24
Never has a ticking clock felt more laden with urgency or doom than in this revolutionary ‘real time’ TV thriller, in which all 24 episodes of a given series profess to add up to one day of the life of harassed hero Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland). In fact, strip out all the commercial space and each episode is closer to 45 minutes rather than one hour but that fallacy aside, 24 was monumental in spearheading a new era of fiendishly entertaining small-screen popcorn entertainment. With each instalment perfectly calibrated to leave us hanging with a devastatingly timed cliffhanger, it also resurrected Sutherland’s career and gave him a signature character who has endured over the course of 9 seasons, a TV film and a PS2 game.
