11.27 | Fox’s Gary Newman discusses '24'
Gary Newman, Co-President of Twentieth Century Fox Television, discusses '24':
WS: How do you keep a show like '24' fresh season after season? NEWMAN: Oh boy! If we knew the formula, we’d probably bottle it and sell it or guard it carefully! I think that the key creative team of Joel Surnow, Bob Cochran, Howard Gordon and Evan Katz deserve an enormous amount of credit for finding ways to continue to top themselves with twists and turns each season. At the core, we have a star who has incredible charisma and is magnetic, and people just love Kiefer in this role. Even though the audience knows that at the end he’s going to succeed, they just love the ride. And I guess that if the show has done anything particularly well that has caused it to stand out, and keep people feeling that it’s fresh, it’s that literally each season there are four or five surprises that you just don’t see on network television: from Nina being the mole in season one, to Jack shooting his boss, to the twist at the end of last season with the Chinese government. It’s those sorts of surprises that just when you think they’re going to save the day, they don’t save the day - in one season nerve gas [was actually released]. In other shows they manage to save the day before the unthinkable happens.
