24: Legacy

With many of the same dramatic and visual gimmicks as the original, this worthy successor boasts a similar intensity and quality as the first 24. A ticking digital clock still appears on the screen to show us where we are in each real-time hour; a split-screen camera still reveals what various cast members are doing simultaneously in their own storylines. Speaking of those storylines, also like in the original 24, there are many to juggle at one time, some of them more ludicrous than others: A love triangle set in a high school with young Chechen terrorists? A family circumstance that puts Carter's wife in danger just when her husband also is dealing with a terrorist plot? Sounds like a good old overstuffed episode of 24, and fans will be eager to let 24: Legacy unspool to its (no doubt) complicated conclusion. 

Like 24, too, it becomes fairly obvious early on that there's at least one mole somewhere in the antiterrorism team who's throwing Carter and his fellow freedom fighters to the wolves. Is it Rebecca Ingram or Senator John Donovan, desperate to further Donovan's presidential campaign? Carter's PTSD-clouded former Army Ranger unit comrade Ben Grimes (Charlie Hofheimer)? CTU's director Mullins, who'll stop at nothing to make sure his agency comes out on top? A character states, "I learned a long time ago that everybody lives two lives: one that we show to the outside world and one that we keep all to ourselves." As we soon find out, that's true both for the terrorists and those trying to stop them in this binge-worthy drama.