San Diego Television"24" Is Back In Action
Also: "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" on PBS Somebody’s messing with America’s air traffic control and the national security system. An African despot is threatening world peace, such as it is. Who ya gonna call? Right. This is a job for Jack Bauer, even if his favored forms of rough justice suddenly seem embarrassingly primitive. Such are the circumstances framing Fox’s “24,” which returns Sunday for a seventh season of careening car collisions, catastrophic crises and computer crashes, all seemingly happening in a single day of the calendar. (For those seeking more traditional melodrama, the PBS anthology “Masterpiece Classic” Sunday airs the conclusion of Thomas Hardy’s “Tess of the D’Urbervilles.” We’ll get to that a bit later.) This time around, both Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) and the producers of “24” are coping with new political realities. The torture-tolerant Bush administration is on the way out, and the more Geneva-conscious Obama administration is a-comin’ in. Apparently surprised that the political winds of the real world could shift so quickly, the producers tell us that in the world of “24,” four years have passed since Season Six. Actually, thanks to the 2007-2008 strike by Hollywood writers, it’s been two years, bridged by a stand-alone movie that aired in November. (“24” kicks off its new season with a two-hour special at 8 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 11, on KSWB/Cable 5) The story gets under way with a rush, several men in black ramming their vehicles into that of a government scientist driving his daughter to school and tossing him into the rear of a van. As we soon learn, their aim is to force him to tinker with a computer box so they can penetrate the nation’s “security firewall” (whatever that is). Oddly, they don’t take the one step that would guarantee his cooperation; they don’t take the daughter. Some terrorists. Meanwhile, Jack Bauer’s former employer, the Counter-Terrorism Unit, has been disbanded and he’s trying to answer for its excesses in front of a Senate committee. He’s stone-faced, defiant, even if the twitching fingers on his right hand give away his nervousness. Sure, he tortured a suspect, he admits, but he prevented a bus bombing. Now, however, it’s Jack’s turn to be rescued. He’s interrupted in mid-testimony and escorted away by an FBI agent. His services are urgently needed. The gang that kidnapped the scientist, the men threatening the government’s “firewall project,” are headed by an old pal of his, Tony Almeida (Carlos Bernard). Wait! Isn’t Tony dead? That’s what Jack and everybody else thought. What he wants to know now is, why did Tony go bad? Between action sequences, Jack allows himself a moment of reflection. “It’s better that everything comes out in the open,” he says. “We’ve done so many things in the name of protecting this country, we’ve created two worlds. Ours and the people’s we’ve promised to protect. They deserve to hear the truth and decide how far they want to let us go.” He and the producers, it seems, are transitioning to a post-post-9/11 world. In the White House, in a plot that resonates of “The West Wing,” President Allison Taylor (Cherry Jones) is deciding what to do about an African dictator who’s slaughtering people left and right. She has her own problems, though. Her son recently committed suicide. But, she declares resolutely, “grief is a luxury I can’t afford right now.” Do you think all these plots and subplots will eventually entwine? Would you be surprised if they did? Until we know for sure, here’s some food for thought: When this seventh season of 24-hour plots wraps up come May, Jack Bauer will be completing a full week’s worth of bad days. --------------------- “Tess of the D’Urbervilles,” adapted from Thomas Hardy’s 1891 novel, isn’t as flashy, and not at all contemporary. Not at first glance, anyway. But look at it this way: people around the globe have read and been touched by his story – moved to tears, many of them – for more than 100 years. What are the odds anybody will be watching “24” in 24 years? “Tess” is a tragedy, the story of a young woman wronged, trying as best she can to live her life right despite the pervasive hypocrisies of the late 19th Century, when the double standard was the only standard most people knew. (Part II airs at 9-11 p.m. Sunday on KPBS/Cable 11) Played appealingly by Gemma Arterton, Bess is a farm girl. Her surname, so far as she knows, is Durbeyfield. Then her no-account father is told that, actually, their family is descended from nobility, distantly related to the D’Urbervilles, whose mansion is not far off across the lush, green hills of England. Tess is sent to work for her rich relations, not knowing they aren’t D’Urbervilles at all. They’re mere parvenues, a merchant family who bought the name to festoon themselves with illusions of grandeur. One of the current crop of D’Urbervilles is young Alec (Hans Matheson), whose main occupation seems to be lurking about the estate, making sure he meets innocent Tess at every opportunity. She resolutely rejects his attentions, but to no avail. This week, the tragedy of Tess will fully reveal itself. Keep a hanky handy.  Robert P. Laurence About the author: Robert P. Laurence was television critic at the San Diego Union-Tribune for 21 years. He previously wrote about politics, jazz, rock 'n' roll and all manner of news. He graduated in journalism from San Francisco State University, and earned an M.A. in political science at San Jose State. He's lived in San Diego since 1971. More by this author Subscribe to Television:
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