24 Legacy touched down on Fox last night — with a relentless hour of computer surveillance and balls-out gun fights.
The series, a spin-off of the original 24 starring Kiefer Sutherland, centres on former army ranger Eric Carter (Corey Hawkins), who finds himself on the run when a terrorist cell murders most of his former team.
Eric is forced to contact Rebecca Ingram (Miranda Otto), who is the former national head of the Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU). With Ingram’s help Eric tracks down Ben Grimes (Charlie Hofheimer) the only other survivor from his special forces team.
As the story quickly unfolds we learn that the terrorists are after a USB drive, which contains activation numbers for various terrorist cells loyal to the terrorist leader that Eric, his team and CTU helped capture.
Trouble is Ben Grimes is unstable, paranoid and off his face on drugs — and steals the drive while Eric engages some terrorists in a dramatic concluding gun fight.
Eric doesn’t get to have all the action though.
In a jaw-dropping scene, we get to see Otto’s Rebecca Ingram take out the new head of CTU with a taser. She apparently is not authorised to be using CTU computers to run an operation.
She should also really be with her husband, Senator John Donovan, who is running for President.
This first episode is your typical 24 set-up, in that we are given a problem with various people and angles from which to figure things out.
The opener leaves us with a few interesting questions to ponder.
First off. Will Rebecca wind up abandoning her husband’s presidential campaign to run the op? And what repercussions will she face for tasering a colleague?
Second is how far down the rabbit hole does the conspiracy run? We do know that the terrorists have a mole somewhere hidden in the FBI or CIA.
Although there is no Jack Bauer in this new show, we do have a nice little call back to the original with an analyst who is apparently the cousin of Edgar Styles — who died during 24’s run.
This is a pretty strong start and Miranda Otto is definitely not to be messed with.
24: Legacy Season 1 Episode 2 airs tonight, February 6, at 8/7c on FOX.