If you've been watching 24 for the past five seasons, chances are you know a thing or two about counter-terrorist agent extraordinaire Jack Bauer. A few things you might not be aware of: Bauer sleeps with a pillow under his gun; Bauer once won a game of Connect Four in three moves; Bauer could strangle you with a cordless phone; and Bauer once forgot where he put his keys - he then spent the next half-hour torturing himself until he revealed their location.
Season six begins 20 months after the events of season five, which ended with Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) being taken into custody by Chinese government agents. Shorn of its one-man anti-terrorist force, the US finds itself under attack from wave after wave of bombings by Islamists while its population is gripped by fear and xenophobic paranoia. As usual, Bauer is the only man who can neutralise the jihad, but this time the situation demands his greatest sacrifice to date.
In a bid to put a stop to the attacks, the US government - now headed by Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside), brother of the late president - has brokered a deal to retrieve Bauer from the Chinese and hand him over to militant Abu Fayed (Adoni Maropis) in exchange for information on Hamri al-Assad (Alexander Siddig), the man they believe is behind the terror spree. Given that Fayed's brother died while being interrogated by Bauer in Beirut in 1999, the deal amounts to a death sentence of the most agonising variety.
While a lesser man (that is, everyone else on the planet) might complain if their government let them spend almost two years being mercilessly interrogated in a Chinese prison only to be brought home for more torture and certain death, the ever-stoic and surprisingly well-tanned Bauer takes it in his stride, pausing only for an improbably rapid shower, shave and haircut before facing his duty. So begins another high-octane 1,440 minutes in the life of counter-terrorism's finest.
To keep 24 interesting across the previous five seasons, the writers stretched viewers' suspension of disbelief to its limits and season six does nothing to change this. In the tradition of not fixing things that aren't broken, the makers have delivered another unashamedly implausible yarn filled with tense moments, inventive violence, evil terrorists, double-crosses, surprise twists, political intrigue and things that go boom in the night. Bauer, you can be sure, wouldn't have it any other way.
