LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – The Fox TV network on Friday stopped the clock on its action adventure series "24," ending one of its most successful dramas as ratings began to slip in its current, eighth season.
The final, two-hour program will air on May 24, and in the countdown to that last show, the network will air 11 hours of uninterrupted episodes on Monday nights.
"This has been the role of a lifetime, and I will never be able to fully express my appreciation to everyone who made it possible," the show's star, Kiefer Sutherland, said in a statement.
"Looking ahead to the future, (executive producer) Howard Gordon and I are excited about the opportunity to create the feature film version of '24'," Sutherland added.
It's a great series....one of the best ever but it has sort of run its course. I have been following it once again this season but, I mean, how many times can Jack Bauer save the land of the free and the home of the brave and still make it seem relevant? I'd probably go see the movie as long as it wasn't 24 hours long.
I am sad to see it go. Faced with one "reality" joke after another flooding tv channels it's always bad when a good show drops off.
I think it's time for a show to go when the creators of it stop producing good material for it.
I'm not sure where the show is in the ratings but that would seem to be the best indicator or whether their material still does't it for most of it's viewers.
Well, on a lighter note, Keifer is getting a bit old for it and Freddie Prinze doesn't really convince me as a replacement for Jack Bauer, even with his Jersey accent on the show
I wonder what the plot will be... Let me guess. It'll include...
A terrorist. Some kind of bomb, nuke, bio or chemical weapon. The President. Some type of betrayal or conspiracy with the President.
Some one screaming "Tell me what I need to know!"
And the "agent" pulling off amazing shooting skill with your basic pistol while jumping through the air, and rolling through a fiery explosion and emerging untouched.
Please someone kill off this 24 crap once and for all. Every damn show has been the same and annoying.
There have been rumors about a cancellation for at least three weeks now. Mary Lynn Rajskub wrote it on her twitter account and the producers issued the invitation to the casting for the role of the UN general secretary with a sentence like "this could be your last chance to be on 24". And the producers were already in talks with NBC about whether the show could jump networks in case FOX dropped it.
So this isn't real "news". Most critics and tv market experts have only waited for the official word from FOX but were already pretty sure that 24 was being cancelled.
Honestly, I liked the first three seasons, even though they were in part grossly unrealistic. But seasons four through six were sometimes almost unbearable, especially if you're not an American. The constant racial profiling, gun waving, torturing, shouting, beating, Jack Bauer dies, Jack Bauer lives again, Jack Bauer is tortured, Jack Bauer tortures somebody, we have no time so let's just torture somebody, "It has to be done!", "Mr. President, there is no time!", "Where is the bomb/device/microchip/... ?!?!??", "Damn it!!!".... etc. etc. Season seven was a bit better again and had a fresh breeze. The current season however is sometimes almost laughable:
Jack get's stabbed in the gut and continues as if nothing has happened. In the next episode (which is supposed to be just one hour later!) he almost gets tortured to death for half an hour with electro shocks but kills his torturer with ease and his hands tied. Not one hour after that he gets grazed at the shoulder by a shotgun blast and continues as if nothing has happened and the list goes on and on and on.
And mind you, if we'd calculate Jack Bauer's age... let's say in season one he had to be at least 34, as he has a daughter, that was 16 years old at that time. Seasons one to three alone cover a time span of about seven years, if I remember correctly. Well, doesn't take a genius to figure out that in this eight season the Jack Bauer character has to be at least 50. And he does all this? Yeah, right.
If you ask me, this show had it coming, as great as it once was.
But there are a lot of new shows coming or in the making. I think I'll just start a new thread on that.
Makes me happy actually. I haven't seen a single episode of the show, now I get to watch every episode in order and don't have to wait for weekly episodes .
I like the show a lot, but I also found the series getting quite painful the last few years. Like Om3ga, the season that did it for me was the one where the nuke went off in the middle of LA. It seemed the action really fell off in the middle of that season.
A very overrated show. It was alright and had a good premise the first and maybe the second season. Then it just got lame and repetitive to the point I couldn't take it seriously anymore. If you've seen one of the seasons you pretty much have seen them all. They were just slight variations on almost the exact same storyline. You could almost write out a short premise for one show and write out all the others by just changing a few words here and there. The whole basis of the show is that it's run on a gimmick, the 24 hour clock ticking down, and by it's nature it couldn't last. Really, just how much and at how high a level does one have to suspend disbelief about how Bauer saves the day exactly as the 24 hour mark passes every time. Also, like many dramas on television now there seemed to be way too many times when that one thing that broke the conspiracy opened just conveniently came at the right time or was found (All CSI shows are very bad at that also). There were also way too many "Xanatos gambits" or maybe even "Xanatos roulettes" that made the show too ridiculous. The blatant plot devises used in it just became to much. Thank God, it's finally over.
I also disliked how some people seemed to think of it as some sort of actual manual on how to handle situations like that, thought it was realistic, or used it to try to portray that things like torture and such were alright by playing to it's popularity, without considering it was just a television show.
