The Pilot High concept television truly arrived at the turn of the millennium with this pacey offering from Fox. The premise is simple enough, with maverick counter terrorist agent Jack Bauer (a reborn Keifer Sutherland) getting called into work amid the threat of a presidential candidate being assassinated. Cue lots of fancy tech, an enthralling subplot involving Bauers daughter out on a sinister double date, as well as secrets and lies unravelling on the campaign trail. What Did It Change? Escapist nonsense it may well be to some, but 24 kicked down a fair few doors in respect of the way it changed TV. Multi and split screen interludes connected the overlapping plot strands better than any show had done before; the real time format received a shot in the arm courtesy of creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, as they expertly turned the show into the TV equivalent of a page turner, but, most ground-breaking of all, 24 officially heralded the era of boxsets, instilling a culture in viewers where marathon sprints through the show on DVD were favoured over watching it via weekly syndication. Legacy Once 24s countdown started, the pretenders came in thick and fast with notable shows including Britains Spooks, Alias, Prison Break and Homeland. Its also not a long shot to cite 24 as the program that showed career resurrections can be a glorious thing, with faded stars such as Charlie Sheen and David Spader enjoying success in Two And A Half Men and The Blacklist, respectively.
Shaun is a former contributor for a number of Future Publishing titles and more recently worked as a staffer at Imagine Publishing.
He can now be found banking in the daytime and writing a variety of articles for What Culture, namely around his favourite topics of film, retro gaming, music, TV and, when he's feeling clever, literature.
