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{{BSZ}} The fifth season of “[[24]]“24,” the phenomenally successful Fox television series, premiered on January 15. Composed of 24 one-hour episodes, the show chronicles the workday of the fictitious L.A.-based Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) as it desperately attempts to thwart a catastrophic terrorist attack. (In season four, they stopped a stolen nuclear weapon from exploding above a major U.S. city.) The “real-time” nature of the series confers a strong sense of urgency, emphasized by the ticking of a digital clock and accentuated with hand-held camera shots and split-screens showing the concurrent actions of various characters.
Even the commercial breaks contribute to this sense of urgency: Before a commercial, we see an on-screen digital clock signalling it is “7:46.” When the action resumes, the digital clock reads “7:51.” The length of the break in our, the spectators’, real time is exactly equivalent to the temporal gap in the on-screen narrative, as if the events nonetheless <i>go on</i> as we watch commercials. This makes it seem like the ongoing action is so pressing, spilling over into the real time of the spectator, that even commercial breaks cannot interupt it.