A day in the life

Joel Surnow is the man responsible for the thrilling, masochistic television show "24." He has no idea how it's going to end.

By Ian Rothkerch

Feb. 5, 2002 | Sitting through an entire episode of the unnervingly suspenseful "24" is a gleeful exercise in masochism, both thrilling and torturous. Since its debut this season, Fox's ingenious new espionage drama has found itself at the center of a maelstrom of publicity and critical adulation, even if its underwhelming ratings don't necessarily reflect the show's originality and flawless execution.

"24" stars Kiefer Sutherland as Counter Terrorist Unit operative Jack Bauer. Jack's job is to stop a labyrinthine conspiracy to eliminate a popular African-American presidential candidate (Dennis Haysbert). The assassins, however, draw Jack into their plot by kidnapping both his disgruntled wife (Leslie Hope) and his angst-ridden daughter (Elisha Cuthbert). Add to those troubles a few untrustworthy CTU agents, a spurned paramour/co-worker (Sarah Clarke) and a couple of murders and it's no wonder Agent Bauer is wearier than a drugged-out Michael Corleone.

With double-dealing moles, shady government bureaucrats, fancy techno gadgets and ice-cold assassins, "24" plays up every element of the spook genre. Where the show distinguishes itself, however, is in its audacious episodic structure. As often noted, the whole series takes place in the span of one day, beginning on the eve of the California presidential primary. At the same time, each episode unfurls in real time. That means that a minute on the trail of the assassins translates into a minute of television. The impressive thing is that what could have easily degenerated into a tiresome gimmick has actually turned out to be a taut, deftly rendered storytelling device.

I recently spoke over the phone with Joel Surnow, one-half of the creative team behind "24." (Robert Cochran is the second partner.) Surnow is an industry vet with a résumé as a writer and producer that includes "Nikita," "Covington Cross," "Miami Vice" and "Wiseguy."

"24" airs Tuesday nights at 9 on Fox with an encore on Fridays at 9.

"24" is so tightly constructed and juggles multiple, interconnecting story lines that I imagine it must be a bitch to plot from episode to episode. Before sitting down to write the actual scripts, did you outline the entire arc of the series? Do you already know how this season is going to wrap up, or is it still a discovery process?

It is impossible to come up with a 24-episode arc. You can do about six or eight at a time. We came up with kinda like the first eight, which we thought of as sort of like Act 1. We have a rough idea where we're going, but because it's so many episodes, you have to divert and go off to the side and get off the main story to keep telling the story. That is a separate kind of storytelling and a separate discipline. The thing about our show is every episode's only an hour, so it could be one small idea that becomes an entire episode.

Can you talk a little about the genesis of this project? How did you come up with the premise?

I came up with an idea of doing a show in real time and I pitched it to Bob [Cochran], who I work with very often. He thought that it was a good idea, but impossible to do. And I agreed with him. But we decided it has such a great hook. So, we started to think of what kind of story can you tell in 24 hours that would keep people up for 24 hours, not sleeping or eating or snoozing. It's got to be a very compelling story.

So, we thought a presidential candidate's about to be assassinated. Then we had to do something that [made it] a personal story. Bob and I both have teenage daughters, so we thought, "Wow. What if our teenage daughter disappeared?"

Then we put those together and we had a 24-hour day where a presidential candidate is going to be assassinated, a guy's daughter is missing and one guy has to be responsible for both of them. That will keep everybody at the edge of their seats for 24 hours.

How long did it take for you to come up with the bare-bones premise?

I think it was four hours and 17 minutes, to be exact.

You know, that's not what other writers want to hear.

[Laughs] It probably took us about two or three weeks of sitting down. We really wanted to work it out since we knew it was a complicated concept. We really were thorough and pitched out the whole season in a sense -- not specifically, but where it could go and how episodes could play out and examples of how it could work. It really helped us in the long run.

"24" is a risky proposition because it relies heavily on the patience and loyalty of the audience. In a medium not exactly known for going out on an artistic limb, how did you manage to sell a series like this?

I just think that Fox liked the pilot that we wrote. I think what happened, quite honestly, is they didn't expect much of it. I don't even think they were thinking it would ever get on-air. There were a couple of other shows that season that looked like they were gonna be shoo-ins. It turned out our pilot was so good and the response was so strong, that they suddenly had to face the reality of "What are we gonna' do?"

The pilot tested through the roof; everyone at the studio flipped over it, all the way up to Rupert Murdoch and Peter Chernin. And so then there were meetings about how to mitigate the risk. We don't want to rely on everyone having to watch every episode, so can we come up with close-ended stories to make it palatable? Can we have recaps? I think to their great credit, they knew it was a risk, but they decided to go for it.

Were you ever dissuaded by the commercial failure of gutsy shows like "Murder One" and "Twin Peaks," both of which tried to stretch one story line over the course of a whole season?

No, because we never thought we were gonna stretch one story line over a season. Our story lines are going to evolve. Yeah, we were daunted by it, and hopefully we learned a little by their failure. One thing we learned from "Twin Peaks" is you can't string an audience along so much that they get frustrated with it.

Next page: What Kiefer Sutherland has is a lot of anger