Television
Like a sales pitch for the saviours of the Western world, the dudes of 24: Legacy storm our screens.
Fiona Rae
As the new president of the free world moves to, supposedly, secure his country’s borders from bad dudes, 24: Legacy (TVNZ 2, Tuesday, 8.45pm) is just what the US really needs right now: a violent show about terrorists planning a major domestic attack.
Only one man can stop them, and with Jack Bauer in a Moscow prison, that man is former army ranger Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins), the leader of a Seal Team Six type-of squad that killed a major terrorist leader.
As the series begins, he’s in witness protection and struggling with his new life as a security guard, “helping the 1% breathe easier”. He and his wife Nicole (Anna Diop) have been talking about kids, but she doesn’t think he’s ready.
He really isn’t. In the opening scenes, which are complete with the familiar 24 clunking digital clock, he and Nicole come under attack in their suburban home from revengey bad guys who are making their way through the squad. They’re searching for something and killing wives and children without compunction.
Carter isn’t actually alone. He turns to Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto), the former head of the Counter-Terrorism Unit, who sent the rangers on the mission.
She is in the process of stepping down from the CTU so that her husband, John Donovan (Jimmy Smits, always charming), can run for president.
Suspicious of the new CTU director (is he working with the terrorists?), Ingram starts running a secret operation to help Carter. Also in the mix are Carter’s old squad mate Grimes (Charlie Hofheimer), a drug addict suffering from PTSD, and a Chechen school student in Washington who may be part of an attack.
Guess Chechnya wasn’t on the banned list.
24: Legacy exists in a
different world from the original 24 – when it began in 2001, it was more like a
Tom Clancy thriller than real life. 24: Legacy is an update, executive producer Evan Katz said at Comic-Con last year.
“We were very excited about dealing with the world that’s changed and the threats that have changed and the types of things we’re seeing going on in this country and all over the world.”
Hawkins’ character is also different from Bauer because he’s a soldier, not a spy. “He’s used to being told who the enemy is – Where do I shoot? – and now he’s entering a world that is grey, where there is backstabbing and you don’t know who is good and who is evil.”