The hit series 24 is loved by fans, peers and critics alike. In its first three seasons, the show garnered a staggering list of nominations and awards: 28 Emmy nominations, Emmy wins for writing and editing, seven Golden Globe nominations and a Golden Globe for both Best Television Series in Drama for the third season, as well as Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Drama for Kiefer Sutherland in his second season of the show.

With the release of Season Four on DVD, fans can catch up with Agent Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) eighteen months after his emotional breakdown at the end of the third season, when he crossed moral boundaries to stop a terrorism threat before it could kill millions. Now CTU, the Counter Terrorist Unit, is headed up by Erin Driscoll (Alberta Watson) and Jack is working for Secretary of Defense James Heller (William Devane) and romantically involved with Heller's married daughter Audrey Raines (Kim Raver). When a commuter train explosion reveals a new and greater terrorism threat to the world, Jack finds himself back at CTU and reluctantly forced to work back in the field again as the clock starts ticking.

For 38-year-old Kiefer Sutherland - son of actor Donald Sutherland and veteran of films such as Stand by Me, The Lost Boys, Young Guns, Flashback, Flatliners and Taking Lives - the show is a labor of love. He not only stars in the real time episodes covering 24 hours each season, one hour at a time, but he also serves as co-executive producer.

What do you think of Jack Bauer's moral struggles in the show?

I've done some other projects where I explored terrible choices people have to make. Are these hundred people expendable to save these thousand people? Are these potentially ten thousand people expendable to save the potential million people? That was the basis of the idea of our show to begin with and we take a talented but ordinary man and put him in extraordinary circumstances to see what would come of that.

As a producer, does it get more difficult coming up with ways to top yourself each season?

I talk to the writers as a producer but also from the standpoint that ultimately I will have to play one of the characters in this storyline. It's an incredible challenge and I think jokingly we didn't know if we were even going to make it out of the first season! We were certainly very scared about whether the idea would play with the same cast of characters in the second season and in a large part it's a tribute to the talent of our writers that they keep getting more and more creative in trying to find the variables on a very similar theme year after year. We also cast fantastic actors that helped make the show last and I think the fourth season is our best yet.

Has playing Jack Bauer changed you as a person?

Not as a person except that in my own 24 hour day, if I sleep for about forty percent, that leaves sixty percent and I would say fifty percent of that day is spent working on this show, as an actor or producer. The experience I've had has changed me as an actor incredibly. We work at such a pace and over a long period of time it's allowed me to focus on the moment and notice the smaller aspects of a story or the inflection of a word that I would not pay attention to as closely before as an actor.

Do you worry about political correctness and what audiences will let you do?

At the end of the first season, I found out they were going to kill my character's wife and I was very nervous and said fantastically bold things like, 'I go on the record that this is the worst thing we could ever do to our audience' because I thought it was wrong to ask an audience to stay with them for twenty-three episodes and instead of reunite the family, we destroy it. But I take my hat off to the other producers because they stood fast and insisted on going for it and I got so many letters that echoed how I felt but ended by saying, 'but thank you for doing this because you really caught us off-guard and now we don't know what will happen next.'

How do you feel about Jack Bauer's journey so far? Is there hope for him?

I think there has to be hope because if you lost hope for him, then you would lose interest in the show. The fourth season starts with him being happy, very much like the first season started off. I think he smiled more in the first two episodes than he smiled in the entire history of the show! And I think why he's so aggressive this year is because he's a guy in love again. In the second and third season he was a guy who hadn't gotten over the death of his wife, who felt responsible and was very angry. Now he feels good again and that becomes threatened so he has to approach it all with much more care, especially when Audrey's life is in danger.

How do you approach a season of 24?

We've always broken it down like a very long three-act play. We work in sections of eight and when you see the DVD, you'll notice the huge shifts more. The first eight episodes are Audrey and her father being held captive and being brought back. Then Paul, Audrey and myself go out for another eight episodes on a mission and then somewhere around the sixteenth episode, there is a real kicker. The writers have done a fantastic job this year in clearly explaining my character's point of view, which is something we haven't done before.

Did you always know you were going to bring back some of the cast from the third season?

It was something we had every intention of doing from the very beginning but we had to develop the story to figure out where they would come back and we didn't know exactly which ones and at which time until the script got turned in.

What impact do you think 24 has had on television?

I think that will be up to other filmmakers to decide but what I have noticed is when I start watching other shows, there is an awful lot of reality television out there that uses a lot of split screens, which I think is pretty funny because it was innovative when we did it. Our director of the first season, Stephen Hopkins, got the idea of split screens from a Chinese film he'd seen ten years earlier so a lot of things are being borrowed that are technical.

Does the show still make it difficult for you to have a personal life?

Yes, but I'm not complaining. My daughter Sarah is starting college and I was disappointed I couldn't go and look at colleges with her because I have an incredibly demanding schedule, but I'm glad to have a job and I'm thrilled to be doing this show. When my daughter comes back to Los Angeles to spend her summer with me, she gets a job as an assistant on the show so that's been a fun experience to go to work with her.

Why do you think 24 has been such a big success worldwide?

I think the show taps into fears we all have. Watching a main character deal with knowing something that millions of other people don't know, yet they should - that creates a lot of fear and anxiety as a viewer. Roller coasters create anxiety and why do people like those? It makes you uncomfortable. Why do children turn themselves in circles until they're dizzy and laugh? They think it's funny! I think anything that every once in a while can alter our state of being at that exact moment can be attractive. And 24, for a variety of reasons that could be personal and individual, collectively make people uncomfortable and nervous. The one constant thing that I hear back from the DVD watchers is that they have to watch them at least four or five at a time, because they're tapping into a fear that the show is dealing with and that makes them too anxious to turn it off after one episode.



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