Creators of TV series '24' admit there are no 'ticking time bombs'

The New Yorker:

Each season of "24," which has been airing on Fox since 2001, depicts a single, panic-laced day in which Jack Bauer — a heroic C.T.U. agent, played by Kiefer Sutherland — must unravel and undermine a conspiracy that imperils the nation. [...] With unnerving efficiency, suspects are beaten, suffocated, electrocuted, drugged, assaulted with knives, or more exotically abused; almost without fail, these suspects divulge critical secrets.

The show's appeal, however, lies less in its violence than in its giddily literal rendering of a classic thriller trope: the "ticking time bomb" plot. [...]

Bob Cochran, who created the show with [Joel] Surnow, admitted, "Most terrorism experts will tell you that the 'ticking time bomb' situation never occurs in real life, or very rarely. But on our show it happens every week." [...]

[Lead writer Howard] Gordon, who is a "moderate Democrat," said that it worries him when "critics say that we've enabled and reflected the public's appetite for torture. Nobody wants to be the handmaid to a relaxed policy that accepts torture as a legitimate means of interrogation." He went on, "But the premise of '24' is the ticking time bomb. It takes an unusual situation and turns it into the meat and potatoes of the show." He paused. "I think people can differentiate between a television show and reality."