24 Television Program

Will the big screen give Jack Bauer his biggest bad day yet? 20th Century Fox and the producers of "24" have signed a deal to make a film version of the counterterrorism exploits of special agent Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). Sutherland wants to reprise his favorite role, but the deal is not final yet, his publicist said. "24's" executive producer Howard Gordon said he would work on the project with the show's co-creators, Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow, who will write the script.

One fallout of the Hollywood writers strike is that fans of Fox's drama "24" have to wait until next January to see Jack Bauer again. The network has committed to air a full season on consecutive weeks and had been planning to start last month. If it had started airing new episodes of the Kiefer Sutherland action show soon, the season finale would not have taken place until the summer, when TV networks rarely show their high-profile programs. A January 2009 start seemed the best way to comply with viewers' wishes that a season's episodes run without interruption to conclusion, Fox said Thursday.

A friend showed me recently how to program my TiVo remote so that I can skip ahead in 30-second increments with one touch of a button. I had been living in relative darkness, working the arrow buttons, fast-forwarding to the first, second or third power, watching a "Grey's Anatomy" episode in 10 minutes (medical-medical-medical, Meredith-whatever, Burke-whatever, stop to see if George and Izzie have sex).

JON CASSAR was sitting in his director's chair on the Oval Office set of "24" during a typically hectic day for the first-time Emmy director nominee. Cassar was filming the first two hours of the Fox drama's sixth season, and there was an awful lot he has to live up to. The first two hours of "24," which Fox airs in one night, have become a January event for the show's rabid fans.

Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp. has subpoenaed YouTube, Google Inc.'s video-sharing site, to reveal the identity of a user who uploaded four episodes of the TV show "24" ahead of their airing. The subpoena filed Jan. 18 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California requests that San Mateo, Calif.-based YouTube help identify the subscriber so that Fox can stop the infringing immediately. The subscriber also uploaded 12 episodes of "The Simpsons."

When "24" debuted in 2001, critics thought it might be too soon after Sept. 11 for a show about a crisis-bedeviled counterterrorism unit. Then they worried that the series' real-time premise couldn't remain both exciting and plausible for 24 episodes. (They forgot that when a show is exciting enough, no one cares if it's plausible.) This season, the fourth, provoked complaints about stereotyping Middle Easterners.

The lesson we can take away from Monday night's episode of "24" ("2 a.m.-3 a.m.") might be this: Ask long enough and eventually ye shall receive. Finally, after weeks of begging and whining on the part of "24" fans everywhere, the Powers That Be at the Fox series saw fit to give us the return of James Cromwell as Jack Bauer's dad.

JACK BAUER, America's favorite counter-terrorism agent with the violent code of honor and the weird sadomasochistic bent, is squaring off against a stealthy and unforgiving new enemy. His fans. After peaking in the ratings last year, Fox's thriller "24" has been getting dumped on by seemingly everyone in this, its sixth season.

It was spy versus spy on TV Monday night. One's coming back next year, the other isn't. Fox won the last Monday of the 2005-06 season in the key "adults ages 18 to 49" demographic with the two-hour, fifth-season finale of "24." The drama starring Kiefer Sutherland as a gruff counterterrorism agent delivered a 5.4 rating/14 share in the demo, with 13.5 million total viewers, according to early data from Nielsen Media Research.

FROM a cold start, it takes about 75 minutes for Jack Bauer to become Jack Bauer. Fresh off a transport plane from China, where he'd been jailed for almost two years, Jack emerges looking like an early '70s Deadhead. He shuffles his feet, has difficulty looking people in the eye, and we learn that he hasn't uttered a word in two years.