded out for the sake of the ‘format’, and as Sondheim says (in an equivocation I will defend), function should not dictate format, and format should not dictate content. This is especially true in episodes two to six. After hitting the track at a run, the pacing of the show slows to a jog almost immediately. It is evident that the writers knew the story they wanted to tell, but were taking their time getting their pieces into place, all for the sake of the format of the show. It often felt like some scenes were put in so that there was something to cut away to when they needed to advance time a little. One that jumps to mind is a five minute scene where two of the characters were stopped by the police for speeding. The scene does nothing to advance the plot, and little to build tension. Later, the policeman lets them go with no consequence. It left me scratching my head.

Perhaps it’s the mark of another time in television. As soon as I booted up the first episode, I was launched back to a time where cinephiles had never heard of Jason Bourne, and James Bond still had black hair. (I can only imagine that the show-runners wanted to subtitle the second season ‘Live Another Day’, but they were scuppered by the launch of Brosnan-era Bond film Die Another Day in 2002.) 24, with its protracted chase scenes, unforgiving fight scenes and frankly disturbing interrogation sequences (which became a staple of the show) must have been intense in 2001. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by the recent television renaissance led by HBO and AMC, but while I was watching 24, I was acutely aware that it was television. The lighting felt a little shallow and uninteresting. The camera-work was occasionally excellent, but often mediocre, which left the impression of talent working on a budget. The locations could all have been sourced in Coventry, for all I know (apart from the docks, come to think of it). The effects are nice, but all the gruesome stuff, like the removal of a corpse’s thumb for identification, happens just off  screen. That, however, is likely a censorship thing rather than anything else.

The lead actors in the show are really, really good. I’ve personally always enjoyed Kiefer Sutherland’s performances. The last thing I watched before jumping into 24 happened to be Stand By Me, in which Sutherland plays a very different character. The portrayals were so different that it was a little weird going straight from one to the other. The fact that the roles were fifteen years apart might also have had something to do with it. The acting in the final episode was great – Bauer is forced from having everything within his grasp, to having lost everything, to getting it back, then [Spoiler Alert] losing it again. The poor man must have been beyond exhausted, but Sutherland gives the portrayal a subtlety that never lets the story slip into absurdity. As a rule, the acting in this show was great, but the other stand out performance for me was Dennis Haysbert’s conflicted moralist of a politician. It’s so much fun watching him be angry.

Mostly the acting and directing was top-notch. Some of the supporting cast erred, and in the company of such great performances, this made for some really jarring moments. However, the thing about 24 was that if you weren’t required to do a stellar job, then your character wasn’t going to stick around long anyway. Stand-outs here were Silas Wier Mitchell’s terrifying rapist Eli (you may have seen him in the recent show Grimm as the warm-hearted Monroe) and a fleeting one-episode tour-de-fource from Yoloanda Ross as Officer Jessie Hampton, an unflinching beat cop who gives her life to help Jack.

Overall, the writing on the show was of a very high standard. The dialogue was fairly believable, which is always a big plus when you’re throwing techno-jargon around and making threats on people’s lives – these things can so often land poorly. In fact, I remember being highly satisfied with the clunky and inefficient portrayal of “tracing a call”, something that is so often glossed over in shows of this type. The story arch is satisfying, with twists and turns and betrayals that only occasionally left one nonplussed (to elaborate: the big betrayal at the end was somehow simultaneously predictable  and nonsensical) and the plot holes are nicely smoothed over by the quality of the acting and the dialogue. It leaves you with a perfect moment of bathos which counter-acts a well constructed feel-good ending, that would have felt trite after the unrelenting nature of what had come before.

It was a show of its time, in many ways, but I enjoyed procrastinating with Season 1 of 24.

Entertainment – 8 Once it gets going, this show is eminently enjoyable, and its momentum is undeniable.

Effort – 6 It’s a lot of time to devote to a show, and there are a lot of threads to juggle.

Expense – 8 Accessible through Netflix, which at current prices, I would recommend to most people.

Endurance – 8 It’ll eat your time once you get into it, especially if you remember that there’s a ninth season coming out tomorrow.

EQUALS – 7.5 A show that’s still worth watching, 13 years later. If political action thrillers are your wheelhouse, then make sure you’ve seen 24.