A DAY IN THE LIFE JACK IS BACK AS `24' RETURNS FOR A NEW SEASON OF TREACHERY.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

Past seasons of ``24'' have tasked Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) with preventing some monumental horror threatening our country. This year, Jack must put an end to an ongoing series of terrorist attacks.

Perhaps this is retribution for the country allowing Jack to rot away in a Chinese prison for nearly two years (after exposing the president as being in league with terrorists last year, he was kidnapped and beaten by sinister Chinese officials in the season finale).

The sixth season begins tonight on Fox at 6 a.m. with a bombing in San Antonio and a bus explosion in Los Angeles, the latest in a series of attacks that has resulted in 900 dead. The body count is ratcheted up before tonight's two-hour premiere concludes.

Wayne Palmer (D.B. Woodside), brother of David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert, whose character was one of many killed off last year), is president, though the escalating violence causes him to fret, ``I'm starting to wonder if I'm the right person to run this country.''

Palmer has negotiated Jack's release from the Chinese. He arrives, bedraggled and disoriented, at Camp Pendleton, but still manages to register a kill within an hour of returning to the U.S., offering up a vivid new method from his grisly bag of tricks.

To counterbalance the fact that Islamic fundamentalists are behind the assaults, the writers create a former Islamic terrorist who has renounced violence and teams up with Jack to help stop the attacks, as well as a timely subplot involving a White House official (Peter MacNicol) eager to shred the Constitution to end the carnage. But, like the president, Jack's time in the Chinese prison has caused him to suffer from his own crisis of confidence: He's not sure he's the right guy to save the world anymore. But of course we know better.

To put it mildly, after winning the best drama Emmy for season five, ``24'' opens its sixth season, impressively enough, with its greatest sense of urgency ever. By the end of Monday night's two-hour installment, the writers seem to have upped the ante significantly in terms of what's at stake. Again, you'll be hooked.

But, this being ``24,'' there are also the requisite howlers and hyperbole. Jack manages to out-race military helicopters to one location in a hot-wired car, and one terrorist recruits the stupidest family in suburbia to carry out part of his mission. And it turns out the Palmer brothers had a heretofore unmentioned sister, who just happens to provide legal representation, during this time of national paranoia, for a Muslim organization -- awkward -- Petulant Chloe (Mary Lynn Rajskub) is back, and her imperious boyfriend Morris (Carlo Rota), seen briefly providing a smidgen of comic relief last season, returns to make life miserable for Milo (Eric Balfour), who has returned to CTU. And yes, the writers still have no compunction about including established characters in the body count.

``This is going to get much worse,'' a character grimly intones tonight. Which means it'll also get much wilder.

David Kronke, [phone]

[e-mail]

24 - Four stars

What: Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland) must save the world for a sixth time.

Where: Fox.

When: 8 tonight; 8 p.m. Monday; thereafter, 9 p.m. Mondays.

In a nutshell: The roughest, most violent season ever. And that's an understatement.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Kiefer Sutherland and the rest of his Fox real-time drama's cast return as terrorist attacks ramp up on ``24.''