The fifth-season premiere, a four-hour, two-night affair, is a heart-pounding, mesmerizing adventure unlike anything else up or down the dial. Fox, probably in defiance of the Geneva Convention, sent the first four hours of "24" to critics along with a note requesting they not reveal what happens, even in the first 10 minutes of the first hour. All I can say is that legendary CTU agent Jack Bauer (Keifer Sutherland), presumed by all but a few to be dead, is called into action once more as a result of terrible and unexpected events.

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