Four years since Jack Bauer last tried to save America from terrorists, he’s back on screens – and this time he’s in London. Lynsey Charleston talks to Keifer Sutherland about the much-hyped return of the reluctant hero

UNKNOWN to even the biggest of Kiefer Sutherland fans, a secret location in a remote part of west London has been the 47-year-old actor’s home for the past five months.

British-born Sutherland, who briefly lived in the US before moving to Canada as a child, has been filming a new series of the Emmy-winning TV show 24, much to the delight of its loyal fan-base. It’s four years since the show ended, but producer Howard Gordon (the force behind Homeland) decided the time was right to revisit the high-octane drama.

The result is 24: Live Another Day, and after 15 hours of filming, Sutherland arrives for his interview somewhat breathless, having just run up six flights of stairs.

He manages to munch half a biscuit before saying: “It took about ten minutes to convince me to do another series. Howard said he had a fantastic idea and wanted to tell it in 12 episodes, rather than 24, but each episode will still remain in real time.

We all agreed to do it and Howard spent the next eight months writing.”

The “real-time” element made 24 ground-breaking TV when it first hit screens in 2001, with each episode depicting events as they happen over the course of an hour.

For emphasis, a digital clock is prominently displayed on screen, counting down as the drama unfolds.

A close look at the hand-painted view of Big Ben, which forms one of the new set backdrops, reveals that the hands are missing from the clock face.

This is so the crew can set it to match the digital countdown that will, once again, flash up on screen.

Despite his sprint in, Sutherland’s instantly composed and professional, filling the room with his familiar gravelly voice, which also landed him the role of the creepy caller in hit 2002 movie Phone Booth.

“I was scared to death,” he says, of reprising the role of Counter Terrorist Unit (CTU) agent Jack Bauer. “I was afraid of what we would be able to do with it and if there was anyone there to watch it.

“I don’t think any of us thought we had a perfect season, but we were proud of all of them. It made me very nervous for six months.”

It wasn’t until a couple of days into the shoot that he sat back and thought, ‘Wow, this actually may be really special’, he admits.

24 ran for eight series between 2001 and 2010, taking up a chunk of the actor’s life: “I have a picture of my daughter when I started 24 and she was barely 12 years old, and I have a picture of when I was finishing its last season and she’s graduating from university.”

In the new series, the US President arrives in the UK for a summit with the prime minister, when a threat’s made against his life and Bauer resurfaces.

“London is a stunningly, beautiful city,” Sutherland says, before hinting at what his alter ego’s been up to since we last saw him. “I can tell you that Jack made it as far as Eastern Europe and this series fills you in on what’s happened over the past four years.”

As fans will remember from series one, Bauer saved the lives of his daughter and the President.

But his efforts to save his wife failed, something that’s haunted him ever since.

“There are aspects of Jack that I really admire,”

says Sutherland. “This is not a guy who’s perfect by any stretch of the imagination. He’s a man who has made mistakes and he acknowledges this. This is a guy who’s been put in the most difficult, unwinnable circumstances possible, and he’s then forced to make decisions that none of us ever really want to make.”

Sutherland’s career began in 1983, when he appeared alongside his dad, Donald, in the comic movie Max Dugan Returns (they’re set to team up again in the Western drama Forsaken).

By the end of the decade he’d secured heart-throb status, with roles in hits Stand By Me and The Lost Boys. This was followed with the likes of Young Guns, Flatliners and A Few Good Men.

Reflecting on his success, Sutherland says modestly: “The only things I’ve approached which could be classed as ‘cinema’ is Dark City, a long, long time ago.

“The other was Melancholia,” he states, referring to the 2011 award-winning film directed by the controversial Danish film-maker Lars von Trier.

“Lars would send me into a room with cameras and I wouldn’t know where they were. I’d say, ‘Where do you want me to go?’ And he’d say, ‘Don’t talk, just play the scene’.

“It was a fantastic contradiction of everything I thought I had learned over that time in 24,” he recalls.

“For me, it was a very healthy thing to do and I enjoyed it immensely. I learned early on you just have to surrender to the difference, instead of forcing what you think you know on to the film.”

While he doesn’t consider 24 to be “the best thing I’ve done”, it’s something he’s incredibly proud of.

“If I was a runner and wanted to get to the Olympics, I would have to train every day. As an actor, it’s very hard to get that opportunity, but I got to work every day for ten months a year with 24.”

And by the time the show clocked up 200 episodes, as Sutherland points out, that’s “200 hours, which is the equivalent of a hundred films. That’s a career.”

  • 24: Live Another Day, Sky1, Wednesday, 9pm