There must be something about real time, each minute of airtime in proportion to a minute in the frantic lives of the characters. Commercial breaks are placed at times when non- essential plot is taking place. The now signature digital timer of the show maintains during commercials, underlining the realism of the 24 hours of the season in which the characters exert themselves full force. So thankfully, this action-crammed melodramatic saga, which by the way could easily be the most violent show on network television, never uses slow motion, even during the briskest action or surreptitiousness, which countless other action franchises inevitably choose to point out in so doing. 24 goes in precisely the opposite direction, employing split-screen editing to monitor compound plot strands, phone exchanges, and emotional dialogue, following both characters' faces without fracturing tension by cutting between angles.

The characters tend to consign time windows on terrorist threats or other panicky obstacles to thwart. The action alters between different locations tracking interrelated quests of different characters in the thick of the same overarching plot, a fast-paced and complex ensemble sociopolitical opera sustaining an episodic set-up by forcing its characters to pursue leads during endless time crunches, putting them all under more and more duress. The precise intention of the given day is subject to change over the direction of the season, as the terrorists amend their horrific plots, carry out fallbacks, or are exposed to have been simple pawns in superior, more sinister schemes.

This is action adventure to the umpteenth power, never having been surpassed by a feature film, involving every cataclysmally dramatic device to send your snaredrum heart splattering the opposite wall, from weapons of mass destruction, government traitors, hapless invocation of the 25th Amendment, the bureaucratic insubordination of true heroes, threatened families, the ethics of torture and a human and believable action hero. But what brings the biggest charm to me from this world-class blockbuster is its chronic matter of characters confronted by impossible moral dilemmas of whether or not to let something dreadful go on for the ostensible benefit of a greater gain. In one season, a Dept. of Defense staffer has the option to alert CTU of an impending attack on them, but claims doing so would thus alert the terrorists and compromise an indispensable resolution. Another version of this theme is in another season, when terrorists arrange to discharge nerve gas inside a hectic shopping mall. In yet another season, the President and CTU agents have to decide between the life of a superior CTU official and the pending menace of more attacks. And it goes far beyond sociological ethics into purely emotional territory, as in Season 4 when two characters, one of whom has vital information about a nuclear strike, and the other is the spouse of a pivotal character, lay dying in an emergency room, forming the catch-22 of whom to rescue.

Because of the shocking temperament of each season's storyline, main cast members are added and dropped very often, guest stars have been advanced to main cast members over the direction of a season. Save for one or two cliché characters that comes to mind over the course of six highly peopled seasons, every one of them is fully drawn and depicted by the most becoming actors. We either care tremendously for them or hate them with a vengeance, and those extreme emotional investments can entirely turn around within a single season. Unlikely relationships spring up between two people whose ideologies, backgrounds, occupations and personalities are worlds apart. Kiefer Sutherland's federal agent Jack Bauer is no exception. The writing fleshed out by the tremendously versatile actor profoundly observes the personality and actions of this ultimate maverick action hero. He tortures, he kills, he races the earth-shattering clock for 24 hours apparently without eating or going to the bathroom. And yet, unlike Bond, Bourne, Rambo, Willis or Schwarzenegger, he not only shows and speaks his deep feelings and weaknesses but suffers their inevitable effects on his field work and the ramifications of the rules he cannot afford not to break.

Indeed, Robert Cochran and Joel Surnow's nerve-shredding post-9/11 succession of cliffhangers nurtures captivating doubts about trust, distrust and expertise under pressure, and alternates them with urgent ethical concerns regarding torture, terrorism and warfare which, though it has been understandably attacked by human rights groups owing to its circumstantial approval of governmental torture and its everlasting defiance of civil liberties, is unmistakable when it periodically materializes into a terrifically shrewd commentary on the diplomatic failings of the Bush administration.