Familiar tricks keep ‘24: Legacy’ ticking right along
New clock, same ticks. If you were a big fan of 24 and you’ve been wondering whether to watch Fox’s reboot 24: Legacy (Sunday, approx. 10:30 ET/7:30 PT, then Mondays at 9 ET/PT; out of four), the simple answer is “yes.” Most of what you loved about the old series is still intact, including that famous ticking clock marking the show’s real-time (well, almost) structure.
And if you hated 24 and were wondering whether to avoid Leg
acy, the answer is also “yes.” Most everything people began to complain about in that groundbreaking Fox hit — the increasing familiarity and clumsiness of its delaying tactics, the weakness of its multiple subplots, the sometimes questionable politics — also is intact.
Odds are that for most who have fond memories of the show, the good will outweigh the bad. But there’s no doubt that for others, the scale will differ.
Either way, one change is deep- ly felt: the loss of Kiefer Sutherland, whose tightly wound performance as Jack Bauer added both urgency and weight to the series.
Wisely, rather than try to duplicate Sutherland or Jack, Lega
cy has gone in a completely different direction, casting Corey Hawkins as Eric Carter — a young African-American former Army Ranger who is outside the world of CTU, and only reluctantly forced into it.
The catalyst is an attack on Carter and his fellow Rangers, who had killed a Yemeni terrorist leader in a mission organized by CTU’s former head, Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto). This being
24, it turns out the attackers are after more than just revenge, as Carter becomes embroiled in a battle to save thousands of lives from a planned terrorist attack. But unlike Jack, who was usually just out to save the world, Carter has been given a simpler motivation: Avenge his fallen comrades and protect his wife (Anna Diop).
That would be great, except that Carter decides the best place to stash his wife is with his estranged drug-dealing brother (Ashley Thomas), a choice that entangles us in a cumbersome and potentially offensive subplot. Even at that, it’s a more involving story than the one revolving around a teenage girl — which, through the first four hours at least, revolves in a world of its own.
But that’s the thing with 24: Just when one story begins to bore you, another gets its share of time. Those include the more promising one built around Rebecca’s husband, a presidential candidate played by Jimmy Smits, and the inside-CTU drama provided by Rebecca’s favorite analyst (Dan Bucatinsky).
At the center stands Hawkins, who makes for an attractive hero. His Carter is both more conventionally sympathetic and less experienced than Jack, which allows the show to explore the possibility that he might be wrong or make mistakes — avenues it never traveled with Jack in charge.
Still, for all the novelty Legacy may try to introduce, it ultimately rises and falls on old tricks. Like, for example, the splitscreen device meant to convey simultaneous action, which makes little sense when it uses multiple images of the same person.
And so you’ll either cheer or laugh the first time someone hacks an ATM camera, or disobeys orders, or behaves in a way that seems to have no motivation outside of plot necessity. You’ll sigh in exasperation, or maybe nostalgic appreciation, when some crucial piece of evidence slips right past Carter’s grasp. And it will, because it must to keep the clock ticking.
Which is what that clock does yet again, and well enough to keep fans ticking along.