Fox’s drama 24, starring Kiefer Sutherland, debuts tonight with the best reviews of
any new drama this season — but is facing formidable competition from
ABC’s NYPD Blue.
Matthew Gilbert in the Boston Globe calls
it “an innovative and expertly executed hour of suspense.”
Howard
Rosenberg in the Los Angeles Times describes it as “smashing.”
“It’s gripping from the get-go,” comments Tom Shales in the
Washington Post.
Linda Stasi in the New York Post bestows
special praise on the series’ lead, Sutherland. “He’s so good, it’s like
he’s not acting,” she remarks.
John Corman in the San Francisco
Chronicle also has nice words for Sutherland, while giving the show
itself only so-so grades. “It’s a pleasingly glossy production with a
gimmick it doesn’t really need and a star it couldn’t afford to lose,”
he writes. (The gimmick: each hour of the 24-episode series comprises
one “real-time” hour of the day.)
Antonia Zerbisias in the Toronto
Star comments that when she first screened 24 back in August,
she found it “slick and surprising” and wrote “Five Harrison Ford movies
rolled into one TV series!” in her notes. But after the Sept. 11 attacks
and the anthrax terrorism, the drama, she writes, now “seems trivial and
simplistic.”
